Post by realdre on Jan 23, 2007 19:41:45 GMT -5
What is Hip Hop?
This is probably one of the most complex and hardest questions to give one single answer. Simply because, there is no one single unified answer. What people have to understand about "hip-hop" is that it's alot like Dante's Inferno. There are several levels in hip hop. When most people that encounter hip hop on its mainstream level all they do is turn to BET, MTV2. They see high end cars, girls wearing next to nothing, money constantly being thrown around, and tons of drug and killing references. This is highly problematic because as I've said, all of that is just one level in hip hop and it has many levels.
The origins of "hip hop" itself came from the need to give a voice to the problems, specifically of the black community of the late 1970's to the early 1980's. "The Message" by GrandMaster Flash and the Furious Five is marked as the first socially concious rap song, and it is. It talks about the dangers of drugs, crime, prostitution, corrupt police, just about everything that goes on negatively that seems to never get fixed and solved in black communites across America. Of course the place where hip hop launched is the Bronx, New York...namely the South Bronx. Graffiti, Dj-ing, MC-ing, Rebelllion, Questioning of the social system, and break dancing...are all unique elements that make up the entire fabric of what we call today hip hop.
Hip hop music, also known as rap music, is a style of music which came into existence in the United States during the mid-1970s, and became a large part of modern pop culture during the 1980s. It consists of two main components: rapping (MCing) and DJing (production and scratching). Along with hip hop dance (notably breakdancing) and urban inspired art, or notably graffiti, these compose the four elements of hip hop, a cultural movement that was initiated by inner-city youth, mostly African Americans in New York City, in the early 1970s.
Typically, hip hop music consists of rhythmic lyrics making use of techniques like assonance, alliteration, and rhyme. The rapper is accompanied by an instrumental track, usually referred to as a "beat," performed by a DJ, created by a producer, or one or more instrumentalists. Historically, this beat has often been created using a sample of the percussion break of another song: usually funk and soul recordings have been utilized. However, in recent years, it has become more common for the beat to be built up from individual drum samples. In addition to the beat, other sounds are often sampled, synthesized, or performed. Sometimes a track can be instrumental, as a showcase of the skills of the DJ or producer.
Hip hop began in The Bronx, a borough in New York City, when DJ's began isolating the percussion break from funk and disco songs. The early role of the MC was to introduce the DJ and the music and to keep the audience excited. MC's began by speaking between songs, giving exhortations to dance, greetings to audience members, jokes and anecdotes. Eventually this practice became more stylized and became known as rapping.
By 1979, hip hop had become a commercially popular music genre and began to enter the American mainstream. In the 1990s, a form of hip hop called gangsta rap became a major part of American music, causing significant controversy over lyrics which were perceived as promoting violence, terrorism, promiscuity, drug use and misogyny. Nevertheless, by the beginning of the 2000s, hip hop was a staple of popular music charts and was being performed in many styles across the world.
Hip hop arose during the 1970s at block parties in New York City, at which the DJs began isolating the percussion breaks to hit funk, soul, R&B and disco songs. The roots of this type of songs stem back to the mid-1950s when soul/funk rock artist James Brown credit Little Richard's band as having been the first to put the funk in the rock beat. These songs were based on - "breakbeat" DJing. As hip hop became popular, performers began speaking while the music played, and became known as MCs or emcees.
In 1979, the first commercially issued hip hop recordings were released: "Rapper's Delight" by The Sugarhill Gang which became a Top 40 hit on the U.S. Billboard pop singles chart. "Rapper" in reference to music was actually coined by this song. Some historians cite King Tim III (Personality Jock) by the Fatback Band to be the first commercially released hip hop recording but they were a funk and disco group.
During the 1980s, hip hop began to diversify and develop into a more complex form. At the same time, more sophisticated techniques were developed, including scratching, and electronic recording. In the late 1980s, a number of new hip hop styles and subgenres began appearing as the genre gained popularity. Hip hop musicians collaborated with rock bands and spread out into the genres of conscious hip hop, jazz-rap and gangsta rap.
In the 1990s, a prolonged confrontation between West Coast gangsta rappers and the resurging East Coast began. It centered around Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G. and led to both of their deaths, in 1996 and 1997 respectively. In 1996, Cleveland-based rap group Bone Thugs-N-Harmony tied The Beatles' 32-year-old record for fastest-rising single with "Tha Crossroads", and in 2000, Scottish-American White rapper Eminem's The Marshall Mathers LP sold over nine million copies and won a Grammy Award.
For many years rap music has included product placement for cars, alcoholic drinks, clothing and other products, which appears to have gone largely unnoticed by its audience. Rappers worldwide have bowed down before large corporations as shills and puppets and turned their songs into adverts for products, which many feel has degraded and destroyed the artistic value and integrity of rap music.
