Writing One

Hip-hop has been around longer than anyone can imagine. The loud sound of bass and the rowdy music seemed to help urban people escape their problems, but also seemed to go beyond that. It talks to the streets, to the people who live there. It talks about life. It's poetry, filled with metaphors and similes. It's creative and very straightforward; no one hid their problems when they expressed themselves on microphones. Each stanza, every quote, every single word withheld a hidden message. Whether it was a message about drugs, violence, death, it was music that certainly, with a resonant chest thumping beat that captured the thoughts and feelings of whomever that listen to it.

Hip Hop was basically battle zones of the 1980s, but instead of fighting and using violence, battlers got on mics and rap freestyles. They use their knowledge of words to tear down their opponent. They used words punctuated by the emergence of crack cocaine, gunfire, and gang wars. They spoke on the pain of living in a low poverty city, the pain of going home to no food, no lights, and no running water. They talked about the deaths of loved ones from the streets. They were fighting verbally…..and in that way no one could die physically. Being ranked the best on the streets was the power they were looking for. It was the highest reputation anyone "degrading" could have. Hip-Hop literally set them free.

The music was different from the crazy disco beats that were popular at the time. In actuality, the blacks weren’t allowed in those disco clubs. They weren’t allowed to go to the suburban part of time to go to the club to have a good time like everyone else. So they turned to parties, house parties. They threw house parties and were able to go all out. They were able to scratch their CD’s, play a favorite track over and over and blast the music to an almost unbearable level. It was just something about the pulsing beat that didn’t allow the listener to play the music at normal level. It was a vibrating beat that occasionally seems likely to burst the windows of enthusiasts' cars.

That’s what started hip-hop, but since then we’ve grown so much. We’re now in a decade that allows anything from having magazine coverage on the artist to premiering videos on the television. We went from not being allowed in the Disco Club to building our own clubs that plays hip-hop only. Hip-hop and rap music are by the best selling, highest grossing styles of music to burst upon the American - and global - scene in decades, racking up billions of dollars in sales year after year, both for the music produced by the industry and the magazines that cover it. One reason for the music's popularity is that it crosses cultural boundaries, blacks, Asians-Americans, Latinos everyone can enjoy the power of the music. Males and Females included.

Hip- hop artists of the 21st century seem to have lost the true reason for the music in the first place. Now instead of rapping about how they want to become someone and provide for their kids, they’re rapping about money drugs and sex. Even though in the ‘old’ rap days some artists included those certain factors, the music wasn’t based on it. Plenty interviews have been recorded with "old" artists who set the paths for our recent artists, and they are not ashamed to say ever that they think that the music of today has degraded. They feel as if these artists are in the business for the wrong reasons and instead of helping our generations by motivational music, they’re breaking us by just influencing drugs, sex, and money. Kids are out there trying to get money, but in all the wrong ways and why? Because that’s what their favorite artist said they were doing before they "made it". Times have change, so of course people must change with it. We came from a lot in over20 years who knows what the next 20 will hold.