Previously posted on the Young People For Blog.
This is a hot issue now and many people are chiming in. I would just like to piggy back off of the early post titled :A Response to All Hip Hop Apologists. Hip Hop is a topic that is drawing together as well as dividing people. Imus, Al Sharpton, Anderson Cooper, Oprah Winfrey, Snoop Dogg, Cam'ron, Russell Simmons, you, me, and your neighbor are all caught up in this 'issue.' Hip Hop is something that touches us all no matter what your ethnic background, home situation, or city dwelling. Hip Hop consumes you no matter what to think, no matter what you listen to, no matter where you come from.
I am an avid reader of National Geographic and you can't even imagine my excitement when the newest issue arrived in the mail during a weekend visit home from college. In big print, one of the top articles read: Hip Hop Planet. NG covering Hip Hop? No way! I definitely had some skepticism at first, but I also knew that NG had a great reputation for reporting and journalism excellence. This excellence was expounded further with their article on hip hop. The American music culture owes everything to black culture and its African roots. We wouldn't be listening to anything today if it was not for the black cultural connection with music and stories. The NG article looks back into the birth of hip hop and its roots in West African traditions of story-telling brought over on the slave ships. I will not attempt to cover hip hop history because the NG article does that much better.
With the idea that we now live on a Hip Hop Planet comes the problem with commercially motivated and corporately owned hip hop and its detriment on society. Today's New York Times has an article titled: 'Don't Blame Hip Hop' speaking how one cannot blame hip hop for cultures ills, but rather the corporation. Imus blamed hip hop and Oprah blames hip hop for problems in society, and they are within their rights because what they see called hip hop asks for controversy. Now in all other cases, especially the case of hip hop controversy is the purpose, but this controversy is about the missed purpose. Hip Hop is rooted in oppression, race, and class. What the movement has become now is questionable. "We were about the movement," Abiodun Oyewole, a founder of the Last Poets, says. "A lot of today's rappers have talent. But a lot of them are driving the car in the wrong direction."
From the Bronx, to France, to Spain, to my dorm room, to the streets, to the suburbs the influence of hip hop can be felt. I recently completed a project on the hip hop culture in France's banlieue district where immigrants from former French colonies live. From Senegal and North Africa, these french youth face the problems of fitting in and being accepted in society, they get in trouble at school, have run-ins with the police and hip hop is their outlet. In Spain the NG reporter notes that the hip hop artists speak about the local issues and problems. The last place visited was Israel and Palestine, where youth are also using hip hop to express their troubles. Black, white, middle-eastern, french, spanish, israeli, palestinian - Hip Hop knows no boundaries.
The end of the NG article hits on the growth of Hip Hop in the american suburbs where youth may not have the toughest time living on the streets, etc. For some reason the idea of gangstarism and being tough appeals to the typical american youth. This hip hop however is the hip hop of commercial industry looking to turn a profit - not spread a message or movement. "People call hip-hop the MTV music now," scoffs Chuck D, of Public Enemy, known for its overtly political rap. "It's Big Brother controlling you. To slip something in there that's indigenous to the roots, that pays homage to the music that came before us, it's the Mount Everest of battles."
Hip Hop, along with gaining a bad reputation within the mainstream american culture has raised great issues and raised the consciencness of many people. Social problems, overlooked conflicts, discarded peoples all have a place in hip hop. Just this past weekend I heard a local hip hop artist drop some lyrics about how we all want so much material goods, but what of the people who can barely live because they are AIDS orphans in South Africa? This to me embodied hip hop turning back to what it was meant to represent, the movement of social change is becoming more evident - instead of the commercialization. Today's youth are bringing hip hop back on track.
I would like to end my post here and leave with quoted section from the article in National Geographic, which I highly recommend reading: "That is why, after 26 years, I have come to embrace this music I tried so hard to ignore. Hip-hop culture is not mine. Yet I own it. Much of it I hate. Yet I love it, the good of it. To confess a love for a music that, at least in part, embraces violence is no easy matter, but then again our national anthem talks about bombs bursting in air, and I love that song, too. At its best, hip-hop lays bare the empty moral cupboard that is our generation's legacy. This music that once made visible the inner culture of America's greatest social problem, its legacy of slavery, has taken the dream deferred to a global scale. Today, 2 percent of the Earth's adult population owns more than 50 percent of its household wealth, and indigenous cultures are swallowed with the rapidity of a teenager gobbling a bag of potato chips. The music is calling. Over the years, the instruments change, but the message is the same. The drums are pounding out a warning. They are telling us something. Our children can hear it. The question is: Can we?"