Rappers will discuss at length the cars they drive and the drinks they consume and glorify the excess, decadence and luxury of a lifestyle spent wasting money on vanity products, working as shills for companies who are looking to reach a key demographic of the young music audience without having to change their mainstream brand advertising, e.g. cognac drinks whose primary audience is for the older market, but who wish to appeal to a younger audience without losing their older fans.
Hip hop has encountered more problems with censorship than any other form of popular music in recent years, due to the use of expletives. It also receives flak for being anti-establishment, and many of its songs depict wars and coup d'etats that in the end overthrows the government. For example, Public Enemy's "Gotta Give the Peeps What They Need" song was edited without their permission, removing the words "free Mumia".
The pervasive use of profanity in many songs has created challenges in the broadcast of such material both on television stations such as MTV, in music video form, and on radio. As a result, many hip hop recordings are broadcast in censored form, with offending language blanked out of the soundtrack (though usually leaving the backing music intact), or even replaced with completely different lyrics. The result - which quite often renders the remaining lyrics unintelligible or contradictory to the original recording - has become almost as widely identified with the genre as any other aspect of the music, and has been parodied in films such as Austin Powers in Goldmember, in which a character - performing in a parody of a hip hop music video - performs an entire verse that is blanked out.
In 1995 Roger Ebert wrote:
"Rap has a bad reputation in white circles, where many people believe it consists of obscene and violent anti-white and anti-female guttural. Some of it does. Most does not. Most white listeners don't care; they hear black voices in a litany of discontent, and tune out. Yet rap plays the same role today as Bob Dylan did in 1960, giving voice to the hopes and angers of a generation, and a lot of rap is powerful writing."
Basically, Corporations KILL Hip Hop.
Conscious hip hop for the moment...
The audience for conscious rap is largely underground. Conscious hip hop artists have not attained the same level of commercial success as mainstream hip-hop. Some notable conscious hip hop artists are;
MosDef
Public Enemy
Lupe Fiasco
The Roots
Wyclef Jean
Common
Dead Prez
De La Soul
Fugees
Gangstarr
Slum Village
Talib Kweli
Political Hip Hop is without question more well known than Conscious Hip Hop. Political hip hop is a subgenre of alternative hip hop. Though mainstream and crossover acceptance has been generally limited to crunk & pop rap, some artists with a socially aware and positive or optimistic tone or a more avantgarde approach have achieved some success. They are often referred to in mainstream musical circles as conscious hip hop due to their focus on political issues surrounding the black community, which differentiates them from gangsta rappers. Fans of such rappers tend to view this genre as more authentic hip hop, claiming that they harken back to hip hop's early days where several artists rapped about "socially conscious" issues and gangsta rap had not yet gained mainstream acceptance.
Political hip hop differes from conscious hip hop, simply because poltical hip hop is more direct and open. Hence, why its called political.
Public Enemy is one of the definitive voices of "conscious hip hop," verbally confronting institutional racism, police corruption, and the legacy of slavery in the United States. They attracted youth because of their ability to boldly criticize and reveal serious contradictions in American democracy. Since then, other rappers have promoted positive messages. For example, with songs like "Stop the Violence" and "Self-Destruction," KRS-One has dedicated his talent to opening the ears of a world that often seems cruel and drenched in hate. Eric B and Rakim, EPMD, Schoolly D, Slick Rick, Poor Righteous Teachers, and Ice Cube all helped to build this movement.
In recent years, political hip-hop has increasingly represented a revolutionary message, including themes such as communist class conflict and revolutionary feminism. Such artists include:
Nimrod (with Red Army Productions)
Sun Ra
Sabac
The Coup
Zearle
Paris
Public Enemy
Zack de la Rocha
Ill Bill
Non Phixion
Soldier X
But the one that currently dominates the world of all things rap and hip hop, unfortunatley belongs to gangsta rap. This is the one level or version of hip hop that garners the most attention, and most people use to dismiss the hip hop culture entirely. In a world where image is everything, gangsta rap is about bragging first and foremost. "Dissing" calling the other person out, and basically leaving them with their pants hanging down infront of the crowd while audience members look onward.
Gangsta Rap
Gangsta rap is a form of Hip Hop music, which developed during the early 1990s. With the popularity of Dr. Dre's The Chronic in 1992, gangsta rap became the most commercially lucrative subgenre of hip-hop. Since then some former gangsta rap artists have moved towards a more pop-friendly mainstream sound.
The subject matter inherent in gangsta rap has caused a great deal of controversy. Criticism has come from both right wing and left wing commentators, who have accused the genre of homophobia, misogyny, promiscuity, racism, and materialism.
Gangster rappers often defend themselves by claiming that they are describing the reality of inner-city life, and that they are only adopting a character, like an actor playing a role, which behaves in ways that they may not necessarily endorse.
