African American Influence On Hip Hop

The rap subculture is widely agreed to have been established in the Bronx, New York during the 1970’s. At a time when block parties became popular, especially among African-American youths, hip-hop music was a means of expressing opinions and values and as a new source of communication. At these gatherings, DJs would play percussive breaks from popular songs, often on two turntables to enable them to extend these breaks. This new culture defined itself by four key stylistic elements: MCing/rapping, scratching/DJing, graffiti writing and break dancing. As this style of music became more established, an evolution began, as sampling technology and drum machines became more affordable and widely available.

The hip-hop cultural movement has been divided into four categories: the 1970’s discovery of turntable sampling and the emergence of "Rapper’s Delight" from The Sugar Hill Gang; "The Old School" defined by Run-D.M.C.; The 1980’s Rapper’s of "Social Realism" dealing with the identification of racial issues within the urban lifestyle, expressed in lyrics by rappers such as Ice-T, Rakim, N.W.A. and LL Cool J; The present day commercial hip-hop centered around monopolized record labels sacrificing art for the benefit of commercial revenue, such as "No Limit Records." The hip-hop movement originated as an urban impulse using various elements of performance art to discover a cultural identity, which was usually deemed unacceptable by law enforcement officers. The culture adopted an "outlaw" image through graffiti art, breakdancing and DJ’s mixing samples at public party performances. The two most

Hip hop music contains more than just empty meanings; it can educate, motivate and encourage. In addition, it possesses the power to inform one about current technology and urban life. Nevertheless, since the start of the 21st century, hip hop has lost its originality by focusing on topics such as sex, money, and drugs, rather than its original roots which educated on meaningful issues such as racism, police brutality, and segregation. A good example of this would be Tupac Shakur’s song Changes.

The history of hip hop is important to understand in order to determine the ways in which hip hop has ‘commercialized’. Firstly, Hip hop originated in Bronx, New York in the 1970s. Hip hop has been heavily influenced by the American Black culture. The elements of hip hop include MCing, rapping, graffiti art, break dancing, and scratching (“History of Hip Hop”). The block parities hosted by DJ Kool Herc made significant contribution to the beginning of the hip hop culture. Many new DJs, MCs, rappers, break dancers would attend these parties to show off their talent. These gatherings brought new and styles of music and dancing which marked the beginning of the hip hop culture. This new form of music caught on and by the late 1970s, many block parities were being hosted in New York. Other DJs like Afrika Bambataa and Grandmaster Flash are also considered the pioneers of hip hop (Mize, 2014). After the hip hop culture grew out of the underground and become more known, it drew the interest

Music has been here since the dawn of time. It's considered the universal language in the world and can relate to every individual in one way or another. Music has a way of bringing opposite people together through various emotions. Music has a way of explaining things in ways that words cannot. Our group chose to focus on the racial diversity in the music industry because of the ever-growing popularity of music. Now people are becoming more accepting of other's cultures, however; progress cannot be made overnight and it is evident within the music industry.

The 56th annual Grammys award show was an event in 2014 that recognized the achievements made by a plethora of musical artists from a plethora of genres. However, that year a lot of controversy came along. Most of the controversy came along, when the award for ‘Hip Hop Album of the Year’ went to rapper, Macklemore, who is white, as opposed to Kendrick Lamar, an African American from Compton, California. The matter being brought to higher attention after this was that Hip Hop is African American culture, and for a white man from Seattle to not only rob the culture, but succeed immensely from it is wrong. Throughout time, the style of popular music has changed drastically; what hasn’t changed is the fact that most of it was actually stolen

From where it started to where it is now, Cuban hip-hop has transformed greatly. Without the United States, hip-hop in Cuba certainly would not be where it is today. The United States is the hub of hip-hop and helped to jumpstart hip-hop in Cuba. While this is true, hip-hop in the United States completely differs from that of Cuba for the better. Even though hip-hop in Cuba did not start from much, the amount of development and influence this music has towards Cuba is immeasurable.

Over the past few years, hip-hop culture and rap music has stirred up controversy throughout America and it’s media. Whether it is Dr. Dre’s 1992 hit single “A Nigga Witta Gun” or Bobby Shmurda’s 2014 hit single “Hot Nigga” that boasts about shooting other African-Americans, it seems that the media has denounced the hip-hop culture and criticized them for the continuous increase on inner-city youth violence. If people would just listen closer to hip-hop’s message instead of assuming it has negative intensions, they will realize that hip-hop culture is simply a liberation movement was started and still ran mostly by the black inner-city youth in America. For years, the black inner-city youth has been oppressed through racial and economic situations and they believe that the hip-hop movement is the next civil rights movement in America. They have similar intentions as Martin Luther King did during the 1960’s civil rights movement; their way of peaceful protest is through the four main areas involved in hip-hop culture: DJing, breakdancing, graffiti, and most importantly rap music (Romano).

