The Expression of Political and Social Views in Hip Hop Music

Introduction

Donald Glover's (Childish Gambino) most impactful music visual to date is more than just what your typical rap music would entail. 'This Is America' is a music video that depicts and symbolizes guns, violence, and racial issues in America that especially affect the black community. This is a perfect example of how the culture of hip hop is being used and has been used to express a statement or convey a message. The song and music video are well represented by Glover to show the reality of how it's like being black living in America. Glover is expressing his emotions through dance movements, words, beats and the people in the video. Hip hop from the early days has been dominated and controlled by the black community. The agenda of the black community was to use hip hop music and culture to express their views on social issues affecting their neighborhoods and communities. In this essay we will explore the various ways that hip hop music has been used to express political and social views experienced in our society.

Origins

Hip hop has been inspired by many factors to become the art form it is today. The founding father of hip hop is Clive Campbell better known by his stage name Dj Kool Herc. He founded the music genre in the recreation room of their apartment at his sister’s birthday. This was about six years before the term hip hop was coined. The music genre was formed as a result of a multicultural exchange between the African-American youth and young immigrants from the Caribbean. At the time, hip hop was the voice of disenfranchised youth who came from marginalized communities and low-income housing projects. The hip hop culture represented the political, social and economic realities of their lives. To many people, hip hop sounds like a conceptual nuisance (thought economics). Many critics have described hip hop as materialistic, misogynistic, homophobic, racist, vulgar and violent. At face value, this can be said as true. However, when you look at hip hop in a deeper context, it speaks deeply about the black urban poverty, government neglect, social injustices towards marginalized communities and the grip that street culture has on many young people. According to Tricia Rose’s book ‘the hip hop wars’, she states that hip hop gives a ground-level view of what it might mean to live under what are nearly war-like conditions in communities that face a myriad of daunting circumstances. Occasionally, a rapper’s lyrics offer gripping tales of loss, despair, hopelessness, sorrow, rage, exploitation, confinement. These are conditions that are however denied in the larger society. The society at large only pays attention to the extraordinarily despair- producing conditions in which young black poor youth attempt to survive.

Hip hop activism is said to have started becoming a significant factor when Congresswoman Maxine Waters who represents the 35th district in South Central Los Angeles, California took on hip hop as her crusade. This created a generation of youth that was avoiding being scapegoated as a result of generational divides over language and media representation. Marc Bamuthi an artist and activist commented: “a broad force of hip hop resistance was activated by movements against apartheid, police brutality, and the systematic abandonment of social services spurred by Reaganomics.” According to Hall, the social justice origins of hip hop culture has resulted in the formation of organizations such as the Hip-hop Political Action Network that began in 2001 and the Hip-Hop Congress that begun in 2000. Non-profit organization is also in on the action as they utilize the power of hip hop to educate and organize. Some of these organizations include H2ED that begun in 2003 and is based in New York City, The University of Hip-hop that started in 2000 and is based in Chicago and the International Association of Hip Hop Education that started out in 2006 and is based in Washington D.C. these and other organizations started the connection between hip hop, education, and activism in schools, correctional facilities and out of school time spaces.

Youth in hip hop

According to Emdin (2010), hip hop culture has a way of knowing. It has its own sets of beliefs, customs, practices and schematic understandings that are unique to those who are immersed in that culture. It also represents a place for black boys who historically are normally separated from mainstream school culture through racial stereotypical practices. When black young boys are treated racially, they align themselves with hip hop music including spending a lot of time learning about the lives of hip hop artists and chronicling it in social media. Educators can use hip hop culture to provide instructional strategies that can also be utilized in the classroom. Hip hop has permeated the social constructs of race, class, ethnicity, and gender. Emdin (2010) theorizes that the term hip hop constitutes more than just a music genre. He advocates that hip hop is a culture that enables young people from all over the world to connect through their common experiences. It is through these common experiences that the youth develop their own identities and resist the oppressive nature of the American public education system. The controversial nature of hip hop expresses the language and attitude of many youths in schools today. Educational researchers are utilizing the controversial nature of hip hop culture to capture the voice and themes of an ethnically diverse population of inner-city youth.

According to Brown (2010), hip hop culture has been regarded with like a reference to urban music although in recent years it has been increasingly utilized as a reference for understanding the youth. He further claims that youth immersion of hip hop culture has become a rite of passage. The urban youths firm grasp of hip hop culture should signal to education practitioners that today's students are not only connected ethnically but also through experience. Emdin writes “the cosmopolitan nature of hip hop includes people from backgrounds other than black Americans and make it clear that in hip hop, one’s kin is not just those related by blood but those related through experience. This is particularly the case if the shared experience is of oppression at the hands of the same institutions and the same political and social-economic that exclude a particular set of people from fully participating in the activities within a particular social field.” Black boys develop close associations and identities based on themes presented within the hip hop culture. This is relevant because the hip hop culture enables the black boys to resist the hegemonic culture they are confronted with in public schools.

When rap music was at its infancy stages, it reflected the voice of the urban youth. It also remained under the control of the black community. the music contained serious socially conscious messages. The greatest artists would master the ability to articulate social and political messages while at the same time maintaining rhythmic integrity. The ability to manipulate words would wow the audience and encouraged the inner-city youth living in New York City to build their own vocabularies. This led to every youth carrying a pocket-size thesaurus in the backpacks eager to outwit their friends with their verbal skills. In the 1990s, the emergence of artists such as poor righteous teachers whose lyrics contained political rhetoric and exposed the economic hardships that were being experienced in the inner-city neighborhoods. The rap music of the early hip hop era of the ’70s and ’80s would mainly be about race and resistance. Different artists would protest governmental procedures and policies that led to a concentration of poverty in the Bronx, especially in the African American and Hispanic communities.

