Hip Hop Beginnings

by Kaitlyn Dowdy

It seems as if hip-hop is a product of the African American experience directly. From the videos and readings, the art form has been adopted from social conditions, economic instabilities, and various styles of African and Hispanic Americans. This new knowledge that I’ve picked up within the module has raised many questions in my own mind such as “if this movement has embodied so much of American culture, why must society reduce it to simply rap music?” I also asked myself, “what will it take, to bring hip hop back to its original form, its original intention?” Or, “is this what occurs with evolution, when a group of people evolves, is the music altered as well?” As individuals, people of color and those who are not, as Americans, as people all over the world I do see evolution, however, people of color living in not only the United States but other countries as well, still face conditions similar to those when hip hop began as a movement. Why is this? I believe hip hop saved many lives, and with this it’s powerful to destroy lives as well. Furthermore, the solution, if there is one, is to go back to hip hop, go back to knowledge, to learning and taking the ills of society, manipulating them into art forms and spreading that art around. Is this possible?

            It was said in one of the videos, hip hop is not only rap music, it is the Dj, the MC, the way one talks, dresses, it’s the movement of all of the elements as one. The notion of various, common, men putting together a movement as powerful as such, as long lived and cosmic as such is very beautiful, my next question is as follows: was the movement successful? Africa is hip hop, people of color created a powerful movement that still lives. It’s as if poetry found a dance, and that’s hip hop.