Summary Of Prophets Of The Hood By Imani Perry

In “Prophets of The Hood”, by Imani Perry, she discusses and expresses her thoughts on the complexity of politics and poetics in Hip Hop. The novel describes Perry’s true meaning of Hip Hop. Throughout the novel, the author reveals four elements that make Hip Hop “black american music”. Two out the four elements that were discuss are political location of black americans and black oral and literary tradition. I agree with Perry’s idea that political location of black americans and the discourse of english in african americans creates black english/ebonics in hip hop that makes it their music. Political location of black americans shows how urban neighborhoods and the lack of resources merged into hip hop. Black english/ebonics is how black

According to Perry, “Violence, sexism, and criminal activity are all depicted as horrifying features of rap music” (27). However, people may say rap music is a bad influence. “That image often does not correlate the actual lyrics or the personality of the artist; it reflects the music’s perception as violent ghetto expression”, acknowledges Perry. Regardless of the language hip hop artist use they paint a picture of real life situations of black americans. The realism of these stories causes destructiveness in these areas which fuels the words of an artist. For example, Grandmaster Flash, Melle Mel, and the Furious Five created a song named, “The Message” in 1982. “The Message” explains how the dislocation of black Americans force them to partake in criminal activity because of poverty and lack of resources. This particular song tells a story of the future. Throughout the hook Grandmaster Flash repeats, “It’s a jungle sometimes/ It makes me wonder how I keep from going under”(1). He never admits to partaking in any criminal activity, but he has witness all the negative routes the innocence youth way take. Perry notes, “Witnessing proves incredibly in hip hop”(88). In verse 3 he says, “My brother’s doing bad, stole my mother T.V/ Says she watches too much, it’s just not healthy” (2). As a result, he’s surrounded by all these bad things, but doesn’t have enough money to move out. So, he has to

Black english isn’t grammatically correct, but has been adopted into the America. Black americans tend to create their own english within their culture/community. Perry admits, that in order to fully understand hip hop language you’ll have to learn black english, whereby new words are understood by context. “The language of rap is primarily AAVE not only in a grammatical sense of language that includes discourse, what people actually use language to say and the verbal routines they use in saying it”(26). In the past ancestors change the sounding and meaning of words due to the lack of their education. Black americans discourse in english occurred when they were enslaved by white americans, and raised in the south. For example, in many lyrical pieces rappers spelling words with “em” at the ending signifies the southern culture of black americans. Since, african americans lack resources in schools they only knew what person to person. This eventually was tickled down generations and generations. As time went on “black english” continues to change. This discourse is a major problem because other races look down black americans for not being able to communicate like them. Once again, this all ties into the mistreatment of african