Hip Hop And Rap Music

The rest of the chapter talks about the similarity of minstrel images in 1990s hip-hop, as evidenced by the defining characteristics of greed, violence, hyper sexuality and pathos in “gangsta rap” (a sub-genre of hip-hop further defined in chapter two). Ogbar balances this landscape with challenges to what he calls “neo-minstrelsy” from both inside and outside the hip-hop community, including discussions of the Spike Lee movie, Bamboozled, underground conscious hip-hop groups such as The Roots and Little Brother, and the activist “Stop Coonin’ Movement”, to name a few. Throughout the book, Ogbar explains how rappers strive for authenticity by “keepin’ it real”. And that is defined by how they rap, walk, talk, and make their

Hip-hop is a cultured style that started in the 1970’s. Majority of different funk groups began playing disco music at that time it was popular. During this time funk music was technology driven more electronic sounds were being used on the drum machines. Funk was the new dance in the early 70’s. This particular style of singing in which was being used is called rapping, this begun in African American, Urban Areas, Jamaican American, Latino American and many others cities of the United States. The group of artist or singer say words with a rhythm that rhymes. Some hip-hop music lyrics are about violence and illegal drugs. Often time lyrics are about the life of urban people who stay in big cities. Other styles that hip-hop uses come from

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

Many Americans today embrace the culture of hip-hop. Since hip-hop became mainstream its influence has surrounded most Americans. People engage in social issues from the hip-hop culture In his recent work, How Hip-Hop Holds Blacks Back, John H. McWhorter have offered harsh critiques of hip-hop for delaying and marring the success of black people. McWhorter asserts hip-hop music “celebrates a ghetto life of unending violence and criminality(10).” He believes hip-hop contributes to the stereotype nearly all Americans maintain in regard to black people. Reflecting on harsh song lyrics McWhorter attempts to strengthen his argument. McWhorter acknowledges not all hip-hop promotes violence in people. He concedes “not all hip-hop is belligerent

It may be hard for a kid to understand why his parents didn’t want him or her listening to Pac or Biggie’s lyrics, but as their actions on TV and in music videos displayed the same notions, their fear only increased. For both artists, they had videos displaying women with nearly nothing on, smoking, drinking and carrying weapons, but kids people liked it. That’s why both of these artists are known as the best of all time. What they didn’t see though was the rising amount of disrespect towards women, increase in drug sales and an enormous increase in gun violence during this time. This is proven by Lindsay John, “The endemic of violence in the black community can be directly traced back to the whole irresponsible images of black masculinity which is fed to us through music.” (174) Along with the videos, they had concerts that displayed rash and harsh comments towards not only whites but also law enforcement. Like in this lyric by Tupac:

Hip-Hop is an extensive and a broad conglomerate of various artistic forms that ultimately originated in the South Bronx and then quickly spread throughout the rest of New York City among African-Americans and other African-American youth mainly from the Caribbean and from Jamaica during the 1970’s. Over the course of decades and recent years, controversy surrounding Hip-Hop and rap music has been the vanguard of the media. From the over hype of the East and West Coast rivalry to the deaths of Tupac, Biggie, and even Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin, it seems that political and broadcasting groups have been injudicious to place essentially the blame on rap and Hip-Hop music for a superficial trend in youth violence.

The film “Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats & Rhymes” is a film that was directed by Byron Hurt that covers Hip Hop and all the things that are prominent, yet unworthy to be prominent within the genre as a whole when it comes to composing Hip Hop. One of the first thing that is brought up in the film is the violence that is always portrayed within Hip Hop. As Byron went around talking to random fans of Hip Hop, he would ask all of them if they wouldn’t mind spitting a freestyle for him on the spot. Every single person he asked to freestyle that did freestyle, rapped about violence, and guns, and gangs, and everything that Hip Hop was not founded upon. The fact is then listed that homicide is the leading cause of death for men 15-35 years old.

