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Hip-Hop Culture and Contemporary Race Relations
Hip hop's effect on culture
Hip hop's effect on popular culture
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American Writer and Musician, James McBride has written multiple books and has voiced his opinions in magazines as well as newspapers. In this particular essay, which appeared in National Geographic in 2007, he talks about how hip-hop has influenced the world and how he realized that he has missed an important part of his life. There are many rhetorics used in this essay, -“Irony, Metaphors, Hyperbole and Allusions. ”- are some of the more notable ones. While talking about his biggest nightmare, a feeling of disjoint comes into his mind, “It is no longer…hip-hop planet.”
In this particular article, Ivan Fernandez discusses the unique connection between hip-hop and indigenous people. In the past few years, many more indigenous music artists have begun to voice out their stories of oppression and their traditions that have been suppressed for such a long time through hip-hop. This is because hip-hop is utilized as a medium for indigenous artists to take back their culture and tradition. This is connected to the historical material that we have studied because it pertains to the history and background of hip hop. Hip-hop and its culture originated in the rough neighborhoods in South Bronx.
“Hip-Hop’s betrayal of Black Women” is written by Jennifer McLune. This piece was in the Z Magazine Online in the July/August issue of 2009.McLune informs readers how hip-hop artist brutalizes women giving them a bad image with their music videos and lyrics. She calls them sexist for the amount of respect they have for women. A female artist who stands up for they risked not having a successful music career and badly slurred name calling. McLune wants sexism to end and for the hip-hop artist to respect the black woman.
Commercial hip hop is too blindsided by making profit to assist in the rallies for Black justice the same way that hip-hop proper is doing. #BLM has liberated rap from its default setting today, and is beginning to break the white stereotype that hip hop is defined as a consumer market where “rhyming negro gentleman callers and ballers sold vernacular song and dance to an adoringly vicarious and increasingly whiter public” (para.6). Tate concludes with stating that #BLM’s “reclamation of hip-hop proper has brought complexity and revolutionary street cred back to the race conversation in commercial rap. The public can no longer be sold the noxious and recherché notion that 21st-century rap culture is only about trap-happy nigras getting paid for getting dumb, or coldstoopidwackretarded, even. Thanks to #BlackLivesMatter, the beautiful struggle against racialized injustice once again matters where rap and hip-hop proper live” (para
In “Azealia Banks” author James McNally analyzes arising rapper Azealia Banks in order to discuss post-racial politics where political elements of hip-hop and the systemic racial inequalities they address, have become gradually ostracized in favor of “color-blind” conceptions of United States society and pop culture. To do so McNally argues that Banks’ music video for “212” and her public rhetoric rearticulates ideas of the mainstream black female identity in hip-hop and confronts the white gaze. In “212” Azealia Banks raps about growing up in Manhattan and her reactions to the situations that she experienced and declares her dominance over all of her rival, while establishing her extensive “technical skill and stylistic versatility as a rapper (61).” Banks combines multiple hip-hop tropes, while infusing her own character in as well to
Hip hop has a message that reveals the social inequalities of our nations. In addition, McBride wants people to keep an open mind about hip hop and new thing that they may not be used to. In conclusion, he declares hip
This article focuses on the color-blind ideology that allows white people to participate in and appropriate hip-hop culture. Rodriquez notes that they do so by using the guise of inclusivity of all races to justify their participation in hip hop and to adapt characteristics of the culture without respecting Black identity. He uses his own interviews of several white audience members of hip hop concerts who identified as participants of hip hop culture. Rodriquez identifies two groups resulting from social collectivity to reinforce his argument: consciously collective white groups, who actively reinforce racial segregation and passively collective white groups, who unknowingly unite and reinforce systematic racism through their adherence to color-blind ideology. The participants of his research are part of the latter, who unconsciously reinforce systematic racism through treating cultural objects, namely aspects of hip hop culture, as shareable products and experiences.
