The Influence Of Hip Hop On Black Culture

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The Impact of Hip-Hop Ever since its birth in the 1970s in West Bronx, Hip Hop has been known as “Gangsta” music and most commonly associated with black culture. Since its creation it has become a fast growing genre of music and has growing fame all over the world. The popularity of it has increased to all races, age and gender. However the growing popularity of hip hop has come with several controversies among scholars. Some scholars argue that the growing popularity of the genre is very helpful to low income families who can use this as their outlet into going to Universities, on the other side some believe associating the genre to black culture is bad for the culture as a whole and they should not be associated together. Hip-hop is highly …show more content…

Williams argues that hip hop is “detrimental” to the black culture. He believes kids growing up in the hood assume that they have to meet the stereo type mentioned in hip hop. This is the music they listen to when growing up leading them to believe that should be their way of life. Anybody who acts different is “acting white” because they are not following the typical black culture stereotype. (Williams) According to Williams this causes several generations of black kids ending up in violent gangs or doing criminal activities. All this is caused from association black culture with hip hop. When this is separated kids and families won’t feel the pressure of acting a certain way. This potentially might lead to advancement in black culture as they will feel the need to advance and move up in the community. Hip – Hop acts as the road block between advancing and what it is now. Dela Rosa on the other hand believes that Hip-Hop can be a good way of getting kids out of the “Ghetto” and moving them to higher education as this is the topic that they are really familiar. And due to increase in listeners of hip hop he believes this will be a huge success around the community. Placing this genre in education will discuss the history of the genre and point out that it is not necessarily associated with violence or someone’s behavior. Since it’s a highly known topic in the lower class studying it will help them have interest on school because it is something that they are really passionate about and very familiar with. By them going to college doing something they love, this will reduce the number of potential people that could be involved in violent or criminal activities. So De la Rosa views this as a potential outlet for low income families not as a road block. So both authors believe that Hip hop has influence on culture but the views on those influence is different for both authors. In conclusion