Albeit a subproduct of slavery and colonialism, African-American culture has also influenced White American culture, adding slang expressions from the African-American Vernacular English and African culture that gave birth to Hip-Hop subculture (Campbell 3). This, in turn, helped the spread of Hip-Hop, as a subculture in both the United States and the whole world. Nevertheless, due to the particular, and often violent nature of the cultural manifestations involved in Hip-Hop, the mainstream culture criminalizes it proponents, particularly the youth involved in it.
Early hip-hop was not all about music. It was composed of non-musical elements such as graffiti and B-Boying that used different approaches to address the central issues of agency and resistance against a culture they perceived belligerent. Also, this non-violent approach contrasted heavily with the White Americans perception of African-Americans movements as violent. Conversely, early Hip-Hop movements relied on the underground to thrive and increase their fan base, as well as showing the message of the struggles of the Black community.
Use your promo and get a custom paper on
"Criminality and Hip-Hop Culture".
Still, this violence was more lyrical, verbal and figurative. Hence, Hip-Hop was born charged with a myriad of symbols and language that stemmed from the language and behaviors of the young, urban African-Americans. These manifestations, instead of promoting senseless violence emphasized racial unity and an Afrocentric consciousness as the way to gain recognition.
Also, the Hip-Hop subculture managed to escape from their original contributors, turning into a worldwide phenomenon that helped youth around the world to channel their voices through a set of stylistic and rhetorical choices that emphasized action and resistance to the mainstream culture, regardless their background. Therefore, early Hip-Hop can be regarded as an anti-colonial movement that elicited unity for the margined sectors of the society. Again, these counter-cultural phenomena do not develop isolated from the reality. On the contrary, they are a manifestation of a series of social conditions and human agency.
Consequently, it seems likely to say that without the 1970s New York environment, Hip-Hop would not have existed as it does today. These transformations that intended to give freedom of choice and thought to the oppressed black ghettoes of the South Bronx are a modern echo of the African-American tradition of resilience and struggle that has characterized Black Civil Rights movements since the abolition of slavery in 1865.
That way, the Bronx served as the flashpoint from which a new cultural paradigm would emerge, a standard that would encompass a plethora of marginalized youth searching for their identity. Hip-Hop served as the catalyst of the creative energies of countless individuals in America, individuals that focused on often forgotten issues and aimed to find if not a solution, at least an explanation. Therefore, instead of resorting to actual violence, early manifestations of the subculture sought to offer a more in-your-face attitude that showed the problems African-Americans faced instead of hiding them.
However, with every growing cultural expression comes the capitalism and the will to monetize everything that appeals to a large crowd. Accordingly, given the fact that “ninety percent of what Americans read, watch and listed is controlled only by six media companies owned and ran by 232 media executives … responsible for the intake of 277 million Americans” (Sandman 4), these executives could incite any trend they want with the results they need in no time.
Subsequently, when Hip-Hop culture became a product of capitalist interests, it ceased to be a power of the decolonization movement to turn into a representative of the White corporate oppression they said Hip-Hop fought. Hence, instead of upholding the ideals of unity and a cohesive Black identity, it bolstered an indiscriminate violence that only served an alienating purpose.
Also, independent analysis conducted by independent scholars such as Homeboy Sandman found that there is an overlapping of interests between mass media companies such as Viacom and Time Warner and the Corrections Corporation of America (Sandman 5). This study itself should set a few alarms in the issue of the amounts of violence found in contemporary Hip-Hop compared to the non-violent rhetoric of the 1980s.
Consequently, despite the crime rates going down since the 80s, thanks to the privatization of prisons in the same decade, incarceration rates have also increased exponentially among African-American and Latino youth. Another instance of Sandman’s report points to the fact that it is possible that such behaviors among youth that glorify drug use and gangster attitudes might come from the disparity between drug and prison-related hip-hop, vs. the other types of Hip-Hop as the first, receives much more financial and media exposure while the rest do not have the same mainstream distribution methods.
It seems likely that once Hip-Hop became a dominant force in the urban context of most of the American youth, corporations and media acting as a fourth arm of the military turned their weapons to seize it and use its potential reach as ideological propaganda aimed to the African-Americans in an effort to maintain their statu quo (Ball 25).
Hence, the Hip-Hop contemporary ethics praise success as a form of talent, instead of maintaining the idea of talented performers that speak of inequality and racism (Sandman 7). To sum up, early Hip-Hop became a force of unification that although did not erase the rampant socioeconomic differences among African-Americans. A counter-culture that aimed to find a way for all the African-Americans to coexist peacefully while having fun. These Afrocentric behaviors of the new rap music contrast heavily with the notions of individual gain found in the contemporary rap.
Media, as they understood the postcolonial possibilities of these new paradigms, reshaped the public perceptions of Hip-Hop, turning it into a product of mass consumption. If that caused an unprecedented amount of violence, that is not the fault of the culture per se, it is on the corporations and mass media conglomerates where the answer must be found. Nevertheless, it seems unlikely that Hip-Hop is going to revert to its old state, it appears that corporations stripped African-Americans of a cultural manifestation that was rightfully theirs and turned it into a product of consumption, a product whose only resemblance to the original lies in its name.
- Ball, Jared A. I Mix What I Like!: A Mixtape Manifesto. Oakland: AK, 2011. Print.
- Campbell, K. (2005). In Defense of the Black Vernacular Voice. In Gettin’ our groove on Rhetoric, language, and literacy for the hip-hop generation. Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press.
- Sandman, H. “Jailhouse Roc: The FACTS About Hip Hop and Prison for Profit.” New York Hip Hop Birthplace Magazine. Birthplace Magazine, 12 Apr. 2013. Web.