But alot of gangsta rappers early on did not explain this fully well enough to the impressionable teens that were buying the music. Many thought, they were giving out example to live by as opposed to an explanation of cries in which needed to be corrected in many inner cities and communities. However, there was "gangsta rap" well before the 90's. The album Hustler's Convention by Lightnin Rod was released in 1973. The lyrics deal with street life, including pimping and hustling. The Last Poet Jalal Mansur Nuriddin delivers the rhyming vocals in the urban slang of his time, and together with the other Last Poets was quite influential on later hip-hop groups such as Public Enemy. Ice-T, as well as many other rappers, has credited pimp and writer Iceberg Slim with influencing his rhymes. There is also a long tradition of "gunman" lyrics in Jamaican music, which had a strong influence on South Bronx MC KRS-1.
Philadelphia MC Schoolly D can probably be credited as the first rapper to use the word "gangster" in one of his songs. In his 1984 12" single "Gangster Boogie" he mentions it with "I shot call a ? with my gangster lean". He released the 12" single "P.S.K." (short for Park Side Killers) in 1985. In this song Schoolly D makes direct references to his crew or gang (PSK) as well as describing putting his pistol against another rapper's head.
The rap group Run DMC are often credited with popularizing hardcore and abrasive attitudes and lyrics in hip hop culture, and were one of the first rap groups to dress in gang-like street clothing. Their socially conscious lyrics would later influence socially conscious gangsta rappers and hardcore rappers such as Ice Cube and Nas.
Rappers such as Slick Rick, LL Cool J, the group EPMD, and the seminal hardcore group Public Enemy (which even sported a crosshair as its trademark symbol) would further popularize hard-hitting, aggressive, often socio-political lyrics, sometimes revolving around street violence, poverty, and gunplay.
In 1987, Los Angeles-based rapper Ice-T released "6 n the Mornin", which is often regarded as the first gangsta rap song. Ice-T had been MCing since the early '80s; his first song, "The Coldest Rap", was the first hiphop song to use the words "ho and nigga", and included references to guns and pimping. Ice-T continued to release gangsta albums for the remainder of the decade: Rhyme Pays in 1987, Power in 1988 and The Iceberg/Freedom of Speech...Just Watch What You Say in 1989. Ice-T's lyrics also contained strong political commentary, and often played the line between glorifying the gangsta lifestyle and criticizing it as a no-win situation
But very few hard the latter about it being a "no win" situation.
The Beastie Boys, while never truly credited as gangsta rappers, were actually one of the first groups to identify themselves as "gangsters" on their acclaimed and commercially successful 1986 debut album, Licensed to Ill. They were also one of the first popular rap groups to talk about violence, drug and alcohol use, and themes common in gangsta rap today. According to "Rolling Stone" magazine, "Licensed to Ill is filled with enough references to guns, drugs, and empty sex (including the pornographic deployment of a Whiffle-ball bat in "Paul Revere") to qualify as a gangsta-rap cornerstone." In their early underground days, the seminal gangsta rap group N.W.A. rapped over Beastie Boy tracks for songs such as "My Posse" and "Ill-Legal", and the Beastie Boys' influence can be seen significantly in all of N.W.A's early albums.
The Beastie Boys continued to produce proto-gangsta rap tracks on their 1989 album Paul's Boutique, which included such hardcore tracks as "Car Thief," "Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun," and "High-Plains Drifter."
Boogie Down Productions released their first single, "Say No Brother (Crack Attack Don't Do It)", in 1986. It was followed by "South-Bronx/P is Free" and "9mm Goes Bang" in the same year. The latter is the most gangsta-themed song of the three; in it KRS-1 describes shooting rival weed-dealers after they try to kill him in his home. The album Criminal Minded followed in 1987. Shortly after the release of the album, BDP's DJ Scott LaRock was shot and killed. After this BDP's subsequent records focused on conscious lyrics instead.
N.W.A. released their first single in 1986. They were crucial to the foundations of the genre for introducing more violent lyrics over much rougher beats. The first blockbuster gangsta album was N.W.A.'s Straight Outta Compton first released in 1988. Straight Outta Compton also established West Coast hip hop as a vital genre, and a rival of hip hop's long-time capital, New York City. Straight Outta Compton sparked the first major controversy regarding hip hop lyrics when their song "f**k Tha Police" earned a letter from the FBI strongly expressing law enforcement's resentment of the song. Due to the influence of Ice T and N.W.A., gangsta rap is often credited as being an originally West Coast phenomenon. In 1990, former N.W.A. member Ice Cube would further influence gangsta rap with his hardcore, socio-political solo albums
Mafioso Rap
Mafioso rap is a hip hop sub-genre which flourished in the mid-1990s. It is the pseudo-Mafia extension of East Coast hardcore rap, and was the counterpart of West Coast G-Funk rap during the 1990s. In contrast to West Coast gangsta rappers, who tended to depict realistic urban life on the ghetto streets, Mafioso rappers' subject matter included self-indulgent and luxurious fantasies of rappers as Mobsters, or Mafiosi, while making numerous references towards notorious crime organizations of the Italian underworld, including the Gambino crime family and Cosa Nostra
Meanwhile, rappers from New York City and Philadelphia, such as Black Moon (Enta Da Stage, 1993), Wu-Tang Clan (Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), 1993), Onyx (Bacdafucup, 1993), Mobb Deep (The Infamous, 1995), Nas (Illmatic, 1994) and the Notorious B.I.G. (Ready to Die, 1994) pioneered a grittier sound known as East Coast hardcore rap. B.I.G. and the rest of Puff Daddy's Bad Boy Records roster paved the way for New York City to take back chart dominance from the West Coast as gangsta rap continued to explode into the mainstream.
