Introduction
Hip-Hop has become a lifestyle that’s been embedded within every culture around the world. Its influence has assimilated into the lives of millions of men, women and children by the introduction of fashion, mannerisms and coded language that’s being used by all African Americans. To say that Hip-Hop is now the culture of the entire world is an understatement.
The Origins Of Hip-Hop
Hip-Hop was founded on exposing the economic and financial struggles of African Americans by creating a genre of music that expressed those struggles in the form of spoken word, art and dance. Not only did Hip-Hop become a way to communicate with other African Americans across the United States to highlight the hardships and find the solutions to fix them, it became a foundation of awareness and healing of a culture.
Selling The Soul Of A Culture
Once Hip-Hop became profitable to a world that became fascinated with the struggle and lifestyle of African Americans, they were willing to pay any amount of money to experience witnessing African Americans pick up the pieces of their lives in real time under the guise of entertainment. In consequence, the love of money and materialism became the driving force behind the artist to willfully entertain and exploit every aspect of African American culture in order to get out of poverty which in turn brings us to where we are today. As it stands now, Hip-Hop contributes to over $15 billion dollars every year to the United States economy alone.
The Last Generation
Artists have failed to understand that their music is powerful enough to change the thoughts and behaviors of every listener. The truth is that they are the gatekeepers of influence in this age of information and with power of social media, they can independently reach millions of people instantly.
Conclusion
The exploitation of Hip-Hop fueled by the financing of major record labels have made the artists numb to the importance of self preservation of the culture they represent. It has caused catastrophic damage to this current generation of African Americans with the glorification of sex, drug abuse, violence, incarceration and murder. As a result, the current generation of artists who was raised on those same glorifications are now living that lifestyle as well as promoting it in their music. It’s resulting in the revolving cycle of the untimely deaths of both the artist and listener. The question now is: Is Hip-Hop now considered a death culture? An alarming trend is that there has been at least one rap artist dying since 2018 and countless others prior to that.
Sources
Written by: Nadira Jamerson
Course by: Brooklyn College Library
Written by: Amir Vera and Eliott C. McLaughlin, CNN
