Misinterpretation of Hip Hop

Hip-Hop is a relatively young genre compared to the other genres of music such as Classical, Jazz, and Country. The first time the word hip-hop was used; was by the South Bronx leader Afrika Bambaataa in the 1970’s. Around this time was when the music was gaining popularity. Hip-hop has a complex history consisting of four elements that include deejaying, rapping or MCing, graffiti painting, and b-boying. It originated in the predominantly African American economically depressed South Bronx in the late 1970s.

At first, it was the graffiti that made people turn their heads. This was in 1972 and it was called the graffiti movement. It was started by a Greek-American teenager that tagged his name and his street number. He would tag Taki 183 on walls all around the New York City subway stream. Then this was followed by young people in the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn stealing into train yards and graffiting mural-size renderings of their names or imagery from comics and television.

After this, many influential artists were inspirations and started displaying graffiti in galleries. Yet the Metropolitan Authority of New York City didn’t respond well to the graffiti on the subway and they used dogs, barbed wire fences, paint removing acids and undercover police squads to detect graffiti. Dancing, rapping, and deejaying were fused together because they shared the same environment.

DJ Kool Herc was the first major hip-hop deejay. He was 18 years old when he was getting recognized. He was an immigrant from Jamaica. He fused older records with popular dance songs.

Get quality help now

KarrieWrites

Verified

Proficient in: Hip Hop Culture

5 (339)

“ KarrieWrites did such a phenomenal job on this assignment! He completed it prior to its deadline and was thorough and informative. ”

+84 relevant experts are online

Hire writer

Kool Herc and other spearheading hip-hop deejays, for example, Grand Wizard Theodore, Afrika Bambaataa, and Grandmaster Flash confined and expanded the breakbeat (the part of a dance record where all sounds, however, the drums drop out), animating improvisational dancing(Tate, . Contests created in which the best artists made breakdancing, a style with a collection of acrobatics and every so often airborne moves, including gravity-defying headspins and backspins. Kool Herc is considered the father of modern-day rapping. Rap first blew up in the United States with the release of Sugarhill Gang’s single Rappers delight in 1979. In weeks it became a hit on the charts, with this became its own genre.

To understand hip-hop a little better we must know who listens to hip-hop or the demographics of the listeners. As of 2015, Hip-Hop out of all the genres of music, has the youngest audience out there, with two-thirds being within the range of ages 18-34. 70% or more of Hispanic adults say that they listen to this genre. Of the audience that was surveyed, 40% of the listeners of Hip-Hop were of African American descent. In the research, there were very few people that listened to Hip-Hop that happened to be over the age of 64. 37.1% of people age 15-25 adore hip-hop. From the age range of 15-25,37.1% of the music, listeners say that they adore the genre. That is within the reach of about 296 million people! That was the estimated population of the United States of America in 2005, according to the Pew Research Center. 24 million people from the ages of 19-34 from all over the world make up the core demographic of hip-hop. Hip-hop is not just a phenomenon in the U.S, people listen to it all over the world.

Furthermore, people who were surveyed on what they actually think of hip-hop. I thought that people despise the genre mainly because they misinterpret it. Also, with the bad reputation that hip-hop gets mainly from older people, people would have a preconceived opinion towards it. My parents have a dislike towards hip-hop, probably because they do not understand a word that they are saying due to the fact my parents don’t understand English. When I play my music out loud in my room they tell me to lower it down or sometimes they would just be irritated and tell me to turn it off. Despite the fact that my parents hate the genre, most of my family and friends love hip-hop and listen to it every day.

According to a poll that was conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2008, 70% of Americans who responded to it said that hip-hop has an overall negative impact on society. Many rap/hip-hop songs do glamorize destructive behavior like substance abuse and violence. Rappers like Lil Pump and Tekashi 6ix9ine, do these actions. They are very popular artists Lil Pump was on the billboard hot 100 for 45 weeks and his best song, Gucci Gang, peaked at # 3 on the BillBoard hot 100 charts for 24 weeks.

He has had 9 songs on the top 100 charts. He is notoriously known for his mediocre rap songs that are extremely popular and he basically brags about taking drugs and abusing them. He has, as of January 15, 2020, over 17.9 million followers on Instagram. He has done a couple of live streams where he shows off reckless behavior such as pouring cough syrup on his cereal as if it was milk and then proceeds to eat the entire thing. My cousin Ortencio looked up to Lil Pump.

When Lil Pump went viral in 2018 for his song Gucci Gang and my cousin was 14 years old. Since Lil Pump raps heavily about drugs it got him interested in trying what he did. One day he was with his friends and they had lean. Lean is a “drink” that consists of prescription cough syrup that contains codeine and a citrusy soft drink usually Sprite with jolly ranchers hard candy for added sweetness. This is a very addictive drug and at times it has been fatal. Many rappers like Lil Pump and even singers like Justin Bieber have sung about this substance making it well known and popularizing it in the music community. Since my cousin looked up to Lil Pump as a role model, he decided to drink the lean.

