ELEPHRAME

What is hip-hop? Answers from around the web.

Hip-hop - the culture, the music, the attitude and everything else - is a significant and influential part of society, in the United States and throughout the world. Because of its role in the media, politics and the lives of ordinary people, it seems that nearly everyone has developed an opinion about it. Here are several of those perspectives:

Michael P. Jeffries (The Atlantic) - Hip-Hop Doesn’t Need Saviors
Claim: “Hip-hop is an infinite universe of dignity and dishonor — the idea that a chosen few of its inhabitants could save it is a music industry and media hallucination. Record companies will only recover if they abandon the categories and formulas that make us all sick.”

S. Craig Watkins (Foreign Policy Magazine) - The politics of hip-hop 
Claim: “Hip-hop’s cultural and political resonance is making it the most powerful art form yet.”

Jeff Chang (Foreign Policy Magazine) - It’s a Hip-Hop World
Claim: “If you look beyond stereotypes, it’s clear that hip-hop culture has become one of the most far-reaching arts movements of the past three decades.”

Lexington (The Economist) - The politics of hip-hop
Claim: Hip-hop’s ability to solve social and political problems is overestimated.

Jonah Weiner (Slate) - Celebrating (and Getting Over) Hip-Hop’s “Golden Era”
Claim: “Hip-hop isn’t Ghostface’s house any more, and a younger generation of radio smoothies has snuck in and made it their own. But that doesn’t mean we can’t appreciate what they’ve done with the place.”

Dr. Boyce Watkins (The Grio) - Is hip-hop violence here to stay?
Claim: “Early death has become a fundamental component of the existence of nearly every black male in urban America, and commercialized hip-hop both reflects and expands this reality.”

John H. McWhorter (City Journal) - How Hip-Hop Holds Blacks Back
Claim: “By reinforcing the stereotypes that long hindered blacks, and by teaching young blacks that a thuggish adversarial stance is the properly ‘authentic’ response to a presumptively racist society, rap retards black success.”

Share your own thoughts on Hip-Hop music here: Hip-Hop Music / Elephrame