What does Hip-Hop mean to me?

What Hip-Hop Means to Me?

Hip-Hop is an expressive form of rhymes and sounds, using words to express emotions, view, and one’s own story. Hip-Hop can be away of life, using the environment around, you can convey the struggles and the future that is ahead of you. Hip- Hop is a flow, a forever flowing stream of sounds and music, connecting to a beat of words to convey a story.

Hip-Hop is power, when one uses the power of Hip-Hop a legacy can be created, a smooth sound with a contagious beat, bringing strangers together through the use of rhyme and music. Hip-Hop s a culture woven together by generations of oppression. Brought forth by the community as a battle cry to fellow brothers and sisters that “The Revolution will not be televised; the revolution will be live”.  Hip-Hop created a sound that has never been heard before, once seen as wild, uncaged, and disrespectful, is now seen as a revolutionary art form recognized as historic, poetic, and beautiful. Hip-Hip has evolved with each coming generation adding a new chapter to the Hip-Hop legacy and history.  

The black community strong ties with the Hip-Hop art form dates back generations, the expressing the black struggle though the various artistic art forms such as Hip-Hop. Hip-Hop and the black culture takes various beats and sound to cut and mix sounds to create a harmonious vibe. The lyrics of Hip-Hop can exemplifies that real-life issues and struggle facing the black community. Some of the pioneers of this movement Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five for example create this vibe to send a message to the masses, their song ‘The Message” depict the struggles of being black and living in the Bronx in the 80s. This type of Hip-Hop has transcended through generation making its way through currents artist such as Kendrick Lamar, J Cole, and Childish Gambino.

However Hip-Hop does not have one type of style, and that the foundation of Hip-Hop not conforming to one type of sound, style, or beat, that mixing, matching, cutting and scratching create a new type of sound. Hip-Hop is about finding you our style and sending your message to the masses, to create, to not conform to the pressures of an unjust society.