Graffiti expressionism as an element of hip hop

Conquergood (1997) has argued that gang graffiti is counter literacy and he has supported this with numerous examples of the cavernous meaning and complexity involved in gang graffiti. Graffiti writing allows the inner thoughts, fears, and desires of marginalized groups to be expressed, read and recognized. There is a sophisticated literacy to the graffiti. The gangs use it to convey meaning in pictures and words. Sometimes gang members use double-dip word meanings since they utilize well-known advertising products to signify gang terminology. For example, the corona beer to represent the crown or royalty of the Latin kings which is a gang based in Chicago. Graffiti messages are used to display messages that often discredit and disrespect opposing gangs by inverting or reversing their gang names or their symbols. Graffiti writing allows the artists to freely express their inner thoughts and fears just as rap music allows the youth to declare their existence within the mainstream society. Challenging confrontational images that are expressed through graffiti writing are also expressed through rap lyrics.

Hip hop has been a great platform for criticism of the social world. The idea of hip hop is more nuanced than a simple category of music. Although many scholars reference hip hop as a cultural movement, the music is simply an element of that lifestyle. Just as the civil rights movement of the 1960s saw the progress of blacks in the form of rights and privileges, hip hop is considered as the movement that continues to fight for black equality. It can be argued that hip hop is a culture within the black community that has united people and provided them with a voice. Hip hop artists are respected and accepted based on their ability to be real and to ‘keep it real’ (Boyd, 2002). The notion of realness is largely an appeal to the authenticity and ethos of the rhetoric. The concept of realness is that of credibility, needing to be one with the oppressed communities described in the music. As Ogbar clarifies (2007) “At its most fundamental level, “realness” in hip-hop implies an intimate familiarity with the urban, working-class landscapes that gave rise to hip-hop in the 1970s.Implicit in this spatial notion is a class consciousness that is inextricably connected to race. It implies (somewhat narrowly) that black communities are synonymous with poor communities.” it can be argued that hip hop songs of minimal authenticity may still focus on social justice, the likelihood of an artist’s message reaching a targeted audience is diminished if they are not perceived as authentic.

Negative connotations of the hip hop culture

The messages of profanity, misogyny, and violence are problematic for the genre entirely. However, it is important to consider the hidden meanings of the messages trying to be conveyed. Used to establish authenticity, maintain supremacy and tell their unique tale of struggle, the messages explain a great deal about the hip hop community. socially conscious artists such as The Roots, Common and Talib Kweli receive praise for their socially critical messages, their absence of the image of a hip-hop artist has yielded little success and exposure. Despite the controversy surrounding hip hop artists such as Public Enemy, Run-DMC, Tupac Shakur and other so-called ‘gangsta’ rappers, the truth maintains that these artists offer insight into a culture often overlooked and neglected. It has been argued that what makes the hip hop culture so impactful is the degree to which it provides blacks with a platform to communicate their circumstance.

A former New York police commissioner was quick to blame rap music and the hip hop culture when news started pouring in about the fatal backstage shooting at a concert by rapper T.I. He was ignoring the deep issues surrounding gun violence in America. Hip hop culture has over time been clouded with negative connotations. Many people equate hip hop to profanity, misogyny, violence, and crime. Some prosecutors in America have labeled rap lyrics as a criminal threat and studies have been carried out on the negative influences of hip hop on the youth. However, when one looks past the profanity and the violence, hip hop culture is built on values of social justice, peace, self-worth, respect, community and having fun. Due to these values, it is being increasingly used as a therapeutic tool when working with young people. Psychologists and social workers have helped to normalize the integration of hip hop within mental health strategies.

Recently, Big Sean a hip-hop artist was invited to perform at the white house. According to Madden (2016), this happened in 2014 as part of the white house’s annual Easter egg hunt. He performed alongside his then girlfriend r and b singer Arianna Grande in front of a crowd of about 30, 000 people. Over the years, hip hop starts have only popped by the white house for meet and greets. This marked a new beginning and signified a leap in hip hop culture. It can be perceived that performing at the white house could mean a general acceptance and recognition of the hip hop culture together with the acknowledgement of racial challenges that are faced by the black communities. We also get to see the power of the hip hop culture to its fullest. While recently artists have been airing their political opinions through their music such as YG’s “F*ck Donald Trump” song, many fans are getting a glimpse of some of the social problems that are affecting the black community and society in general.

Conclusion

Hip hop started from the streets of the Bronx and has come such a long way to where it is right now. It is now a multi-billion-dollar industry that has been around for over three decades. The influence of African and Caribbean beats infused with some jazz makes it truly of African and Hispanic origin. The hip hop culture was started to express the oppression felt by the minority communities, particularly in the Bronx area. Ever since then to now, hip hop has become the voice of the black community to the world where blacks are often overlooked. It has also provided young black kids with something to do as opposed to drugs and violence. Hip hop as a culture is generally an outcry of the unfairness and mistreatment of the black community. Following the research conducted, the main idea of the hip hop culture is to act as a platform where the overlooked truth about the oppression of black people is freely and safely expressed. It is however sad that the music is sending a message but most of the non-black listeners are considering it as entertainment and failing to grasp the reality of the problems faced.