Hip Hop!
Hip hop teaches the history of the inner city. It teaches the economics of post-industrialism. The hip hop culture is a lens through which we can really analyze current events and politics in our society. Hip-Hop adds a face and a voice to those who might not have otherwise been seen or heard from in any other medium. Whether right or wrong Hip Hop gives credence to those who have been historically shunned, disregarded, oppressed and invalidated. Hip-Hop is a way of life, relative movement, and culture that only a few can relate to and partake in because in the backdrop is “hood reality” and the ideal “keeping it real”. Hip-Hop is an evolving life force within the person that lives it, breathes it, and moves around in it. Hip-Hop is more than what you hear on the radio, read in the magazines, or what you watch on TV. Hip-Hop is you. Hip-Hop is ME! What Is Hip Hop Culture?
Too many people are unclear as to what Hip Hop Culture really is and tend to use the term frivolously. Hip Hop Culture is commonly recognized by its main elements: Graffiti, Djing, Breakdancing (B-boying), Mcing, and Beatboxing. However, these elements are simply forms of art designed to express a deeper meaning. At its core, Hip Hop is so much more than mere art and entertainment. Hip Hop is the constantly evolving spirit and consciousness of urban youth that keeps recreating itself in a never-ending cycle. It is joy, sorrow, pleasure, pain, victory, defeat, anger, happiness, confusion, clarity, humor, intensity, dream, nightmare, life, death, and everything else in between. It is the spirit that connects the past to the present and lays a path towards the future. The spirit of Hip Hop is the same as Jazz, Reggae, Blues, Doo-wop, Be-bop, and a multitude of other types of expressions. Hip Hop Culture cannot be assimilated, integrated, diluted, watered-down, sold for profit, or pimped. It will always exist, in this incarnation or another.
What some mainstream promotes as being Hip Hop, or Hip Pop, is the product being sold to you and your children by media that pollutes the mind and makes impressionable individuals think that being a pimp, player, thug, ho, bitch, baller, or hustler is the thing to do. It is the poison being fed to you by corporate rappers who say that it’s not their job to be anyone’s role model while they depend on 13 to 20 years old fans to buy their music. It’s the studio thug telling your children to represent thug life while his children are well provided for and attend private school. It’s some female rappers who encourage their young female listeners to stay in school and out of trouble when speaking at junior highs across the country while their music gives the same kids the opposite message.
Hip Hop is life and all it has to offer. This knowledge lays the foundation for all those who thought of Hip Hop as nothing more than entertainment.
