Street Rap

      Hip hop has become the most popular genre of music in the world today according to a Billboard.com article. While Hip Hop has made its way into the heart of mainstream society and is now accepted by everybody it was not always that way. Hip Hop in its beginning stage started off as a form of party music to be performed at block parties and cookouts in the South Bronx in New York by blacks and latinos from the neighborhood. There would be a DJ present would take many classic soul and funk songs and just play the breakdown part of the song. While this was happening there would be an emcee present on the mic rhyming about how cool him and they DJ were as well as yelling out many call and response chants to get the crowd hyped and into the party. This is what the genre start off as initially. It was a way for the people from the impoverished areas of New York City to get together and have fun amongst each other but eventually it word turn into much more.

    In 1982 Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five would release a song called " The Message". This would go down as one of the most groundbreaking songs in modern music history. This was the 1st Hip Hop song deviate from the typical party nature of Hip Hop music by opting to instead address the social and economic issues that were going on in many of the black communities around the country. This would go on to to motivate many other artist to go on address these same of issues that were plaguing the black community. This type of Hip Hop started to become more and more popular reaching its apex with groups such as Public Enemy and NWA.  These two groups specifically were extremely blunt and unapologetic in addressing the role that America played in the disenfranchising of the Black communities. They would address the crack epidemic which was growing to its peak at this time as well as police brutality and many other issues that were influenced by the American government. As these groups grew more popular their music started to reach broader demographics even penetrating to homes of many people in mainstream America. These new version of Hip Hop was becoming dangerous because it was holding the America accountable for its wrongdoings towards Blacks publicly. You even had some politicians and political pundits try to boycott this music.

Much of the youth of mainstream America were becomings fans of this music and they were starting to get on board with the subject matter of the music. This music was beginning to expose the American system on a large scale. We had not seen the this much attention paid to Black social issues since the dissolution of the Black Panther Party about a decade prior. There was starting to be the potential for a black uprising and revolution.

    In response to this music industry had artist go from making music that was addressing the social issues that were going on in the inner cities of America to making music that glorified it. They knew they could not outright shut this genre of music down completely so instead they embraced and redirected it. We had the invention of what would go on to be called gangsta rap be promoted and put to the forefront instead. So now what started to happen was the artist would be encouraged to still talk about the same environment as before but now they would be boasting about the damage they were doing to it. These type of music would go on to be promoted heavily from then until even now today. As a result of the more conscious and socially responsible aspect of this music got pushed to the back over time and the more negative side became a staple in mainstream society so much so that now we even see presidents spending time with these artists.