![]() ![]() Isolating the percussion elements of funk, soul, and disco songs, MCs began to lyricize to the beats in between DJs, thus giving birth to a new form of music. Rap music grew out of 1970s New York City block parties.We’ve heard you’ve done one for yourself. #HIP HOP HISTORY FREE#But it speaks to a larger issue about the place of women in hip-hop - where they stand in relation to their male peers who are free to express their sexual desires and conquests, yet when it's women rapping about their sexuality and sexual freedom, it's deemed as not respectable or appropriate.įor one assignment, the students create a work of graffiti based on a hip-hop name they give themselves. "WAP" is a very sexually explicit song which garnered a lot of attention and controversy upon its release. This semester, you had students analyze Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s song "WAP." You keep the class up to date by talking about contemporary hip-hop artists. You can't talk about Megan Thee Stallion, Nicki Minaj and Cardi B without talking about Bessie Smith. ![]() They showed the rebellious nature of the blues and also how Black women carved out a unique space for themselves within blues culture that challenged many of the gendered norms of the early 20th century. She and other blues artists were oftentimes very sexually explicit in talking about their experiences and desires. Smith was a product of the Jim Crow South and a queer Black woman. You focus on a number of female musicians, starting with blues singer Bessie Smith in the 1920s and ’30s. We were raised on hip-hop and with it, a healthy skepticism of the American democratic experiment, but also with a sense of possibility, as well. The coalition that he pulled together was really the hip-hop coalition of that generation. His campaign was very skillful at marshaling hip-hop and marketing Obama as a hip-hop icon. I also argue that you don't have a Barack Obama without hip-hop. She made a tongue-in-cheek remark about Black people killing white people that Clinton decried as racist, going so far as to liken her to Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.īasically, he used hip-hop as a foil to demonstrate his centrist approach to governing and how he was a “New Democrat” unafraid to criticize Black people. I like to point to the 1992 election with Bill Clinton's "Sister Souljah moment," where Clinton singles out Sister Souljah for her comments in the aftermath of the Los Angeles uprising. You also study how politicians respond to and even exploit hip-hop. In the post civil-rights moment of the early 1970s, as the country moved increasingly to the right, when poor people, and specifically Black and brown people, were being forgotten in urban areas and their economic opportunities taken away, hip-hop emerged as inextricably connected to the political struggles of these communities and their need to be seen and have their voices heard. ![]() It was birthed from the economic, social and political marginalization of Black and brown people. Hip-hop from its beginnings was very political. You also can't look at the emergence of hip-hop without connecting it to African American politics. How has hip-hop shaped modern African American life?īy the mid-1980s, you have hip-hop being popularized on a national scale and influencing African American culture in a number of different ways, certainly in terms of music, but also in the ways people talk, walk and dress. Hip-hop is the culmination of a number of different cultural influences, many being African American, but also from the West Indies, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. We also look at other musical traditions, like Negro spirituals, the blues, jazz and R&B. ![]() Hip-hop is the product of a long history dating back to West Africa and the trans-Atlantic slave trade. In your class, you trace the roots of hip-hop back to the African diaspora hundreds of years ago. And as such, it permeates all different aspects of society and people within societies. One of the main points that I emphasize from Day One in my class is that hip-hop is indeed a culture. I don't think there's any aspect of certainly American society and, arguably, even global society, that hip-hop has not touched in some way, shape or form.Īnd when I say that, it's beyond just the music. I think hip-hop is arguably the most dominant form of not just musical culture today, but popular culture more broadly. Chad Williams How would you assess the importance of hip-hop today? ![]()
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