| Description |
This study seeks to understand the genesis of politically charged, or "conscious" hip-hop from a social, cultural, and political standpoint. It seeks to identify the convergent elements that fostered the development of hip-hop as an expression of urban black and Latino culture. It will place a special emphasis on the role poverty and economic conditions played in hip-hop's birth, the course of its development, and its discursive reflections. However, the study points out a strand of hip-hop that transcended mere social realism to produce a political message and was often a direct response to the policy and agenda of the Reagan and Bush administrations. At the climax of a march toward conservatism in America, the Reagan-Bush years embodied policy changes that incorporated a more conservative philosophy, to which the concerns of urban blacks often stood at odds. This new conservatism sought to rescind the policies of the liberal state, a large benefactor for the urban poor. Hip-hop developed into one of the few outlets for both cultural expression and political discourse for urban blacks and Latinos. Elements contained in various hip-hop songs directly respond to specific policies of the neo-conservative movement. Specific themes include crime, drugs, police repression, education, the military, and, most importantly, economics, which tends to be of overarching concern for all other themes. Together, specific messages contained in rap music produce a powerful dialectic that gives voice to many of those left by the wayside as the conservative political machine marched forward into the nineties, without much inclusion of black America. As urban blacks became more and more politically marginalized, rap gave voice to a generation that otherwise would not have had as loud a voice in American politics. Today, hip-hop culture pervades American life, and occupies a central role in American culture. This study examines the era when hip-hop first made headlines not only in the cultural arena, but also the political arena. The convergence of these two theaters climaxed in the "culture wars" over the censorship of rap music, from which hip-hop survived intact to ascend to the prominent position it currently occupies in American society. Without the early contributions of artists that sought to defy America's power structure, hip-hop may not have assumed such preeminence in mainstream (and underground) America. |