It is widely speculated that the "East Coast/West Coast" battle between Death Row Records and Bad Boy Records resulted in the deaths of Death Row's Tupac Shakur and Bad Boy's Notorious B.I.G. This had a knock-on effect on Death Row itself, which sank quickly when most of its big name artists like Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg left and it found itself on the receiving end of multiple lawsuits.
Dr. Dre, at the MTV Video Music Awards, claimed that "gangsta rap was dead". Although Puff Daddy's Bad Boy Records fared better than its West Coast rival, it continued to lose popularity and support of the hip hop fan base with a more mainstream sound, and challenges from Atlanta and, especially, Master P's No Limit stable of popular rappers.
Before the late nineties, gangsta rap and hip hop in general, while being extremely popular, had always been seen as a fringe genre that remained firmly outside of the pop mainstream. However, the rise of Bad Boy Records signalled a major stylistic change in gangsta rap (or as it is referred to on the East Coast, hardcore rap), as it morphed into a new subgenre of hip hop which would become even more commercially successful. Notorious B.I.G. is seen by many to have initiated gangsta rap's move towards conquering the pop charts, as he was the first hardcore gangsta rapper to produce albums as a calculated attempt to include both gritty gangsta narratives and polished, catchy, danceable pop productions entirely aimed at the clubs and at the mainstream pop charts.
Between the release of Biggie's debut album Ready to Die in 1994 and his follow-up Life after Death in 1997, his sound changed from the darker, sample-heavy production to a cleaner, more upbeat sound fashioned for popular consumption (though the references to guns, drug dealing and life as a thug on the street remained). R&B-styled hooks and instantly recognizable samples of well-known soul and pop songs from the 1970s and 1980s were the staples of this sound, which was showcased primarily in his latter-day work for The Notorious B.I.G. ("Mo Money, Mo Problems"), Ma$e ("Feels So Good"), and non Bad Boy artists such as Jay-Z ("Can I Get A...") and Nas ("Street Dreams").
Also achieving similar levels of success with a similar sound at the same time as Bad Boy was Master P and his No Limit label in New Orleans, as well as the New Orleans upstart Cash Money label. A Cash Money artist, The B.G., popularized a catch phrase in 1999 that sums up what the majority of late-nineties mainstream hip hop focused on subject-wise: "Bling-Bling." Whereas much gangsta rap of the past had portrayed the rapper as being a victim of urban squalor, the persona of late-nineties mainstream gangsta rappers was far more weighted towards hedonism and showing off the best jewelry, clothes, liquor, and women.
Many of the artists who achieved such mainstream success, such as Ma$e, Jay-Z and Cam'Ron, originated from the gritty East Coast rap scene and were influenced by hardcore artists such as the Notorious B.I.G and Nas. Ma$e, Jay-Z and Cam'Ron are also typical of the more relaxed, casual flow that became the pop-gangsta norm. Many of these artists are viewed as being rather illegitimately "gangsta" compared to their West Coast counterparts.
Pop-inflected gangsta rap continues to be successful into the 21st century, with many artists deftly straddling the divide between their hip hop audience and their pop audience, such as Ja Rule and Jay-Z. The influence of West Coast gangsta rapper 2Pac on the East Coast rap scene has also become increasingly apparent in the new century.
So basically, What is Hip Hop?
Hip Hop is not just music, it is a movement, a lifestyle. Either you're in, or you're not.
Awaken Hip-Hop by RealDre
Before the mics, before the beats
They were the poets of the streets
Spreading truths, infecting lies
Open peoples eyes, to the hood inside
Spoke against drugs, against the crime
These lyrics now top albums sales
What a change in the times
Hop started conscious rhymes
Then got to Hip too stay in line
No real teachers
Just wanna be students
What was once a game, and spit reason
Is now a business, polluted with treason
Labels see dollar signs
Rappers see diamonds
All MC's are rappers
But not all rappers are MC's
MC's live through their lyrics
Rappers live off of their lyrics
It's not about keepin it alive
Or keeping it real
Rap needs to die
And Hip Hop needs to be re-revealed
To be showcased at center stage
Instead of being a backseat slave
So I beg my MC's to get back in the fight
Bring us back to the light
Stop talking about whats wrong
Speak of how to make it right
Cause like Nas all I need is one mic
But it'll be a thousand sleepless nights
Before I can rest, I gotta defend this night
Cause I will always love Hip Hop
First love of my life
This is probably one of the most complex and hardest questions to give one single answer. Simply because, there is no one single unified answer. What people have to understand about "hip-hop" is that it's alot like Dante's Inferno. There are several levels in hip hop. When most people that encounter hip hop on its mainstream level all they do is turn to BET, MTV2. They see high end cars, girls wearing next to nothing, money constantly being thrown around, and tons of drug and killing references. This is highly problematic because as I've said, all of that is just one level in hip hop and it has many levels.