In Geoffrey Bennett’s essay titled, “Hip-Hop: A Roadblock or Pathway to Black Empowerment,” he speaks about the positive and negative effects that hip-hop has on the Black Community. Bennett goes all the way to the beginning of hip-hop, which he says took place in the early 1980s with rappers such as Run DMC, Public Enemy, Sugar Hill Gang and many others. The author then speaks about how hip-hop grew not only in the young black African American culture but also in the white youth culture as well. Finally, Bennett states that hip-hop has the power to influence positive and negative effects on African Americans

This article focuses on how the Hip hop we know emerged from social economic, and political experiences of young blacks around the 1970’s. Kool Herc, Afrika, Bambaataa, Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five when a few people who have somewhat contributed to the creation of Hip hop. In their music, there were track which spoken the civil rights ideas and response to poverty, drugs, police brutality, and other thing they found unjust in society. Hip Hop artist became the voice for social critique for the civil rights movements of their generation. According to Todd Boyd, “the disconnect between the civil rights and Hip Hop generations has made civil rights seem largely irrelevant and has made Hip Hop the primary voice of contemporary black

Despite political rap’s largely underground presence, Hip-hop has learned to exist within the mainstream of a culture it actively opposes. While Political artists maintain an image that is true to self or representative of African-American /Black life in American society,

The 1980s is known for wearing tie-dye, the start of global warming, and classic movies like the Goonies. But also developed throughout this decade was one of the most influential and popular music genres for many years to come: hip-hop. Hip-hop, or “rap” music, is a form of R&B, with rhythmic lyrics over stronger, faster, and bass booming beats. Like rock and roll, hip-hop music was born and established throughout the African-American culture. While white fans and supporters were not completely out of sight, hip-hop music aimed to attract the black culture early on. It wasn’t until the Beastie Boys that rap music was being delivered by a white group of men. Since the mid-1980s, rap music has been widely spread out to people of all ages, genders, backgrounds, and social groups. Hip-hop music has always been a popular form of debate because of its more than popular topic choices: drugs, women, and violence. Throughout the growth of hip-hop music, the growth of those against the content has also risen. While supporters argue that it is a voice for a voiceless, and a way to connect people of all types, some argue that the lyrics are too aggressive, and promote listeners to act in violent ways. Today, in 2015, hip-hop music is arguably the most popular genre of music, but the debate of the effect of its messages has also continued to grow. By evaluating the history and growth of hip-hop music, this paper aims to demonstrate that hip-hop music has a generally positive effect on

One of the amazing things about music is that it never stays the same for very long. With every year that goes by music is constantly changing and new concepts and ideas are being implemented every day. However, even with all these changes that are taking place, most music still has that familiar feel to it. Everyone is always claiming that their song is brand new and that nobody has ever done anything like it before, but as the old saying goes, “there is nothing new under the sun.” Although most musicians don’t talk about it much when asked, most of them were influenced by an artist or a specific style of music. It is through these influences that the artist is able to create a style for themselves.

The history of Hip Hop as music and as a culture formed during the 1970s in the Bronx, NY, and it gain so much positive feedback that local DJs began using the music for block parties among the African-American youth in the Bronx. Mixing music styles of funk, jazz, rhythm & blues. Jamaican immigrants bought this foreign music style to New York and soon after became a phenomenon. Dj Kool Herc, who is generally considered the father of hip hop, was recognized for being one of the very first Hip Hop artists and a pioneer. He bought the art of “scratching” to New York as a way to extend rhythmic songs because most songs were very short; going for almost a minute or sometimes less. With Dj Kool Herc’s innovations and with the music of Hip Hop almost

With that being said, I think that Hip hop has a very long way to go. Till this day the majority of music played on radio stations are not representing black people in a good light and that is how most stereotypes of us is till “successful”. Everyone should come together and fight against the injustice of how rappers are only criticized for what they say and how other artists from other genres are turned a blind eye. Everyone has the same thinking process and it one person shouldn’t be criticized for what the somewhat “majority” think.