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Hip-Hop: a Culture, an Expression, a Language Essay Example

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Hip-Hop: a Culture, an Expression, a Language Essay Example
What is hip-hop? Many believe hip-hop is synonymous for rap music, but it goes beyond that. Hip-hop is a form of art and culture, style, and language, and for many, a way of life (Fernando, 1994). The graffiti you see on bridges, the dances you see in the clubs, the hardened attitude that the boy who sits behind you in film class has, the slang you here kids yell at the park, this is hip-hop. In the 1980s the subculture at that time was deejaying, emceeing, graffiti, and break dancing. All played a role in hip-hop's evolution and is responsible for its strong cultural influence (Light,Alan).
A hip-hop pioneer and savvy business mogul, Russell Simmons, believed that Hip-hop "speaks for the people who live in the worst economic straits since the Great Depression" (Life and Def: Sex, Drugs, Money, + God 26). Critics on rap music or hip-hop are fixated on the issues of violence and sex and harsh language, painting this negative picture of a beautiful art form. The media loves to headline stories of rival record labels beefing, riots that take place during concerts or shows at clubs, legal cases and arrests of artist, shoot-outs, and drug charges. No matter how much hip-hop attempts to elevate, it remains shackled to cliché (Bigger than Hip-hop, 4). Rap and violence continues to be linked in the media.

Admittedly, rap has its violence, its raw language, and its misogynistic lyrics. However, it is an art form that accurately reports "the nuances, pathology and most importantly, resilience of America's next best secret…..the black ghetto" (Dawsey, 1994). Hip-hop/rap culture is a resistance culture. Thus rap music is not only an African American expressive cultural phenomenon; it is at the same time, a resisting discourse, a set of communicative practices that constitute a text of resistance against White America's racism and its Eurocentric cultural dominance (Smitherman, 7).
Graffiti, may not be considered as hip-hop culture, however, it played a significant role
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