Richard, Kyle. “Hip-hop” Teen solutions, 17 Sept. 2014. Web. 30 Mar. 2015. Richard’s “Hip-hop” Article are known for informing people about the history of hip-hop, the background of the society of hip-hop and how far hip-hop has came from that day to present day. Toward the middle of his article he states “through lyrics they raised social consciousness by speaking out real issues affecting them, such as racism”(Kyle).
In James McBride's essay Hip Hop Planet, he argues that hip hop has a negative influence on American Culture despite people thinking of it as inspirational and how people live through different experiences in life despite of your race. The significance of this is to understand how people live through different experiences in life and if we don't come together and see the truth violence will be the only thing left that will bring us all
Some of the main cores of Beat Street are the music, dancing, and graffiti art works – all of which are part of hip-hop culture. Scholars note that hip-hop as a movement originated in roots from African American traditions and are mainly used to express their culture as well as identity (Blanchard 24). Rap music, for example, comes from West Africa’s “nommo.” This idea refers to the power to deliver words to act upon objects and to bring it to life. The historical and traditional underpinning of rap, therefore, becomes representative of the rich and distinctive culture of African Americans.
In her essay “hip hop’s betrayal of black women,” Jennifer McLune implies that “(h)ip-hop owes its success to the ideology of women-hating” (193). She does not agree with Kevin Powell’s article that hip-hop does not mean to “offend” black women, but instead artists are only letting out their temper throughout their music. McLune feels infuriated that many artists in hip hop (including black men) rap about their community and downgrade their own women. In the hip-hop genre, sexism is mainly used, not only by black men but also by many other race hip-hop artists. Artists assume that women-hating in their rap songs will be accepted by women, but do not realize that it is affecting all women.
Nowadays, everyone wears the identity with pride. The genre was a testament to triumphing over hardships, to having enough confidence in oneself not to let the world drag you down, and to rising above the struggle, even when things seem hopeless. Violence in rap did not begin as an affective agent that threatened to harm America 's youth; rather, it was the outcry of an already-existing problem from youth whose world views have been shaped by the inequalities and prejudice they have experienced. The relentless wave of heroic new rappers arriving on the scene formed the golden age of hip hop in the 1980s, a newfound voice which rose from the impoverished ghettos during the 1980s and inspiring a generation of black youth to fight the police brutality they faced on a daily basis.
Hip Hop was the wildfire that started in the South Bronx and whose flames leapt up around the world crying out for change. James McBride’s Hip Hop Planet focuses on his personal interactions with the development of Hip Hop culture and his changing interpretations of the world wide movement. Many of his encounters and mentions in the text concern young black males and his writing follows an evolution in the representation of this specific social group. He initially portrays them as arrogant, poor, and uneducated but eventually develops their image to include the positive effects of their culture in an attempt to negate their historical misrepresentation.
The death of Notorious B.I.G brought relevance to the discussion regarding conflicts of violence in American rap culture with regards to gang culture within urban black American youth culture. Basu explains how violent events and shootings among rap artists give rap culture a bad reputation which receives a lot of medial attention. However, the violent nature which hip-hop at times carries can be consider to be the tip of the iceberg of the deeply rooted social and economical aspects of the rap culture. In the 90’s, when this article was released, hip hop had gained a lot of economic power in the music industry and it is explained how rap music had become a channel for the unprivileged urban youth to take charge over their own situation and tell their side of the story. Music associated and developed in black culture has, since the 30’s, been marketed and sold by white companies.
The African American community has not gained full equality to this day. Even after fighting for many years this present day issue has come to light in Hip-Hop artists songs like Macklemore & Ryan Lewis song, White Privilege II. Macklemore and Ryan Lewis are respected in their line of work because they have become very popular in today 's Hip-Hop music. Hip-Hop has been the newest way of news being broadcasted. As many artists like Macklemore have become more of an activist in this day and age.
