At the Grammy Awards this past month, the music world celebrated the 50th anniversary of the birth of hip-hop music. Started in the 1970s in urbanized areas of New York City, rap music became a musical and cultural phenomenon that became the voice for many marginalized Black Americans with roots to Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. The music traces its roots to heavy rhythmic percussion, mixed with precise spoken word delivered over hard drum beats. Hip-hop culture is inextricably intertwined with economic, social, cultural and political issues of the day, particularly in disadvantaged or underserved urban communities.
The earliest forms of hip-hop were heavily influenced by political upheaval and the civil rights movement. Speaking to everyday issues, such as poverty, gangs, crime, family, social status, and anything else in life, hip-hop became a counterculture to mainstream America. The music represented a safe space for rappers, DJs, graffiti artists, breakdancers and bootleggers. Hip-hop has been called the central cultural vehicle for open social reflection on poverty, fear of adulthood, the desire for absent fathers, frustrations about Black male sexism, female sexual desires, daily rituals of life as an unemployed teen hustler, safe sex, raw anger, violence and childhood memories. In short, (hip-hop) is Black America’s most dynamic contemporary popular cultural, intellectual and spiritual vessel. See Rose, Tricia, “Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture...
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