Hip Hop Is Art
"Hip hop is art, don't make another pop hit: be smart.
Take it back to the start
Like how KRS and Rakim used passion and art."
I love how Facebook asks 'What's on your mind?' like Rakim asked in '94. What’s on my mind, Rakim? I’ll tell you.
Hip hop and rap music as a whole, has been homogenized to a point where all rap, without a doubt, sounds like carbon copies of the last 'big thing' to emerge. Copies of a copy of a copy, that’s all it resembles today. Like many other underground cultural and musical movements, it became mainstream, toned down to become marketable. 50 Cent, Akon and many more have been rappers of the ‘gangsta’ style: this isn’t what true hip hop is. The hip hop and rap music that’s being peddled on our televisions and radios bears little resemblance to the explosion and birth of hip hop that took place in the multicultural South Bronx in New York. It was and is a huge movement whose influence is still reaching out today.
The roots of hip hop were born from the African tradition of music and oral tradition whereby poets would travel to recite their poetry, often set to music. This was always present, but DJs in the 70s after the disco phenomenon, started jamming and mixing up percussive beats repetitively along side melodic samples from funk and soul songs, borrowing heavily from the music style dub, a kind of slowed down reggae with the bass cranked high, which was spread by the Jamaican community who’d moved to New York.
Vinyl records would be used to scratch and mix with, providing beats that could be rapped over. The DJs would mix, the MCs would rap and the sizeable Latino community in New York added their own elements, like dance beats: for more information on the history of hip hop music, check out Jeff Chang's Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop for a glittering account of this musical genre. This where hip hop culture comes in.
The music origins, the works of DJ Grand Wizard, Grandmaster Flash and DJ Kool Herc all played a part in making hip hop what it is. No matter how hip hop music started, it provide a voice for disenfranchised (and often second or third generation) immigrants in the US. Tony Tone, of the Cold Brothers stated that "…hip hop saved a lot of lives. Hip hop culture became a way of dealing with the hardships of life as minorities within America, and an outlet to deal with violence and gang culture." People were break dancing against each other or holding improvised rap battle to challenge other people in other gangs as opposed to resorting to crime or violence.
The children who started hip hop were those born to parents who had taken part in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s; they were young, they were angry at the inequality that they were and at the limitations of the civil rights movement when racism was still rampant, along with the growing inequality all across the US with it hitting inner city communities the hardest.
They took the morals of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, and took 'em all one step further. The social circumstances were crippling when you take into account the number of single parent families in the poorer immigrant communities and poverty, leading many to crime, in turn, incarcerating many people from immigrant backgrounds. Substance abuse was a huge problem with an epidemic of crack cocaine usage in inner city areas rocketing.
These issues, along with many others, are mentioned in the earliest of hip hop songs where the lyrics were socially aware and politically aware, which have sadly died out in face of the commodification of hip hop. For more info on the origins of politically and socially charged hip hop, check out KRS-One’s Sound Of Da Police or Public Enemy's Fight The Power.
Hip hop was the phoenix that emerged from the ashes of dissatisfied and disadvantaged beat up communities who were at odds with their more privileged counterparts, culturally, physically, emotionally and mentally, burnt by various afflictions and social conditions.
Hip hop is known to have five cultural pillars; DJing, rapping, graffiti, breaking and beatboxing, providing a stimulating environment for people, especially young people, to live and grow up in. Talent was nurtured and polished and put into something productive. Its influence today stretches far beyond hip hop, with bands like Sublime referencing old-skool hip hop and many others acknowledging its significance.
There was an alternative; hip hop was a ground whereby opposing gangs could talk one to one without resorting to any warfare. The traditional routes had been expanded, people were working on their writing or musical skills as opposed to resorting to other alternatives that would ultimately prove to be self destructive. It was all based around community: it was a way of reaffirming identity, uniting people, encouraging talent and outlets for expression, both emotional and political (amongst others) through writing (e.g. through rapping) and art (graffiti) through this grassroots phenomenon.
