What is Hip-Hop?

We've talked about the essence of hip-hop in class, what it's really about. Many things have been said: Hip-hop is a business. Hip-hop is a culture. Hip-hop is about the next. Hip-hop is about truth, authenticity and keeping it real. It is hard to say what hip-hop truly is.

From the historical perspective, hip-hop is comprised of four key stylistic elements: rapping, DJ'ing, break dancing, and graffiti drawing. This perspective does not follow the recent trends in hip-hop unfortunately. Many contemporary hip-hop artists have strayed away from these roots. It can even be argued that these artists are not actually hip-hop even if mainstream society considers them to be.

So how else can we look at hip-hop? I believe it is important to look at it from an evolutionary perspective. Certain elements will grow over time from their roots, and other elements will fade out over time as they become less relevant to the current times.

While this may upset those loyal to the foundations of hip-hop, it is necessary for hip-hop to stay alive by re-inventing itself to become the next time and time again. Every time it is the new next, it has to be something different than what it used to be. It's evolution keeps it relevant and alive.

So what is hip-hop? It's hard to say. At its foundation it is a way of life about creating meaning and expressing it. Beyond that, I believe it will keep changing and find a new way to create meaning and express it. Some will make it a business; others will make it a hobby. Some will think of the next; others will stay with the past. Hip-hop is ultimately what you make it to be, and the possibilities are endless for those willing to seize them.

What is Hip Hop?

According to wikipedia -

Hip hop or hip-hop is a sub-cultural movement that formed during the early 1970s by African-American and Puerto Rican youths residing in the South Bronx in New York City.

It is characterized by four distinct elements, all of which represent the different manifestations of the culture: rap music (oral), turntablism or DJing (aural), b-boying (physical) and graffiti art (visual).  

But is this all to Hip-Hop? I don’t think so… I think the real question is what does Hip-Hop mean to me, to us, to the world of technology.

Let’s examine this case by case.

What Hip-Hop means to me?

Hip-Hop, for me has been about fighting oppression. Just fighting oppression. Oppression comes in many forms, like evil it has many faces. It has a face of racism, it can have a face of hating someone different, it can have a face of disliking disruption (In the case of the movie 8-mile), or it could have a face where in young, smart, college students are asked to leave businesses to “The grownUps”.

Hip-Hop is about fighting oppression, overcoming the challenge of oppression to make you a stronger individual. It’s about survival in a cut-throat world, but it is also a way to leverage aggression and angst into a never-die attitude and fight for your rights. It helps humans evolve into more enlightened beings.

This is what Hip-Hop means to me.

What does Hip-Hop mean to me in the context of the World Of Technology?

Hip-hop to me in the world of technology means two things.

Firstly it means to disrupt technology, to remind people that dogmas are meant to be broken. It means to create breakthrough technologies cause you have  a different sense of viewing the problem than the “Experts” in the field, and giving big corporation who are prisoners of “The Innovator's Dilemma” a run for their money.

Secondly, it also means that art and technology intersect at many points. In terms of culture and reminding us that the sole purpose of technology is to help the beings of this world lead happier, more fulfilling lives and not the other way round. It reminds us that “Hey! We are engineers and we need to find  feasible solution to this problem so we can make the life of a fellow human-being easier!”

Simply put - Hip Hop is not just music. Its a way of life.

What is Hip-Hop?

Hip-Hop is a conglomeration of rap, DJing, graffiti, fashion, dance, visual arts, creative expression, political activism, and commerce. Although this might encompass much more than the 4 essential elements emphasized by its founders, the overall culture of hip-hop has grown astronomically since its inception and their personal view on what it consists of. Charnas takes it upon himself to add two crucial elements: style and marketing--but even those additions cannot encapsulate what it has become today. It can no longer can be categorized into such countless distinctive elements so I would rather define it by the philosophy that created it: hip-hop is the art of taking nothing and making it into something.

In response to the title of this class, most people would almost immediately ask, “What is Hip-Hop entrepreneurship?” Personally, I feel the two terms are practically redundant. Virtually every element of hip-hop represents or is birthed from an entrepreneurial principle and experience. Namely, the creation of hip-hop music is what I consider the element most steeped in entrepreneurial spirit. I recall a documentary I watched on the rise of Run DMC and the pop culture explosion of rap music. The infamous DJ Grandmaster Flash details how even in the middle-class neighborhood of Hollis in Queens, NY the local high-schools didn’t have the well equipped music programs that many white schools had access to. Since traditional music instruments were often much too expensive, they instead used turntables and found records with the same instruments and replayed their snippets to get the familiar sounds they otherwise couldn’t get.

