What Is The Influence Of Rap On American Culture

Rap is a genre in music that consists of rhyming or being poetic over a certain unique beat. The origin of rap is significantly different from any other form of music. The flow, change, subject of the music, and the instrumentals behind the rapping has all changed with time. Most people would underestimate the complexity of the music and the evolution it has undergone. The real roots of rap music began in the late 1980’s with the “Golden Age.” It was innovative and mostly based around the party scene. Gangsta Rap followed the Golden age and was very impactful on the young culture. After the Gangsta Rap era came the time in rap referred to as Crunk Rap which combined the country sound with the party lifestyle. Conscious

Music and society have always been closely related. For years now music has been apart of people’s everyday lives all around the world. Having so many different genres out there, it makes it easy to be appealing to so many different ethnic backgrounds. However, one type of genre in particular has seemed to grab the attention of a younger generation. Rap music has undoubtedly had its utmost impact on African American youth, since many of the performers themselves are African American. An overtly masculine culture dominates rap music and creates gender stereotypes that become abundantly popular to the youthful audience. Three constant themes that are found within the rap culture are encouragement of violence, the misogynistic representation of women, an extreme hatred of homophobia. Each theme plays a detrimental role in the process of defining black masculinity as well as shaping the values, morals, and beliefs that its younger audience adopts after tuning into this “gangster lifestyle”.

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 worst part about this modern rap music is the way that it is influencing the young people of America. No adult should ever listen to this obscenity, let alone an eight year old child. But that is exactly what is happening. Not just teenagers, but elementary age children are listening to this so-called “music.” Because a lot of famous rappers are African American, and because many of them came from complete poverty, a large majority of African American kids who listen to their music and come from similar backgrounds identify with them and look up to them as role models.

The teens would spend time at neighborhood block parties where they would play funk and disco tracks and have some friends MC the event. The MC would introduce the DJ in addition to hyping the songs up as they are played and getting crowd involvement. They would talk in sync with the beat of the music, rhyme with the music and this is how rapping began.

The rap genre originated from some of the most underprivileged areas of New York in the 1970’s. What was once DJ’s talking over a beat they were playing to encourage more activity on the dance floor, turned in to a new genre of music called rap. The majority of earlier rap songs were fun inducing tracks, but in the 1980’s, Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five introduced social consciousness to the genre. They sparked a long lasting impact on rap as it started to evolve rapidly as time went on. The 90’s was home to “gangsta rap,” followed by a softer side of song writing pioneered by the likes of Outkast and Kanye West in the 2000’s. Today, rap music is very diverse and more accepting of different styles than it was before. However, throughout the entire history of rap music, the one thing that has stayed

Rap music appeared as a cultural aesthetic expression of inner city African-American juveniles in the Bronx, New York, during the late 1970s. Rap is sometimes referred to as street youth poetry, who are often neglected according to their class and race (Adams and Fuller 939). According to Tricia Rose, “Hip Hop is a cultural form that attempts to negotiate the experiences of marginalization, brutality, truncated opportunity, and oppression within the

Hip-Hop music and the sub genre, Gangster Rap, has deep roots dating back from as early as the 15th and 16th century but since the mid 1980’s and early 1990’s this sub culture has taken over mainstream and has had a negative effect on both Hip-Hop as a culture and the american society. The word rap was first used in Brittain and meant to hit or to strike. As the word evolved over the centuries the definition of the word changed to mean to speak or to talk. The word rap also has many ties to the African griots dating back thousands of years ago. These griots where the village storytellers that would pass down the history of their family through story and song as well as communicate current local events to the people of the village. These African

Rap is a part of music, it is something that unleashes all your emotions and feelings. Rapping is a spoken word or chanted rhyming lyrics. It’s a style of music believed to have its beginnings in African American inner-city street cultures. Rap music is used in so many ways, whether it’s good or bad. We can use it by down grading someone’s character or

Rap Music is “a popular music idiom marked by the rhythmical intoning of rhymed couplets to an insistent beat.” It is very popular among kids and young adults. “But G-Eazy’s music is different, He samples a lot of doo wop 80s songs”(Emma Brown). Hip hop music was formed in the 1970’s at new york city block parties (“Hip Hop Music”). Young people from the bronx were break dancing, djing, and rapping at these parties (“Hip Hop Music”).

Rap which originated in Africa was used by storytellers known as Griots, to relay stories about family history or current events, set to the rhythm of a drum. This culture was then brought to the west during the 1600’s when Africans were captured and made slaves in America ( (Mize)

Impacts on rap music began as right on time as the 1940 's when Rhythm & Blues and Jazz included a large portion of the components that make up rap music. Rap music turned into its own particular type of music in the 1970 's the point at which DJ 's from New York, for example, DJ Lovebug, DJ Cool Herc and DJ Hollywood, started controlling, and scratching, records to make rhythms, beats, and different sounds. As this occurred the rapper would talk over the music utilizing rhymes. The rapper would utilize attention and stresses with their verses. In 1979 the Sugar Hill Gang promoted the first rap single with their hit "Rapper 's Delight". This constrained the world to recognize that rap was an energy in the music business.

Rap music is undeniably one of the most popular music genres today. What is rap? Rap is really a very old word. You can find the term popping up as early as the 15th and 16th century in Britain. The word rap actually meant to strike or to hit. After a few centuries a slight variation of this definition appeared which meant to speak or talk.

According to Costello, Foster, and Wallace in their book, Signifying Rappers, “Black music is American; pop’s breathe and bread, and WE, as both born audiences and born salesmen know it.” African Americans began this music genre from the “substance of things unseen and things hoped for.” Rap and hip hop originated among lower income based Black American families. Rap and hip hop was a musical expression first derived from African

Throughout history, music has been used to express the feelings of people or groups whom may have no other outlet to express themselves. The best example of this occurrence would be the lower class of America’s use of rap music. Rap music started out as a fun variation of disco with the purpose to make people dance and enjoy themselves, but it later transformed into one of the best outlets to express the struggles of poverty in the United States. The genre gained popularity when the song “Rapper 's Delight” hit the charts in the early eighties; rap evolved into a plethora of different styles from there, Gangster Rap formed with NWA in the late eighties, and rap really hit it’s zenith in the mid nineties. Modern rap began in the early starts of the twentieth century. Because of the storytelling that rappers do in the music, it gained notice in the inner city where the demographic could relate. Many young teen in the inner city environment built dream to be famous rappers just like their own favorite artists . Rap connects to me by its style, its purpose, and its political incorrectness.