Response Paper for a Comparison of Tricia Rose’s Black Noise and Themes of Our Seminar “Ghetto Poetry” Published in 1994, Tricia Rose’s book Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America, has developed to one of the most influential academic works considering hip hop culture. It describes Rap music and Black Culture, focusing on the potency the inhabitants of the United States have. She writes primarily about Rap music, whereas Rose points out the following themes. She starts by talking about hip hop’s (including rap) history, followed by the interruption of the media in hip hop’s occurrences and describes the political happenings within this culture. Finally Rose explores the role of women in hip hop culture, especially
Emmy Laybourne’s Monument 14, follows the main character Dean Greiber who is a junior in highschool living in the city of Monument, Colorado. Although the flow of the book is a little disconnected at times, the development of the major/minor characters was truly astounding throughout the book. The book starts out quite quickly with a weather phenomenon. The destructive hailstorm cause two buses to violently crash into each other with Dean and his brother on board. Immediately, the remaining students ranging from elementary school to highschool take refuge in a store with absolutely no adults to look after them. Not only did the hailstorm cause widespread destruction, it also disrupted a nuclear power plant causing extremely dangerous chemicals
Rap music has become one of the most distinctive and controversial music genres of the past few decades. A major part of hip hop culture, rap, discusses the experiences and standards of living of people in different situations ranging from racial stereotyping to struggle for survival in poor, violent conditions. Rap music is a vocal protest for the people oppressed by these things. Most people know that rap is not only music to dance and party to, but a significant form of expression. It is a source of information that describes the rage of people facing growing oppression, declining opportunities for advancement, changing moods on the streets, and everyday survival. Its distinct sound, images, and attitude are notorious to people of all
Rap music, also known as hip-hop, is a popular art form. Having risen from humble origins on the streets of New York City during the mid-1970s, hip-hop has since become a multifaceted cultural force. Indeed, observers say, hip-hop is more than just music. The culture that has blossomed around rap music in recent decades has influenced fashion, dance, television, film and—perhaps what has become the most controversially—the attitudes of American youth. For many rappers and rap fans during it’s early time, hip-hop provided an accurate, honest depiction of city life that had been considered conspicuously absent from other media sources, such as television. With a growing number of rap artists within this period, using hip-hop as a platform to call for social progress and impart positive messages to listeners, the genre entered a so-called Golden Age
The decade of hip-hop is what some may call it. Tupac, Naz, Biggie Smalls, as well as other artists, were major contributions. Not only for the people who are trying to find their footing, but Buck as well. Throughout the book various lyrics were embedded in order to create a better understanding for its readers. In addition, this book is based upon a 90s lifestyle within Philadelphia, which included drugs, gang activity, crime, hip-hop, and havoc. Malo was directly in the center of everything, the girls, the fights, the guns. His experiences shed light towards what it’s like to as an African American individual living in or near the hood. Not everyone realizes what people go through while living there, but now it gives some readers an image of what goes on. Though times have changed, not all previous feelings
In this article, the speaker must be an expert in politics, ethnicity and the music industry. There is a linkage between the above fields hence the speaker must have had a superlative background on these issues. The audience targeted by this literature were seemingly music enthusiasts to be educated on understanding what Hip-Hop entails and hoped to achieve this as it was established. The subject was Hip-Hop as a music genre that was largely developed by African American men to express their plight on injustice and oppression. The principal issue was how Hip-Hop has been used as a form of resistance and need for deliverance of the African Americans.
The misogynistic treatment of women in commercialized rap has become a widespread phenomenon which as a result has become commonly accepted by majority of the individuals in society. Rappers, in general, nowadays use women in their videos in a way which is both derogatory and exploiting. Black men in today’s society, especially in the entertainment industry, do not see women as their equals; rather they objectify them as being nothing more than sex objects. People in the Hip Hop industry do not believe that sexism and misogyny is as big of a deal as racism, thus they push this issue to the side by simply ignoring it and learning to accept it. This misogynistic portrayal of women is ruining the image if Hip Hop as both an industry and a form of expressive art. However, instead of taking action against this atrocity, many women simply believe that the images of women and their portrayal in rap videos does not represent nor refer to them as an individual and the type of woman they truly are. By being silent these women are allowing themselves to be victimized by the men of not only the Hip Hop industry but also general society. By not having a say in this matter of the false classification and portrayal of women, they are voluntarily allowing men to do whatever they please to do so, in any given time and with any approach they feel is necessary. They do not
When Tricia Rose speaks to the concept of “hip hop wars” in her writing, she is referring to a broad range of different conflicts that are taking place in all areas of hip hop. In the introduction to her book, she begins to explain her multitude of concerns surrounding certain topics in hip hop. She begins by saying that the most financially successful hip hop has become a way of caricaturing “black gangstas, pimps and hoes” (p. 1). She goes on to explain that homophobia, hypersexism, antisocial behavior, and violent tendancies seem to have become defining characteristics of hip hop as a whole. Essentially, Tricia Rose’s definition of hip hop wars can be summarized as: the pushing and pulling between the forces of good and evil within a movement that has begun to develop undesirable qualities. She offers an array of critical analyzations in support and in opposition of hip hop.