Sampling, as it is now known, has since evolved into the de facto way of recording music nearly all pop music--and primarily rap. It allowed an entire generation of musicians who wanted to explore sound to do it at a hundredth of the cost. That technology has since disrupted the entire field of music, allowing bedroom musicians to produce entire albums with solely a computer and microphone. I would argue that hip-hop, at least in an economic sense, has almost single-handedly transformed the music industry more than any other genre. Its rapid ability to innovate and adapt is what I believe has kept it from turning it into another fad genre. Coincidentally, during class we mentioned the breakout success and immediate fall of Disco. The reason disco failed is because as the music became overly commercialized and homogenous in a time where it could not afford to. The originators who traditionally drove the genre’s creative development, urban black youth, couldn’t afford to put out another tacky disco record that lacked distinctiveness in an era of studio time that cost thousands of dollars per hour and expensive distribution. Not to mention the necessity of knowing the right executives and movers. They were literally priced out of the industry and as disco became more commercialized it lost its distinctiveness and crashed only to be replaced by the next fad, flashy pop and hair rock. If the technology and practices surrounding disco had evolved at the rate of music today, it would likely still exist.

Hip-hop music and the technology that accompanied it, made the ability to produce music completely democratized, in the same fashion that the home computer made word processing and cross-country communication an affordable domestic convenience. The production of rap music especially throughout the 90s reflected how hip-hop had grown up in an era of living room studios and sound-proofed closets. Distinct styles had sprung up from different regions since the technology could be available cheaply and virtually anywhere. This allowed a multitude of distinct styles and genres, completely independent from its home of New York. Technology didn't just communicate its narrative, it created it. It is the first truly entrepreneurial music genre that reflects the innovative ability of impoverished youth who were able to build multimillion dollar enterprises and sub cultures with what little resources they had. This is even more evident today, with rap stars owning everything from the record labels themselves to clothing lines, liquor labels, audio companies, movie studios, and even fragrances. Overall, I think this has been a positive impact on the impressions of millions of black youth who now have a generation of successful black entrepreneurs and culture influences who now own a commanding role in our public discourse. They have helped elect presidents, shed light on public injustices, spawned multi-billion dollar industries--and did it all starting from the literal bottom.  Hip-Hop, especially rooted in its music, perfectly encapsulates the entrepreneurial spirit of innovation and excellence that has made it the worldwide dominant culture that it is today.

What is Hip-Hop?

          Hip-hop is a culture of entrepreneurial thinking and doing.  In a society where many African-Americans feel disenfranchised and underrepresented, those people turn to entrepreneurial endeavors as a method for getting out of the ghetto and achieving success. By becoming a hip-hop artist, someone from the hood can establish him or herself as a self-made man or woman, an entrepreneur.  However, as with start-ups, the vast majority of hip-hop artists are not success stories.  Moreover, once again like start-up companies, most successful hip-hop artists don’t reign for long.  Hip-hop is about the next.  And if you’re not next, you’re nothing.  It doesn’t matter if someone sits on the throne today.  If that person doesn’t stay hot, then they can get knocked off the throne tomorrow as quickly as they were put there yesterday. 

            Furthermore, hip-hop is a culture of invention and reinvention.  Once again, it is easy to see the connection between hip-hop and entrepreneurship.  In order to make it to the top, or stay there once you’ve made it, it takes a quick-witted mind to not only set the trends, but follow them.  Every great hip-hop mogul has this in common.  Whether it’s Jay-Z, Eminem, P-Diddy, Dr. Dre, Kanye West, or any other major player in the hip-hop world, all of them understand how to do the three things any great entrepreneur must know how to do.  They know how to provide something that is well-received by their audience, they know how to observe the trends that their audience follows and stay relevant by doing so, and they know how to build upon the artists that came before them.  Typically, any new idea is born from one of the following two purposes: providing a want, or alleviating a pain.  Either an entrepreneur is creating something entirely new that the market wants, but doesn’t know it yet, or he or she is fixing or improving upon an existing idea.  Invention, and reinvention.  We see those exact things in the world of hip-hop.  Those people that I mentioned earlier are experts at not only creating, but recreating the work that preceded them.

