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Hip Hop Influence On American Culture

Decent Essays

Hip-hop music in today’s world has grown immensely in the past 20 years, first spreading throughout America and now to parts of Europe and Asia. However, this change was indeed a gradual one. What began as a simple expression of dissatisfaction of inner city life has turned into a multimillion dollar industry and thriving culture, with some of its leading artists being people of all walks of life. It began around the 1970’s and 80’s as a means of overcoming the struggles of urban life in the Bronx, New York City. More so than just music, Hip-Hop is a culture with five elements or “pillars” all of which are essential to what is the Hip-Hop “lifestyle”. These five pillars are MCing (Rapping), DJing, Graffiti, Breakdancing and Fashion. All of these cultural …show more content…

These parties would consist of a DJ playing tracks that the MC would rap over and get the crowds excited. This practice began to spread across America into other cities and eventually internationally. The spread of Hip-Hop outside of the United States began in the mid 1980’s with groups like Public Enemy and A Tribe Called Quest gaining significant popularity and thus touring overseas. This period is known today as the Golden Age of Hip-Hop. These acts would tour in parts of Europe and Asia and bring the culture to other young people in urban areas of the world, and from there it would hierarchically diffuse to more suburban neighborhoods. The first of which to truly adopt the culture would be Latin America, with many of Hispanic descent also living in the same neighborhoods as African Americans as well as the fact that those countries are located closest to the United States. In the latter years however, Hip-hop has begun to spread even faster with the dawn of the internet making it easy overall to access the

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