The origins of "hip hop" itself came from the need to give a voice to the problems, specifically of the black community of the late 1970's to the early 1980's. "The Message" by GrandMaster Flash and the Furious Five is marked as the first socially concious rap song, and it is. It talks about the dangers of drugs, crime, prostitution, corrupt police, just about everything that goes on negatively that seems to never get fixed and solved in black communites across America. Of course the place where hip hop launched is the Bronx, New York...namely the South Bronx. Graffiti, Dj-ing, MC-ing, Rebelllion, Questioning of the social system, and break dancing...are all unique elements that make up the entire fabric of what we call today hip hop.
Hip hop music, also known as rap music, is a style of music which came into existence in the United States during the mid-1970s, and became a large part of modern pop culture during the 1980s. It consists of two main components: rapping (MCing) and DJing (production and scratching). Along with hip hop dance (notably breakdancing) and urban inspired art, or notably graffiti, these compose the four elements of hip hop, a cultural movement that was initiated by inner-city youth, mostly African Americans in New York City, in the early 1970s.
Typically, hip hop music consists of rhythmic lyrics making use of techniques like assonance, alliteration, and rhyme. The rapper is accompanied by an instrumental track, usually referred to as a "beat," performed by a DJ, created by a producer, or one or more instrumentalists. Historically, this beat has often been created using a sample of the percussion break of another song: usually funk and soul recordings have been utilized. However, in recent years, it has become more common for the beat to be built up from individual drum samples. In addition to the beat, other sounds are often sampled, synthesized, or performed. Sometimes a track can be instrumental, as a showcase of the skills of the DJ or producer.
Hip hop began in The Bronx, a borough in New York City, when DJ's began isolating the percussion break from funk and disco songs. The early role of the MC was to introduce the DJ and the music and to keep the audience excited. MC's began by speaking between songs, giving exhortations to dance, greetings to audience members, jokes and anecdotes. Eventually this practice became more stylized and became known as rapping.
By 1979, hip hop had become a commercially popular music genre and began to enter the American mainstream. In the 1990s, a form of hip hop called gangsta rap became a major part of American music, causing significant controversy over lyrics which were perceived as promoting violence, terrorism, promiscuity, drug use and misogyny. Nevertheless, by the beginning of the 2000s, hip hop was a staple of popular music charts and was being performed in many styles across the world.
Hip hop arose during the 1970s at block parties in New York City, at which the DJs began isolating the percussion breaks to hit funk, soul, R&B and disco songs. The roots of this type of songs stem back to the mid-1950s when soul/funk rock artist James Brown credit Little Richard's band as having been the first to put the funk in the rock beat. These songs were based on - "breakbeat" DJing. As hip hop became popular, performers began speaking while the music played, and became known as MCs or emcees.
In 1979, the first commercially issued hip hop recordings were released: "Rapper's Delight" by The Sugarhill Gang which became a Top 40 hit on the U.S. Billboard pop singles chart. "Rapper" in reference to music was actually coined by this song. Some historians cite King Tim III (Personality Jock) by the Fatback Band to be the first commercially released hip hop recording but they were a funk and disco group.
During the 1980s, hip hop began to diversify and develop into a more complex form. At the same time, more sophisticated techniques were developed, including scratching, and electronic recording. In the late 1980s, a number of new hip hop styles and subgenres began appearing as the genre gained popularity. Hip hop musicians collaborated with rock bands and spread out into the genres of conscious hip hop, jazz-rap and gangsta rap.
In the 1990s, a prolonged confrontation between West Coast gangsta rappers and the resurging East Coast began. It centered around Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G. and led to both of their deaths, in 1996 and 1997 respectively. In 1996, Cleveland-based rap group Bone Thugs-N-Harmony tied The Beatles' 32-year-old record for fastest-rising single with "Tha Crossroads", and in 2000, Scottish-American White rapper Eminem's The Marshall Mathers LP sold over nine million copies and won a Grammy Award.
For many years rap music has included product placement for cars, alcoholic drinks, clothing and other products, which appears to have gone largely unnoticed by its audience. Rappers worldwide have bowed down before large corporations as shills and puppets and turned their songs into adverts for products, which many feel has degraded and destroyed the artistic value and integrity of rap music.
Rappers will discuss at length the cars they drive and the drinks they consume and glorify the excess, decadence and luxury of a lifestyle spent wasting money on vanity products, working as shills for companies who are looking to reach a key demographic of the young music audience without having to change their mainstream brand advertising, e.g. cognac drinks whose primary audience is for the older market, but who wish to appeal to a younger audience without losing their older fans.
