Transformation of Hip Hop as a Culture

What is hip hop?

Hip hop is a style of music but it’s also a culture, art, and a style for some people. Hip hop was created in 1970’s in the Bronx in New York City and ever since it has been rising and eventually became a worldwide genre of music that everyone listens to. Hip hop also has different types of subgenres like alternative rap, trap, boom-bap, and etc. Hip hop was pioneered by DJ Kool Herc and many other DJs after him copied his technique of scratching records and improved upon it which then gained popularity. With a growing popularity and over the years there has been different variations of it and many other people who would become rappers. But because of this there has been many critics of people who aren’t African American but rather white to be specific like Eminem and Macklemore that would become successful in this genre of music, and people would argue that hip hop should only be created by African Americans because they were the first to make it. Hip Hop has become a worldwide phenomenon and listened to everyone and therefore any one should be able to rap and make hip hop music regardless of skin color.

Hip hop is usually stereotyped around African Americans and rappers who aren’t African American are usually stereotyped against saying “white guys can’t rap” and just brings a toxic vibe into the Hip Hop community when instead should accept everyone regardless of ethnicity. An example of a successful white rapper is Eminem and although he didn’t fit the typical stereotype black gangster rapper and his music wasn’t about gang related, women, and etc. However, what his music brought into hip hop was relatively new at the time and it was talking about his troubled past and how hard his life was. He was able to take hip hop into a different direction and become different in the hip hop community which made him successful. Hip Hop shouldn’t belong to anyone or one specific group, instead it’s available to anyone who likes this genre of music and to anyone one who wants to make music.

Hip hop has evolved into many other sub genres and it shows how far hip hop has gone too. This shows how hip doesn’t belong to one group as it can be transformed into any form of hip hop. These sub genres reflect the culture it’s derived from and shows how the original hip hop genre transformed into something more and goes back to the idea that hip hop can’t belong to one specific group. Sub genres like religious hip hop showed that it belongs to anyone that wants to use their creative mind and transform it into music as it shows two unlikely cultures join together. Religious rap started around in the 1980’s in the Queens, New York with the purpose of spreading their religion by combining their faith and hip hop.

In conclusion, hip hop doesn’t belong to one group or to anyone because hip hop has been able to evolve and transform into many other sub genres and rappers like Eminem helped break down stereotypes about hip hop. Hip hop is something that a group can control and it shouldn’t belong to one group rather should be free to use from everyone in the hip hop community.