Word: hip-hop
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Despite nearly 30 years of opportunity for serious reflection on hip-hop as a social and cultural phenomenon, there has been little meaningful intellectual engagement with hip-hop as it exists today. Lacking the first-hand knowledge or acumen to constructively evaluate the culture, hip-hop intellectualism has largely descended into romanticized reflection or hackneyed criticism. As both a hip-hop performer and intellectual, my goal with this series of pieces on hip-hop is to seriously delve into the culture without irresponsibly romanticizing it or unfairly denigrating...
...Hip-hop originally emerged as a light-hearted alternative discourse in the aesthetic lives of black and Latino poor in the 1970s and 1980s Bronx. Hip-hop built on existing disco, reggae and funk genres and served as a creative outlet for those youth who maintained a zeal for life, despite trickle-down economics that never quite trickled down to the bottom. Contrary to the elitist posturing of many “real hip-hop heads,” the first rap songs were not about the problems of ghetto life, but instead were composed of nonsensical rhyming about...
Ironically, while commercial hip-hop enjoyed tremendous financial success, it was gangsta and socially-conscious rap that dominated the media’s attention. In the beginning, gangsta rap’s obsession with reporting the conditions of ghetto life to outsiders granted America a great service: NWA’s “F--- Tha Police” exposed police brutality, while Public Enemy brazenly dissed Ronald Reagan by exposing the other side of his policies. This tradition reached its peak in the mid-1990s, when Nas’ Illmatic, the Notorious B.I.G.’s Ready...
Some self-destructive blacks who actually suffer from nihilism—a sense of hopelessness so severe that a person no longer actively pursues a meaningful life—take hip-hop’s public celebration of this outlook to justify their lifestyle. Today’s hip-hop industry portrays such self-destruction as normative—a development which can only prove problematic for the advancement of black people worldwide. The rest of America, buffered by lingering segregation, is unable or unwilling to discern fantasy from reality and consumes this imagery as authentic, with real effects. Because...
...student-run Expressions Dance Company put on a show in a variety of dance styles, including jazz, modern, hip-hop, reggae and African. Every piece is student-choreographed. Tickets available at the Harvard Box Office, all seats $7. Friday at 5 and 8 p.m. Lowell Lecture Hall...