Hip hop has encountered more problems with censorship than any other form of popular music in recent years, due to the use of expletives. It also receives flak for being anti-establishment, and many of its songs depict wars and coup d'etats that in the end overthrows the government. For example, Public Enemy's "Gotta Give the Peeps What They Need" song was edited without their permission, removing the words "free Mumia".
The pervasive use of profanity in many songs has created challenges in the broadcast of such material both on television stations such as MTV, in music video form, and on radio. As a result, many hip hop recordings are broadcast in censored form, with offending language blanked out of the soundtrack (though usually leaving the backing music intact), or even replaced with completely different lyrics. The result - which quite often renders the remaining lyrics unintelligible or contradictory to the original recording - has become almost as widely identified with the genre as any other aspect of the music, and has been parodied in films such as Austin Powers in Goldmember, in which a character - performing in a parody of a hip hop music video - performs an entire verse that is blanked out.
In 1995 Roger Ebert wrote:
"Rap has a bad reputation in white circles, where many people believe it consists of obscene and violent anti-white and anti-female guttural. Some of it does. Most does not. Most white listeners don't care; they hear black voices in a litany of discontent, and tune out. Yet rap plays the same role today as Bob Dylan did in 1960, giving voice to the hopes and angers of a generation, and a lot of rap is powerful writing."
Basically, Corporations KILL Hip Hop.
Conscious hip hop for the moment...
The audience for conscious rap is largely underground. Conscious hip hop artists have not attained the same level of commercial success as mainstream hip-hop. Some notable conscious hip hop artists are;
MosDef
Public Enemy
Lupe Fiasco
The Roots
Wyclef Jean
Common
Dead Prez
De La Soul
Fugees
Gangstarr
Slum Village
Talib Kweli
Political Hip Hop is without question more well known than Conscious Hip Hop. Political hip hop is a subgenre of alternative hip hop. Though mainstream and crossover acceptance has been generally limited to crunk & pop rap, some artists with a socially aware and positive or optimistic tone or a more avantgarde approach have achieved some success. They are often referred to in mainstream musical circles as conscious hip hop due to their focus on political issues surrounding the black community, which differentiates them from gangsta rappers. Fans of such rappers tend to view this genre as more authentic hip hop, claiming that they harken back to hip hop's early days where several artists rapped about "socially conscious" issues and gangsta rap had not yet gained mainstream acceptance.
Political hip hop differes from conscious hip hop, simply because poltical hip hop is more direct and open. Hence, why its called political.
Public Enemy is one of the definitive voices of "conscious hip hop," verbally confronting institutional racism, police corruption, and the legacy of slavery in the United States. They attracted youth because of their ability to boldly criticize and reveal serious contradictions in American democracy. Since then, other rappers have promoted positive messages. For example, with songs like "Stop the Violence" and "Self-Destruction," KRS-One has dedicated his talent to opening the ears of a world that often seems cruel and drenched in hate. Eric B and Rakim, EPMD, Schoolly D, Slick Rick, Poor Righteous Teachers, and Ice Cube all helped to build this movement.
In recent years, political hip-hop has increasingly represented a revolutionary message, including themes such as communist class conflict and revolutionary feminism. Such artists include:
Nimrod (with Red Army Productions)
Sun Ra
Sabac
The Coup
Zearle
Paris
Public Enemy
Zack de la Rocha
Ill Bill
Non Phixion
Soldier X
But the one that currently dominates the world of all things rap and hip hop, unfortunatley belongs to gangsta rap. This is the one level or version of hip hop that garners the most attention, and most people use to dismiss the hip hop culture entirely. In a world where image is everything, gangsta rap is about bragging first and foremost. "Dissing" calling the other person out, and basically leaving them with their pants hanging down infront of the crowd while audience members look onward.
Gangsta Rap
Gangsta rap is a form of Hip Hop music, which developed during the early 1990s. With the popularity of Dr. Dre's The Chronic in 1992, gangsta rap became the most commercially lucrative subgenre of hip-hop. Since then some former gangsta rap artists have moved towards a more pop-friendly mainstream sound.
The subject matter inherent in gangsta rap has caused a great deal of controversy. Criticism has come from both right wing and left wing commentators, who have accused the genre of homophobia, misogyny, promiscuity, racism, and materialism.
Gangster rappers often defend themselves by claiming that they are describing the reality of inner-city life, and that they are only adopting a character, like an actor playing a role, which behaves in ways that they may not necessarily endorse.