Hip hop as a whole, to some degree, has been vilified, shunned and looked down upon as music that was not even worthy of being called art in many circles. This written to inform people about the history of hip hop and its social influences in the United States. Hip hop has a deeply rooted and momentous origin, with influential milestones and musicians who paved the way, and still maintain to make social change through its songs. Yet, hip hop has managed to take its message and history well beyond blind minds. Through this, I will delve into this "culture movement" by highlighting three major aspects of hip hop, specially the history and origin of hip hop music, hip hop through the decades, with the key musicians who pioneered this music genre,

“Gangsta rap acted as an outlet so such people could express themselves angrily and not in fear that they were going to be silenced for telling the truth. They often used gangsta rap to tell the stories of their lives, which sometimes included strong violence, hypersexuality, and drug abuse.” This music style was new and different. Gangsta rap was authentic and helped tell a story with its deep lyrics. “During the 1990s, Republican and Democratic politicians and some black leaders blamed, not all hip-hop music, but gangsta rap for all of the black communities ' social problems: drug use, teenage pregnancy, unemployment, gang violence, and high school dropouts. Even though these problems existed in the black community prior to gangsta rap, this music and culture has provided a convenient target to avoid addressing the causes of the real problems of black America: racism, sexism, and poverty”.

(Rose, 33-34) Author Tricia Rose suggests in her seminal masterpiece, Black Noise, that rap is deeply rooted in “premodern oral traditions” while hip-hop itself follows in the footsteps of previous black musical styles such as jazz, blues, and southern soul music. (Rose, 21, 185) These genres of music all have historic roots in black culture and society and were later commercialized and expanded to wider audiences, both globally and ethnically: something that is currently happening to

Many people look at Hip-Hop artists and think that they are all hard, gang-banging, drug-slanging thugs from the hood. But in all reality most of the rappers in modern Hip-Hop had never stepped foot in the hood until after they finally built a little credibility by being a Hip-Hop artist. Now, in today’s society it’s acceptable for a person to front like they are something that they are not, but back when Hip-Hop had artists like Tupac Shakur, Mobb Deep

were lyrical geniuses and inspirational artist in the 90s. They created music with a story, not repetitive lyrics. 2Pac had an irreplaceable flow that was unheard of in the early 90's. The lyrics were great and the style of the music was original, he expressed his talent on the mic. He could rhyme about anything and still make a great track. Biggie's success had plenty to do with his production. With his production, and lyrics he made music you can vibe to. Music artists now reach a wide audience of young people, teenagers. With that being said, rappers nowadays enjoy speaking about the importance of money and promoting drugs. When a parent talks to their teenager regularly about the dangers of drugs and alcohol they lessen the chance of their child using drugs by 42%. However, only 25% of teens report on actually having these conversations, but now music is promoting these things. The 2000s changed for the worst in the music

Rap music became very popular in the 1980’s with popular groups and artist like Kid n Play, Kriss Kross, Slick rick and Run DMC. But as the 1990’s came with all the nationwide issues going on at the times with the Rodney King beating, Police brutality, and just the high level of murders everywhere, a new style of rap music was formed. With this new style of rap, new rap artist from different parts of the country started to become big time because they rapped about selling drugs, beating woman, and the retaliation against cops. When the rappers such as 2pac, Biggie Smalls, and Dr. Dre rap, they tried to connect with their audience with personal experience they both shared. The song Cop killer is the best example, with all the police brutality and African Americans being attacked by police officers in the early 1900’s, rapper Ice T created the song cop killer to

Moreover a certain persona in rap music during the 90’s such as a “gangster” persona was needed in order to be heard or accepted in the rap community. Whereas it is now more acceptable for an artist who goes by the name “young thug” to wear a dress on his album cover and wear makeup to be accepted in the rap community whereas in the 90’s he would be called homophobic slurs due to the social differences of the past to now. In terms of violence which is depicted in rap music there are examples whereby people have been influenced by rap music when committing violent acts such as a black male in America who shot a police officer and claimed he was inspired by Tupacs lyrics in order to do so. However the music itself is not the violence it has been described by the artists as a way for them to express themselves and their community struggle. Everything from the definition of mainstream

     Most rap songs that contain violence reflects incidents that occur in today’s society such as the Rodney King incident. “Rap music brings together a tangle of some of the most complex social, cultural, and political issues in contemporary American society.” Rap and hip-hop artists write songs that promote the killing of enemies as well as targeting institutions such as the church, government, and justice system (Ro 145) Most artists relive their own painful experiences over and over again though their music, delaying their own society’s process of recovery . for example, in 1989