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Hip became a way for the black

Hip hop is an art movement that began developing in the Bronx, located in New York City in the late 1970’s. Hip hop focuses of emceeing over breakbeats.

A Jamaican man, DJ Clive ‘ Kool Herc’ Campbell, started the use of DJing percussion “ breaks” in hip hop music. It began in his apartment and later spread, Herc created an outline for the hip hop scene, through the Jamaican tradition of improvised toasting, toasting meaning chants or talking over rhythms or beats made by deejays. Herc experimented with record players to make different beats, this is called breaking. Emceeing in hip hop is speaking rhythmically, done first without musical accompaniment and later joined by a beat. This style came from African Americans style of capping, where men try to outshine each other, by gaining the audiences bias, they would rap on subjects such as political and social, as well as roast each other. Becoming part of the hip hop culture became a way for the black youth to deal with hard times.

Afrika Bambaataa created a street organization called the Universal Zulu Nation, which was based on hip hop, it was used to draw teenagers out of gang life, drugs, and violence. Lyrics in raps focused on societal issues, a popular track called “ The Message” by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, talked about housing projects. Hip Hop gave teen African Americans to voice their issues to the society. In 1982, Bambaataa created an electronic sound instead of rapping over disco beats. In the 1980s, hip hop, graffiti art etc became the ruling movement for the urban communities. Beatboxing also made its way into the hip hop culture as people started creating rhythms using the human body, including lips, and mouths.

By 1984, young teenagers all around the world started welcoming the hip hop culture. In the 1990s, rap gained more attention and black teenagers were not the only people listening to hip hop, leading to rap becoming a platform for artists wanting to share political and social issues through their music so they could start discussions all around the world. The 2000s was dominated by the hip hop culture, hip hop was spreading internationally, the most famous white rapper, Eminem, has 2 albums that were amongst the top 5 more successful albums of the decade. The use of auto tune had also become popular during the mid 2008s, it was first used to enhance the human voice, but after becoming popular, it was used to almost completely replace it. During the 2000s, hip hop had become a way to show off, and very often talked about materialistic things, such as money and fashion. Many people said the hip hop culture was dying because of how it had mixed with pop music. Since the 1970s, hip hop has made large social impacts.

Through the lyrics, artists have been able to communicate about their opinions on political and social topics, including racism and the government. Although, many raps from nowadays have become focused on the topic of materialistic things, like money and cars, there are still rappers such as Macklemore who do have rap songs with stories and messages behind them. Many rappers talk about black poverty, what it was like growing up black, or having to go through hardships, stereotypes, being bullied etc. They share what is in their hearts in a small amount of time, “ you can tell your life story, your community’s story, through rapping” said Tricia Rose. In the 1980s, many black artists expressed their feelings on cultural racism, and targeting black youth. A rap called “ F*ck tha Police”, produced by big artists at the time including Dr. Dre, became a large discussion in the media, its lyrics was about how the police think it is right to get black people in trouble just because they are of colour, and thinking that all black people sell drugs and are criminals. Rappers take the ideas from their communities and spread them to the world, for the topics to become talked about and lead to a change.

Beat, tempo, rhythm are three of the core elements of music seen in hip hop, a beat is the background music, it creates a rhythmic pattern, beats can be measured in duple, triple, and quadruple etc. Beats can change from strong to weak, this creates a unique beat that can make the audience more attracted to the rap. The rhythm is the pattern and placement of sounds and beats in music. The rhythm is how the flow of the music goes, fast pace, slow pace, or both. Tempo is the speed that the music is played, all three elements share similar characteristics, the tempo of a song could be slow or fast, a musical piece can also contain both. Usually, in raps, the tempo is fast, but in some areas of the piece, many times the chorus, can have a slow tempo, as many choruses are sang rather than rapped.

The rapper I have chosen is Benjamin Hammond Haggerty, more known by his stage name of Macklemore, he is a singer and a songwriter, and is currently 34. I have chosen Macklemore because when I first listened to his songs, I was able to understand what he was trying to communicate to his audience. Many of his raps have beautiful messages that reflect on things he has been through in the past. I have chosen his song called “ Same Love”, it is about equal rights, and about same sex love, and stereotypes.

He talks about how he thought he was gay because he fit certain ‘ gay’ stereotypes, and how he receives comments daily such as “ that’s so gay”, he also talks about how people shouldn’t have their rights stolen because they love the same sex. “ If I was gay, I would think hip- hop hates me” is a line from the rap, it refers to not being accepted in the society for being different from the majority. For our societal issue, we will be focusing on depression. We have chosen to use our rap to create awareness on depression, we feel that is important because depression can be very dangerous, and many people we know could be going through depression that we don’t know of. Millions of people have depression and it is important we speak and educate ourselves and our classmates on the subject.

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