But alot of gangsta rappers early on did not explain this fully well enough to the impressionable teens that were buying the music. Many thought, they were giving out example to live by as opposed to an explanation of cries in which needed to be corrected in many inner cities and communities. However, there was "gangsta rap" well before the 90's. The album Hustler's Convention by Lightnin Rod was released in 1973. The lyrics deal with street life, including pimping and hustling. The Last Poet Jalal Mansur Nuriddin delivers the rhyming vocals in the urban slang of his time, and together with the other Last Poets was quite influential on later hip-hop groups such as Public Enemy. Ice-T, as well as many other rappers, has credited pimp and writer Iceberg Slim with influencing his rhymes. There is also a long tradition of "gunman" lyrics in Jamaican music, which had a strong influence on South Bronx MC KRS-1.
Philadelphia MC Schoolly D can probably be credited as the first rapper to use the word "gangster" in one of his songs. In his 1984 12" single "Gangster Boogie" he mentions it with "I shot call a ? with my gangster lean". He released the 12" single "P.S.K." (short for Park Side Killers) in 1985. In this song Schoolly D makes direct references to his crew or gang (PSK) as well as describing putting his pistol against another rapper's head.
The rap group Run DMC are often credited with popularizing hardcore and abrasive attitudes and lyrics in hip hop culture, and were one of the first rap groups to dress in gang-like street clothing. Their socially conscious lyrics would later influence socially conscious gangsta rappers and hardcore rappers such as Ice Cube and Nas.
Rappers such as Slick Rick, LL Cool J, the group EPMD, and the seminal hardcore group Public Enemy (which even sported a crosshair as its trademark symbol) would further popularize hard-hitting, aggressive, often socio-political lyrics, sometimes revolving around street violence, poverty, and gunplay.
In 1987, Los Angeles-based rapper Ice-T released "6 n the Mornin", which is often regarded as the first gangsta rap song. Ice-T had been MCing since the early '80s; his first song, "The Coldest Rap", was the first hiphop song to use the words "ho and nigga", and included references to guns and pimping. Ice-T continued to release gangsta albums for the remainder of the decade: Rhyme Pays in 1987, Power in 1988 and The Iceberg/Freedom of Speech...Just Watch What You Say in 1989. Ice-T's lyrics also contained strong political commentary, and often played the line between glorifying the gangsta lifestyle and criticizing it as a no-win situation
But very few hard the latter about it being a "no win" situation.
The Beastie Boys, while never truly credited as gangsta rappers, were actually one of the first groups to identify themselves as "gangsters" on their acclaimed and commercially successful 1986 debut album, Licensed to Ill. They were also one of the first popular rap groups to talk about violence, drug and alcohol use, and themes common in gangsta rap today. According to "Rolling Stone" magazine, "Licensed to Ill is filled with enough references to guns, drugs, and empty sex (including the pornographic deployment of a Whiffle-ball bat in "Paul Revere") to qualify as a gangsta-rap cornerstone." In their early underground days, the seminal gangsta rap group N.W.A. rapped over Beastie Boy tracks for songs such as "My Posse" and "Ill-Legal", and the Beastie Boys' influence can be seen significantly in all of N.W.A's early albums.
The Beastie Boys continued to produce proto-gangsta rap tracks on their 1989 album Paul's Boutique, which included such hardcore tracks as "Car Thief," "Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun," and "High-Plains Drifter."
Boogie Down Productions released their first single, "Say No Brother (Crack Attack Don't Do It)", in 1986. It was followed by "South-Bronx/P is Free" and "9mm Goes Bang" in the same year. The latter is the most gangsta-themed song of the three; in it KRS-1 describes shooting rival weed-dealers after they try to kill him in his home. The album Criminal Minded followed in 1987. Shortly after the release of the album, BDP's DJ Scott LaRock was shot and killed. After this BDP's subsequent records focused on conscious lyrics instead.
N.W.A. released their first single in 1986. They were crucial to the foundations of the genre for introducing more violent lyrics over much rougher beats. The first blockbuster gangsta album was N.W.A.'s Straight Outta Compton first released in 1988. Straight Outta Compton also established West Coast hip hop as a vital genre, and a rival of hip hop's long-time capital, New York City. Straight Outta Compton sparked the first major controversy regarding hip hop lyrics when their song "f**k Tha Police" earned a letter from the FBI strongly expressing law enforcement's resentment of the song. Due to the influence of Ice T and N.W.A., gangsta rap is often credited as being an originally West Coast phenomenon. In 1990, former N.W.A. member Ice Cube would further influence gangsta rap with his hardcore, socio-political solo albums
Mafioso Rap
Mafioso rap is a hip hop sub-genre which flourished in the mid-1990s. It is the pseudo-Mafia extension of East Coast hardcore rap, and was the counterpart of West Coast G-Funk rap during the 1990s. In contrast to West Coast gangsta rappers, who tended to depict realistic urban life on the ghetto streets, Mafioso rappers' subject matter included self-indulgent and luxurious fantasies of rappers as Mobsters, or Mafiosi, while making numerous references towards notorious crime organizations of the Italian underworld, including the Gambino crime family and Cosa Nostra
Meanwhile, rappers from New York City and Philadelphia, such as Black Moon (Enta Da Stage, 1993), Wu-Tang Clan (Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), 1993), Onyx (Bacdafucup, 1993), Mobb Deep (The Infamous, 1995), Nas (Illmatic, 1994) and the Notorious B.I.G. (Ready to Die, 1994) pioneered a grittier sound known as East Coast hardcore rap. B.I.G. and the rest of Puff Daddy's Bad Boy Records roster paved the way for New York City to take back chart dominance from the West Coast as gangsta rap continued to explode into the mainstream.
