Hip-hop is a genre, a social movement as well as an affluent part of the industry that originated in the late 1970s and bore predominantly social meanings. However, nowadays, hip-hop is far from what it was in its primary stages of development. Despite being the most financially supported style in the entire industry, hip-hop has become a vehicle for promoting antisocial or sometimes event violent behavior.
In her book The Hip Hop Wars Tricia Rose puts forward an opinion: “Relying on an ever-narrowing range of images and themes, this commercial juggernaut has played a central role in the near-depletion of what was once vibrant, diverse, and complex popular genre”. The author argues that in 1980s hip-hop was a complex framework of styles, ideologies, and varieties – from avant-garde to political. It was in the late 1990s when commercial success caused hip-hop to transform into a narrow-minded collection of stereotypes.
In his foreword to The Anthology of Rap Henry Louis Gates argues that the modern version of hip-hop does not explore important aspects of social or political life the same way it does not take any measures to do so: It “doesn’t’ take itself too seriously or try to overburden its lines with rehearsed wisdom or the cant of ideology”. Hip-hop is a genre that does not obey the taboos but creates new stereotypes, allowing itself to use risky language to convey the text of the songs in a much recognizable and provocative manner.
Furthermore, it is crucial to mention the themes that dominated hip-hop and become stereotypical definitions for the genre. The style of gangsta rap was supported by the attacks on the law enforcement agencies as well as the direct connections between the Black community and criminal activity. This can be characterized by the dominance of males in the genre, which was backed by the misogynistic narratives. As Robin Kelley states in his Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class, “The gendering of crime also helps explain why gangsta rappers are reluctant to denounce violence, why the criminals in their narratives are almost always men, and why, in part, violence against women appears consistently in the music of many gangsta groups”.
Despite hip-hop nowadays being a stereotypical music genre that does not care about appearing too serious about social or political issues, it is crucial to remember that it did not originate in an affluent environment. On the contrary, South Bronx and East Brooklyn, the centers for the hip-hop culture, were places where poor African-Americans, Jewish, and Puerto Rican families moved in a search for cheap housing and more jobs.
Furthermore, by the end of 1960’s more than a half of white population moved away from the South Bronx, leaving this area dominated by the poor layers of the population involved in criminal activity. In his Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: a History of the Hip-Hop Generation Jeff Chang mentioned that “the Black and brown youth formed gangs, first in self-defense, then sometimes for power, sometimes for kicks”.
Hip-hop is not only a musical genre but also a way of seeing the surrounding world that still continues to change to this day. While hip-hop on the earliest stages reflected the social and political life of the predominantly African-American layers of the society, nowadays there is only a small portion of hip-hop artists that still care to talk about important social and political themes.