By Jerome Joyce
Outside of what many people may believe about Hip-Hop it’s not a genre of music, but a culture built around R.A.P. music (Rhythm And Poetry), dance, tagging and DJ’s. After the rap music was broken into different categories, such as gangsta rap, down-south rap, and snap, hip-hop was used to define the original type of rap that the culture itself was built from.
Outside of what many people may believe about Hip-Hop it’s not a genre of music, but a culture built around R.A.P. music (Rhythm And Poetry), dance, tagging and DJ’s. After the rap music was broken into different categories, such as gangsta rap, down-south rap, and snap, hip-hop was used to define the original type of rap that the culture itself was built from.
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| Photo Credit: Black Culture Is Popular |
Hip-Hop the cultural movement was crated in the early 70’s in the South Bronx, kids got together to keep away from the gangs to impress themselves in the form of visual arts (graffiti art or tagging), dance (b-boying or break dance), verbal expression (rapping or rap) and an aural expression (DJ’ing). Kids wanted to get off the street and do something positive through music. When hip-hop first started the rhymes that were told were more story-like than what’s being released today. The basis of these stories was about self-empowerment and had a positive tone.
In the 1980’s the hip-hop culture expanded out of the
community and became main-stream and commercialize, breaking into the before
mention sub-genres such as gangsta rap. When gangsta rap came to life hip-hop
died, the culture was broke. The DJ wasn’t needed because the sound was
different, the difference is sound change the dance almost to elimination, the
graffiti art didn’t exist no more, but more importantly the positive message to
empower a group of people was silenced.
Unfortunately sex, violence and drugs sells faster than a
positive message, which made the records companies encourage the artist to
write more gangsta rap, which resulted in the death of a lost culture. Surely
Hip-Hop still exist, but now it’s considered a genre of music that is mainly
conscious rap. The art of DJ’ing has changed to a computer assist form of
mixing, which is no longer a craft. Since the song “Lean Back” became popular, songs
such as “Watch Me Whip” instruct the dancing done today; dancing is no longer a
form of expression.