            Examining further the concept of invention and reinvention, providing a want and alleviating a pain, it brings me to what we discussed in class about the phrase, “necessity is the mother of invention.”  We noted that in today’s day and age, it is oftentimes the other way around.  After all, we never really needed a search engine that makes navigating the internet easier.  But most of us couldn’t fathom a world without Google.  We never needed state-of-the-art smartphones, laptops, or other electronics that many of us use today.  Yet think about how many people rely so heavily on their Apple or Android phones, their Macs or PCs.  With that in mind, it seems as though invention coupled with clever marketing is what creates necessity, not the other way around. 

However, hip-hop is where that phrase can go both ways.  A certain element of novel invention is required of any great hip-hop artist.  Without creating something unique, an artist simply cannot be recognized as one of the best.  In that respect, invention leads to necessity in hip-hop.  But on a macroscopic level, the entire culture can be viewed as a byproduct of necessity.  After all, without disenfranchisement and underrepresentation, would African-Americans conceive of such a culture?  If whites were oppressed and black people held the power in the United States, would there be a white version of hip-hop?  I think that hip-hop is cut from the same cloth as the gun violence on the streets of Chicago.  We talked in class about how people in the city feel as though the world has forgotten about them, so they turn to gun violence.  I think that the creative expression of hip-hop is the benevolent form of reacting to that same feeling.  If you are the type of person who holds grudges and harbors anger, then maybe violence is what you turn to when it seems as though the rest of the world has forgotten about you.  But if you have talent, ambition, and a strong work ethic, then maybe you’ll create something new that the world has yet to see, and you’ll remind the world that there are geniuses in the ghetto too.  And that’s what hip-hop is all about.

What is Hip-Hop x YanYe

"What is Hip-Hop?" is a very open ended question. In the first class we discussed the personal meaning and everyone seemed to have the same idea of it's a musical entity/art and it also is a huge business. Although I believe that theses are both true statements I think that there is more to Hip-Hop than this. Along with being a Art form and a business; Hip-Hop is history, it is revolution, it is a father, and it is a culture.

The way Hip-hop came to be what we see today is through a path of changing identity and the revolutionary use and creation of technology. Hip-Hop came from a form of RnB called Doo-Wop. From RnB/Doo-Wop came what we know as Rock n' Roll. Rock n Roll was made so that African-American music can be played on radio. After a while DJ's started to speak over tracks (Grandmaster Flash, DJ Hollywood, Herc, etc) and then one day the Mother of modern rap came to the front. Her name was Tanya Winley, and she rhymed under the name MC Sweet T. She rhymed over a instrumental beat and sold them to people. This sparked arguably the greatest rap track of all time to be born...Rappers delight by The Sugar Hill Gang. With history comes Revolution. 

Revolution is defined as: A dramatic and wide-reaching change in the way something works or is organized.  When I started reading "The Big Payback" It discussed the roots of Hip-Hop and how it came to be what we know it as today. In the text it talked about what DJ's help do in terms of bringing youth together. In the early stages of DJ'ing (which was the predecessor to Hip-Hop) youth regardless of skin color or culture would gather from all around the city to dance to the music that DJ's put out. It is said that this type of music helped spark the desegregation of the white and black youth in the United States. On top of helping with the desegregation of America, Hip-hop and DJ'ing helped reduce crime within cities like New York. The culture that Hip-Hop perpetuated helped the youth put down the "gats" and "heaters" trying to represent your gang, and to turn to the artful creative ways of repping your crew with dance and graffiti. 

 Hip-Hop is also a hustle and a business. Originally it was based on people hustling what was called numbers. Running numbers was like the lottery before the lottery. With the invention of Hip-Hop kids went form hustling numbers to hustling their crafts. They would go head to head with other groups to see who was the best, they would hustle to get the best DJ spot in the city, or to sell a track. Most famous of these situations is that of Dr. Dre. He went from selling drugs in Compton to DJ'ing and making his money in that manner and proving he was the best. Now he is the first Hip-Hop billionaire. 

On top of all of these reasons, Hip-hop is memory for me. It brings back moments of happiness, struggle, anger, fight, and motivation. It reminds me of BBQ's with my friends in the summer, it reminds me of cruising down the street with my brothers, and it reminds me of competing in High School. Hip-Hop gets a bad rap because of the negative events that have occurred in recent years (most recently with the Drill movement out of Chicago). As a final statement, I am a product of Hip-Hop music, my ideas, my thoughts, my vocabulary has been shaped by Hip-Hop and I wouldn't take it back for anything. 

Peace x Love x Growth