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Analytical Essay: The Commercialization Of Hip-Hop Music

1678 Words7 Pages

Hip-hop music, more specifically rap, has grown rampant. Not only two-thirds of millennials listen to it, but its industry earns half a billion dollars every year. This could be attributed to the rise of streaming services like Spotify. Most probably, this aided Future’s, an Atlanta-born rapper, two albums that he released a week apart from each other occupy the top two positions in the Billboard 200, as well as keeping Migos’, a Georgia-based hip-hop group, Culture and Big Sean’s, a Michigan rapper, I Decided intact. Just recently, the Grammy Awards committee sought to include free-streamed music as viable nominations. This led to Chance the Rapper’s revolutionary three wins, namely for Best New Artist, Rap Album, and Rap Performance, last …show more content…

The dissemination of the genre would not happen without the help of corporations that were willing to share these artists’ music. However, to garner a pop appeal with the general public, some key elements of hip-hop music are omitted. In doing so, the focus of lyrical content and the background music becomes muddled, and this phenomenon has been happening recently. Hence, it is necessary to analyze how commercialization has affected this genre that was once composed of soliloquys that were recited by tortured African-Americans skipping rope on the streets of their ghetto communities. Commercialization of hip-hop (rap) music, through the anchoring of different record labels, has led to a boom in the genre’s popularity, but this same commercialization has caused the quality of the music to depreciate in terms of thematic and sound quality. Therefore, this paper will detail how the original spirit, intent, and goals of hip-hop music were established so as to pinpoint what is sacrificed when made aggressively commercial. Hence, only American hip-hop tunes will be used as examples to intertwine with its inception. Also, shades of sexism and egotism in lyrics and descriptions on how gaudy production has become will be discussed as

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