New York is known internationally for its graffiti, art which has a significant cultural importance for the people who live there. Dull, grey and dreary projects (the US version of housing estates) were brightened up by psychedelic graffiti of the richest purples, pinks, oranges and gold, turning an unattractive urban landscape into a work of art: a visual representation of hip hop. Some of this even stretch beyond art or graffiti for its own artistic sake and value, like the culture of families commissioning graffiti artists to create murals for those who have passed on, decorate not only the landscape of the New York, but cities throughout the US.
Then the commercialisation came. The worst parts of hip hop, the glorification of guns and casual misogyny was picked up by record companies and peddled everywhere. Leaks from McDonalds showed that they were willing to pay gangster rappers to mention their food in their songs. Product placement and endorsements were then and are now happening left, right and centre. Hip Hop and the industry are now inseparable, leading to the pockets of the men high up in those large towers, the ones who sign these guys who peddle this rubbish just to get richer.
In The Commodification of Hip Hop directed by Brooke Daniel it’s argued that the glorification of materialism in the form of guns, extremely expensive jewellery has led those without jobs to steal or go out and sell drugs in order to actually get these things to live the hip hop life; these things are exactly the sort of thing hip hop, when it was started, set out to prevent. Contradictory, right?
Think about it for a minute; everyone on this planet, living and breathing right now is going to be dead in 100 years. It’s not about what bling you got or what car you have, whether or not you’re going to pimp it like Westwood, pass the Courvoisier like Busta Rhymes or live like 50 Cent. It’s not about what you have, but about what you’re going to do, what you’re willing to build for the next generation to make their lives easier than the one you were living. The ideas being packaged, sold and bought are watered down versions of their inspirations: Cypress Hill’s Tres Equis versus Eminem’s Lose It: there’s no contest; the music isn’t even as good as it was before! The industry isn’t the movement and shouldn’t even represent the movement, not at all.
It’s such a shame that a grassroots cultural phenomena such as hip hop that did so much, inspired so many people and saved so many lives has been picked up by record industries. The reason it’s looked down upon is primarily the lyrical content and glorification of self destructive tendencies; gang warfare, gang culture, the use of women as sex objects. This is why it’s been widely challenged, for the wrong reasons, why it’s being censored: it is condoning behaviour that the original movement would have dismissed without a second thought. Modern hip hop rapes its forefathers. Before it was challenged for political reasons, such as when Public Enemy mentioned Mumia Abu Jamal and his case in one of their songs and MTV censored it. And now? It is swearing being censored in songs by G-Unit about being a pimp.
Old hip hop didn’t preach violence, and it didn’t preach drugs. Some rappers are keeping it 'old skool' and rejecting major record companies to keep their ears close to the ground, not to lose touch with the issues they rap about and keeping the music easy to access, look at Immortal Technique (who sold 40,000 copies of his album instead), Sage Francis and Saul Williams. These guys are what it is, these guys are what it was, and these guys are the future of hip hop. What it is now isn’t what it should be.
Hip hop is colonized, and it’s just waiting to be freed.
IMAGE: Bo Hakala
3 Comments – Post a comment
Sambow
Commented 25 months ago - 17th April 2010 - 16:15pm
Another article true to life about whats become of music in today's world. Really good article- well done :)
JustinCreddible
Commented 25 months ago - 19th April 2010 - 14:28pm
wicked article once again...
check out associatedminds for a great Wales based UK hip hop label.
their stuff reminds me what hip hop should be about!
www.associatedminds.com
Kid Vengeance
Commented 25 months ago - 20th April 2010 - 15:27pm
No doubt, hip hop is absolutely art! Lemme show you something new and totally different that might make you a little more optimistic about the future of hip hop. I just finished a Spaghetti Western Concept Rap album, called "Showdown at the BK Corral." It's basically an epic Spaghetti Western over 9 hip hop tracks - very influenced by Wu Tang and Morricone, but you never heard nothin like it. You can download it for free at sunsetparkriders.com