It is widely speculated that the "East Coast/West Coast" battle between Death Row Records and Bad Boy Records resulted in the deaths of Death Row's Tupac Shakur and Bad Boy's Notorious B.I.G. This had a knock-on effect on Death Row itself, which sank quickly when most of its big name artists like Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg left and it found itself on the receiving end of multiple lawsuits.
Dr. Dre, at the MTV Video Music Awards, claimed that "gangsta rap was dead". Although Puff Daddy's Bad Boy Records fared better than its West Coast rival, it continued to lose popularity and support of the hip hop fan base with a more mainstream sound, and challenges from Atlanta and, especially, Master P's No Limit stable of popular rappers.
Before the late nineties, gangsta rap and hip hop in general, while being extremely popular, had always been seen as a fringe genre that remained firmly outside of the pop mainstream. However, the rise of Bad Boy Records signalled a major stylistic change in gangsta rap (or as it is referred to on the East Coast, hardcore rap), as it morphed into a new subgenre of hip hop which would become even more commercially successful. Notorious B.I.G. is seen by many to have initiated gangsta rap's move towards conquering the pop charts, as he was the first hardcore gangsta rapper to produce albums as a calculated attempt to include both gritty gangsta narratives and polished, catchy, danceable pop productions entirely aimed at the clubs and at the mainstream pop charts.
Between the release of Biggie's debut album Ready to Die in 1994 and his follow-up Life after Death in 1997, his sound changed from the darker, sample-heavy production to a cleaner, more upbeat sound fashioned for popular consumption (though the references to guns, drug dealing and life as a thug on the street remained). R&B-styled hooks and instantly recognizable samples of well-known soul and pop songs from the 1970s and 1980s were the staples of this sound, which was showcased primarily in his latter-day work for The Notorious B.I.G. ("Mo Money, Mo Problems"), Ma$e ("Feels So Good"), and non Bad Boy artists such as Jay-Z ("Can I Get A...") and Nas ("Street Dreams").
Also achieving similar levels of success with a similar sound at the same time as Bad Boy was Master P and his No Limit label in New Orleans, as well as the New Orleans upstart Cash Money label. A Cash Money artist, The B.G., popularized a catch phrase in 1999 that sums up what the majority of late-nineties mainstream hip hop focused on subject-wise: "Bling-Bling." Whereas much gangsta rap of the past had portrayed the rapper as being a victim of urban squalor, the persona of late-nineties mainstream gangsta rappers was far more weighted towards hedonism and showing off the best jewelry, clothes, liquor, and women.
Many of the artists who achieved such mainstream success, such as Ma$e, Jay-Z and Cam'Ron, originated from the gritty East Coast rap scene and were influenced by hardcore artists such as the Notorious B.I.G and Nas. Ma$e, Jay-Z and Cam'Ron are also typical of the more relaxed, casual flow that became the pop-gangsta norm. Many of these artists are viewed as being rather illegitimately "gangsta" compared to their West Coast counterparts.
Pop-inflected gangsta rap continues to be successful into the 21st century, with many artists deftly straddling the divide between their hip hop audience and their pop audience, such as Ja Rule and Jay-Z. The influence of West Coast gangsta rapper 2Pac on the East Coast rap scene has also become increasingly apparent in the new century.
So basically, What is Hip Hop?
Hip Hop is not just music, it is a movement, a lifestyle. Either you're in, or you're not.
Awaken Hip-Hop by RealDre
Before the mics, before the beats
They were the poets of the streets
Spreading truths, infecting lies
Open peoples eyes, to the hood inside
Spoke against drugs, against the crime
These lyrics now top albums sales
What a change in the times
Hop started conscious rhymes
Then got to Hip too stay in line
No real teachers
Just wanna be students
What was once a game, and spit reason
Is now a business, polluted with treason
Labels see dollar signs
Rappers see diamonds
All MC's are rappers
But not all rappers are MC's
MC's live through their lyrics
Rappers live off of their lyrics
It's not about keepin it alive
Or keeping it real
Rap needs to die
And Hip Hop needs to be re-revealed
To be showcased at center stage
Instead of being a backseat slave
So I beg my MC's to get back in the fight
Bring us back to the light
Stop talking about whats wrong
Speak of how to make it right
Cause like Nas all I need is one mic
But it'll be a thousand sleepless nights
Before I can rest, I gotta defend this night
Cause I will always love Hip Hop
First love of my life