A Voice for Those Left behind

  

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  What the media says about hip-hop is different than what hip-hop truly is and signifies. Hip Hop is more than nudity in music videos or people partying and doing drugs.  When hip-hop originally emerged, it was a voice for social issues; It was a new way to identify yourself. Todays Hip- Hop has lost the message it once created. In the 1970’s Hip Hop was an answer to those who lived in poverty. It was a voice to those who had no platform to voice their economic depravity.

            According to Mark Anthony Neal (1999) article, “Postindustrial Soul: Black Popular Music at the Crossroads, hip hop emerged after Post Industrial. He says that the white and black middle class left the city to the suburbs. When they left their tax money also left. Jobs were also sent overseas. Those left behind the poor blacks weren’t left with much. Neal says that this made a division between the black middle class and the poor black class. He says that the middle class wanted a more “mature” sound. They didn’t want to listen to the music that was being played by the lower class. They didn’t want music that had no funk or political meaning. Smokey Robinsons song “Quiet Storm” here shows how music had changed in the 1970’s. Neal says that they wanted different music because hip hop music reminded them of the problems they used to have. They didn’t want to be reminded of bad times. This is why Neal says hip hop was the “soul” after the postindustrial time, it gave voice to poverty that people were still facing. Hip Hop was the music that actually stated what was going on in the real world of those still struggling.

            Hip-Hop emerged not only to voice real life situations but also made jobs possible to those left jobless.  Mathew Birkhold(2011) says that hip hop did not emerge because Afrika Bambaataa and the Zulu Nation ended gang violence in the South Bronx. He says that hip-hop gave the youth of these cities employment opportunities. Hip Hop gave them a chance of making a living with higher money. Gang members would become security guards to DJ’s and rappers. They would protect the equipment from getting stolen therefore playing an important role in hip-hop. Birkhold says that it’s important to see that gang violence didn’t end it just changed the role it played.  He also says that after the post industrial there were many that were left without jobs so hip hop gave them a new form of labor. There was a low demand for black labor in the black market so this was their only way to earn wages. Hip Hop was their new employer to help them get out of poverty.

            It’s important that we understand how hip hop gave voice to those in poverty through their lyrics. Toby S. Jenkins(2011) says hip hop serves as a platform for those who have been defeated. It helps give voice to those who doesn’t have any opportunity elsewhere because they been in prison or kicked out of school. Hip Hop is their way of becoming someone when they don’t have much else. Jenkins shows how artists use their songs to show change and success can happen. An Artist doesn’t rap just to rap, they rap to give a voice to a social problem such as Tupac Shakur song, Changes shows here. As can be heard in Tupac song he talks about the social problems occurring. Not only is he stating social reality but what changes need to be made. He isn’t just stating facts but he’s trying to create changes. Hip Hop emerged when no one else was there to create a change in poverty.

 

               Works Cited

Birkhold, M.. (2011). ““If You Don't Move Your Feet Then I Don't Eat””: Hip Hop and the Demand for Black Labor. Race/ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts, 4(2), 303–321. http://doi.org/10.2979/racethmulglocon.4.2.303

 

Jenkins, T. S.. (2011). A Beautiful Mind: Black Male Intellectual Identity and Hip-Hop Culture. Journal of Black Studies, 42(8), 1231–1251. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/41304582

 

Neal, Mark Anthony.(1999). “Postindustrial Soul: Black Popular Music at the Crossroads.” In What The Music Said : Black Popular Music and Black Popular Culture . New York: Routledge, pp.125-157. Reproduced by permission of Routledge/ Taylor& Francis Books, Inc.