The misunderstood subculture of music that many have come to know as “hip-hop” is given a critical examination by James McBride in his essay Hip-Hop Planet. McBride provides the reader with direct insight into the influence that hip-hop music has played in his life, as well as the lives of the American society. From the capitalist freedom that hip-hop music embodies to the disjointed families that plague this country, McBride explains that hip-hop music has a place for everyone. The implications that he presents in this essay about hip-hop music suggest that this movement symbolizes and encapsulates the struggle of various individual on
Misogyny is a tried and true American tradition from which hip hop derives its understanding of how men and women should behave. Critics argue that hip hop’s misogyny and promotion of traditional gender roles reflect mainstream American values. Feminists suggest that misogyny in hip hop culture is not a “black male thing”, but has its roots in a larger pattern of hostility toward women in American culture.
The influence of rap on black urban youths has become a major part to the modern day music industry. Berry uses the article to show that through rap music, low income black youth are able to develop empowering values and ideologies, strengthen cultural interaction and establish positive identities. This is done by describing different components of urban black culture associated with rap which enhances the struggle for black significance in pop culture. His beliefs are supported by using rap artists and their music to show how significant it has grown to be a dominant form of expression but also a controversial issue for urban black youths. The thesis that rap music as cultural expression is
Hip hop and rap as a musical genre is a very controversial subject for nearly everyone. Its influences are powerful, both positive and negative. There are many positive influences of hip hop, and a few examples are the breaking down of cultural barriers, the economic impact, and political awareness of pressing and urgent issues. Though there are many positive influences, there are many negative influences as well. Some of the more heated debates of the negative influences of hip hop are that it glorifies violence, and the fact that the music sexualizes women and degrades them as well. Attached to the negative outlook on hip hop, there are also many stereotypes assumed by society towards this type of culture
The beginning of Book II of Paradise Lost brings to the readers an amusing paradox: a debate in Hell. From a religious point of view, there is no possible debate in Hell because God, alone, decides whom to send to Hell and the sinners who are sent to Hell cannot discuss this decision. From the point of view of the Western classical tradition, God does not exist, thus, there is no needs for a debate because, without God, Heaven and Hell do not exist. In other word, Milton seems to tell his readers that a debate in Hell is futile. However, Milton uses Satan and the three fallen angels to prove the superiority of God and to prove that classical values are important but not as valuable as God's values.
The United States was driven strongly during the 1980s by mid-class suburban families. The cities were places that had mostly low income families and high crime rates because most of the economy had relocated to small parts of the country and architecture was creating urban campuses in the suburbs. This caused most of the work force to relocate out of cities. An example of this would be buildings like Bell Labs in suburban Holmdel, NJ. It was designed by modernist architect Eero Saarinen, who is also responsible for creating suburban campuses for General Motors (Warren, MI) and IBM (Yorktown Heights, NY). This had a major effect on the culture of the 1980s. You had cities that were once major job hubs that had now changed into places where
In Joan Morgan’s article “Fly-Girls, Bitches and Hoes: Notes of a Hip Hop Feminist”, she shows the way rap music has changed through it popularity. The widespread appreciation of rap had negative impacts upon the black community. Morgan talks about this through her Feminist point of view. She focuses the topic on what rap music says about the African American culture in Hip Hop. Rap music and Hip Hop were invented through the pain of African Americans. Hip Hop and the Rap industry use sexism and machoism to express the long years of oppressive pain they went through by the hands of the white people. Especially for the black brothers who continue that oppression by using provocative words that degrade the black sisters. Morgan states that blame isn’t only on the brothers
“Rap is poetry” (xii). To any avid fan of the genre, it is a statement that seems obvious. The words could easily be the musings of a listener first introduced to the art form, not the focal point of an entire work of contemporary criticism. Yet in Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop, Adam Bradley’s primary focus is this very point, the recognition of traditional poetic elements within rap music. With the global cultural and economic phenomenon that hip hop has become, it is easy to forget that the style of music is barely thirty years old, that scholarly criticism of it has existed for only half of that time. When viewed within this relatively new arena of scholarship, the importance of Bradley’s text is