How Rap Killed Hip Hop – a rhyming op-ed

When somebody says hip hop, most people automatically associate it with skinny, attractive women shaking their asses on stage in front of oversized oafs screaming obscenities into a microphone in such an ear-bleeding manner, you can barely understand what they’re saying. This is a common misperception of what hip hop really is: much more than just a genre of music. Hip hop is a style, it’s an image and most importantly, it’s a culture. In hip hop, the word “rap” was originally used as a verb, to describe the action of somebody quickly saying—not singing—verse. I say “verse,” and not lyrics, because we all know that rap consistently rhymes throughout a song. That’s a signature that makes hip hop unique. Otherwise this genre, a true integration of all types and styles of music, would be lost amongst its parent sounds. Today, rap is what old people tell you to turn down, or better yet, off. Rap is the music that you don’t shake, you drop your ass too. Rap has become synonymous with Cadillacs, diamonds, elaborate houses, and of course private jets, extremely large breasted women (who, lets remember, were once referred to by rap artists as “chickenheads”), as well as the all-around illusion of luxurious superiority.

The earliest form of hip hop was mixing and scratching vinyl records on two turntables. Dj Kool Herc wanted to figure out a way to harness a single breakbeat, and loop it to create a dance break that would last twice the time of an average song. With that he created an essential element of hip hop: beats. The breakbeats that Kool Herc established in his South Bronx apartment helped inspire the b-boy revolution. Stories say that Herc would drive around with five-foot speakers resting in the back of his Chevelle, and kids would come out and gather in the streets to see who had the quickest feet on the block. Soon, B-boys started to form into crews whose logos you could see tagged on subway trains. The graffiti artists were sneaking around the city late at night painting masterpieces on trains for all the city to know which crew was the tightest. (Type “hip hop” into Google, watch Wild Style, or read Jeff Chang. In my personal journey through hip-hop I have searched for the birth, and was led numerous times down two paths. One to DJ Kool Herc,  and one to Afrika Bambaataa. Above is what I believe to be the true origin.)

It wasn’t until breakdancers and writers and deejays came together that the emcee came to be. Kids deciding to battle with lyrical wordplay and wit instead of guns and violence only further captivated the hip hop audience. Freestyling is an underrated talent–saying words that come off the top of your head and somehow fitting them into a rhythmic pattern that still makes sense—deserves more respect than it is given.

With the four elements of hip hop working together, the entity was ready to contribute to the world of mass entertainment. But in hip hop’s transition from the streets to TV, something was lost in translation.
A culture rooted in non-violent, mind-stimulating activities somewhere took a sharp turn into mindless chatter and sexual exploitation—rap. “In my white tee?” “She made us drinks, to drink, we drunk ‘em, got drunk??” “My job is gnarly from getting slobbed on Harleys???” That is beyond lazy lyricism; and pushes back a culture that has fought for so much, especially for intellectual equality.  No more is freestyling or even b-boying commonly associated with hip hop, because hip hop has been infected by rap, so much so that in the public eye, there is no difference between rap and hip hop: the words are interchangeable. Rap has stained hip hop’s reputation, while disgracing everything  hip hop was created around. This truly breaks my heart. Rap is not based on raw talent, or a serious passion for the style, but on who can make the most money and successfully show it off through a ridiculously excessive display of jewelry, material items, and women who starve themselves for five-minutes of fame.

None of this is to say that hip hop is not hardcore. Hip hop’s roots are in competition, the universal barbaric shoulder and head sway—one arm up, back and forth—that gives a literal appearance of grunting noises. If the emcee tells us to jump, we jump. Hip hop is appealing because of its freedom of wordplay and non-censorship. Hip hop uses this freedom to express emotion, or to evoke change. Take Public Enemy, NWA, or Paris. Hip hop used to make sense! The lyrics said something, told stories, or explained life, often with the aid of simple declarations like fuck the po-lice.

Yes, it is a fine line between hip hop and rap. There is a spectrum, to the far left is the underground, to the far right is the mainstream; but the colors don’t just fade in the middle. There is a solid line, hard as it is to see at times. Some will argue that the line is very distinct, and in fact huge, but these people are in our world, and a part of hip hop in some way or another.

The pop-culture version of hiphop is rap. But don’t we want the pop-culture version of hip hop to be hip hop? Why did hip hop have to spend the time and kick and scream and grow, only to have rap piggyback its way into the limelight that should have been ours? It’s important to somehow make the differences known, so hip hop can claim its rightful place in the public eye.

~ by Bunny on December 8, 2009.