He stated to me about Lil Pump taking lean “ I thought that was the dopest thing ever and it made me want to do it. I thought that since a popular and famous rapper like Lil Pump takes lean I should do it too.” Many rappers have died due to the abuse of codeine. Luckily when my cousin tried it nothing happened to him other than the natural woozy effect due to codeine. He has since told me that he regrets doing that and he would never do any drugs again and advises me not to take anything. Tekashi 6ix9ine is another rapper that is widely known but mainly for all the wrong reasons. He got his first big boost of fame with the song Gummo. Gummo is about how Tekashi spends his time “ wandering the decrepit streets of Brooklyn.”(Genius). In the track Gummo, he explicitly raps about killing people with his gang and sexualizing women as objects. He raps “Pop these n****s like a wheelie”, “On the stoop, crills in my drawers, your girl on my phone, she wanna f**k, but keep her clothes on, I want the jaw, Man, that’s really all I use her for, then kick her out the door I don’t want her, you can keep the whore”.

The music video for Gummo basically represents what he is rapping about, but there is no sexualizing women as objects in the video other than him rapping about it. In the music video, he adds strong gang affiliation with everybody in the video wearing red bandanas (meaning he affiliates with the “Blood” Gang) and showing off weapons in a malintent way, also in the music he is showing off his dozens of bags of marijuana/cannabis. Gummo first debuted at the 58th spot on the billboard then later peaking at the 12th spot. It was on the chart for 20 weeks. We could see why Hip-hop is considered as a negative source of material towards the youth, with all these mainstream songs bragging about these violent and toxic behaviors. Not every single rapper who raps about malicious acts is telling the truth. Sometimes when these rappers rap about these things, it’s mainly to sell records instead of promoting these actions. For example, 21 Savage, a rapper that is also popularly known in the hip-hop scene for mainly rapping about his past gang life has stated: “ They thought I only rapped about murder and pistols I’m tryna feed my family, I ain’t being political.” He stated this on his first studio album “Issa Album” on the record “Nothin New”.

They do this just so they can generate revenue because music like this sells, especially to the youth. Some rappers aren’t trying to promote/set a poor example to the youth, they honestly just want to make money just like you and I. The general population does not understand that. With this it makes them have a very negative opinion on hip-hop.

With this extra information, we must ask ourselves if the rest of hip-hop promotes violence. I have been listening to hip-hop for more than 7 years and I haven’t been influenced by it to commit malicious acts but that is one case out of millions. Many people do agree that hip-hop does promote violence because many of the lyrics within songs are explicit, offensive, and degrading. In an investigation led by Western Connecticut State University where 11 members viewed an explicit hip-hop music video, while another 11 members viewed a positive music video, and another 11 members didn’t watch a music video that went about as the intervention group. The explicit music video contained forceful conduct, debasement towards women, and had violent lyrics.

With the first procedure being done it was discovered that they acted all the more indecently when asked questions about theoretical situations in regards to ladies, families, and ethics (Tropeano 2006). Kalof, an expert from Western Connecticut State University examined the effects of sex and music video imagery on sexual airs. In this examination, 44 U.S. students were haphazardly named to one of two get-togethers which either exhibited a video of prosaism sexual imagery or a video with no sexual pictures. The people who saw music recordings containing sexual imagery were all the more corrupting of women a brief timeframe later, particularly in sexual conditions. The impact of alcohol and drugs is likewise unmistakable through rap music and culture.

Almost all major rappers rap about alcohol and drugs with the likes of Eminem, Kanye West, Drake, and Jay-Z to name a few. Rappers that I stated earlier have a huge platform and rapping about these substances does really give a positive outlook towards the youth. The Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluations Prevention Research Center nitty-gritty an examination interfacing youth’s effect of meds and alcohol in light of rap/hip-hop music. Sponsors inside this examination saw that even alcohol brands talked about rap music show development in bargains on account of the effect the tune plays on society. Mr. Jernigan, official boss, center around liquor exhibiting and youth of Georgetown University, communicated ‘we found that African American youth ages 12-20 were introduced to 66% furthermore publicizing for ale and lager and 81% for refined spirits. The heaviest introduction African American youth gets is for cognacs and schnaps, which have been enthusiastically tied with hip-hop/rap culture.

On the other side of the spectrum, Hip-Hop was created for vocalizing the weak. It was always made for that intent. In recent years we might have forgotten that because of all the music that gets generated for revenue. Most rappers think that quantity over quality just so they can get a quick paycheck.