Hip Hop Culture and

Rap Music
{ A Reflection of African American History in the
United States
Hip Hop: Today's Civil
Rights Movement?
Musical Culture More Relevant than King
Speeches
THE HISTORY OF RAP
 The history of rap music has its roots since the
days of slavery. This form of music was an
outlet originally for the pain and suffering
experienced by slaves.
Although rap music has been around for
centuries, it made a comeback in 1975 in New
York.

Origin of Rap Music

Rap Musics Beginning
Rap music emerged out of a Hip-Hop culture
of the 1960s and 1970s with its emphasis on
political expression and resistance through
graffiti, modes of dress, language and social
practices (Beach)

Grandmaster Flash photo by Stuart

Sevastes
 Rap music was influenced by Jamaican
toasting especially by a Jamaican immigrant
in 1967 Clive Campbell who became know as
DJ Kool Herc (Rhodes)

DJ Kool Herc- The

Original
 Growing Unrest

Leon Litwack in his article on the civil

rights movement for The Journal of
Southern History notes, it became
increasingly difficult towage the kind
of campaign [Martin Luther] King
preached.
New voicesStokely Carmichael,
Malcolm X, the Black Panthers
suggested new moods in black Malcolm X
America
 The more black Americans found themselves
excluded from the mainstream, the greater the
possibilities for violent confrontation with the
more visible symbols of white society.

Growing Unrest
 Civil Rights

Even as the civil rights movement struck down legal barriersit

failed to diminish economic inequalities (Litwack)
 The premiere record with a rap label was
Rappers Delight by Sugar Hill.
Musical elements in this song included: light
guitars, high-hat drumming, and hand claps
over very deep funk base line.

Rappers Delight
 The Bronx community-center dances and
block parties where hip-hop began in the early
1970s were not demonstrations for justice, they
were celebrations of survival(Chang)
The seeds of later political rap were being sown
Grandmaster Flash and the Furious
Five[created] the classic song The Message
[which] resonated with an explosive terrifying
mix of desperation and anger(Litwack)

Rap and Hip-Hop in the

Bronx
 Through the mid-1980s rappers like Run-DMC
and Soul Sonic Force weighed in on topics like
racism, nuclear proliferation, and
apartheid(Chang)
Run-DMC Finds a much larger audience than
early rap (including white rockers)

Political Rap
A Growing Industry
In 1984, the white
population was turned
on to rap music.
The two races were
combined in Walk This
Way by Aerosmith and
Run DMC.
With the growth of white
audiences came the onset
of white rap performers.
 Since the 1980s, the artists of this early form of
rap music were young black men having white
producers.
The first lyrics of this new music genre tried to
show the blackness the artist by using foreign,
sexually charged, and criminal underworld
against which the norms of white society.

A New Wave
 The first rap group whose music was not formed
on inner city streets, but in the middle class of
Long Island.

This music was about the unequal treatment of

police toward blacks and they believed blacks still
did not belong in white America.

FIGHT THE POWER

Elvis was a hero to most
But he never meant shit to me, you see
Straight up racist that sucker was simple and plain
Mother f**** him and John Wayne
Cause Im black and Im proud
Im ready and hyped, plus Im amped
Most of my heroes dont appear on those stamps
Sample a look back, you look and find
Nothing but rednecks for four hundred years if you check

Public Enemy
 Increasing frustration and antagonism a
post-civil rights stance
Led by Public Enemy rappers
displayed the Black Panthers media
savvy and the Minister Louis
Farrakhans nationalist rage(Chang)
In 1988 NWA entered the Top-20 charts
with its album Straight Out of Compton
which included the song Fk tha
Police(Litwack)

Late 80s early 90s

Street Poets
African Americans who articulated growing
despair at being caged in deteriorating
postindustrial cities (Litwack)

Ice T album Body Count which

included the single Cop Killer
 Current State of Rap
music

One might ask whether rap has

abandoned the revolution
The hip-hop lifestyle is now available
for purchase in every suburban mall
Hip-hop rose by making blackness
even radical blacknessthe worldwide
trading currency of cultural
cool(Chang)

Kanye West
 The rap industry is still
growing and setting trends all
over the world, from clothes to
jewelry. Many clothing lines
have been started by rap artist
such as Rocawear and Sean
John.
Political issues are also being
addressed by some rappers in
songs and in the media. For
example recently Lil Wayne
has a song over Kanye Wests
beat for Damage is Done
where he briefly discusses the
event of Hurricane Katrina.

Raps Future