Tracing the Rap/Hip-Hop Dichotomy in Popular and Underground Music Essa

Tracing the Rap/Hip- skip Dichotomy in Popular and Underground MusicRap harmony has experienced a radical increase in popularity in the last five years. In the year 2000, strike hard became the second-best-selling genre in music, capturing 12.9 percent of the years $14.3 billion in total record sales (Rap/Hip Hop Sc 1). Though rap is no stranger to criticism, that criticism has increased in both quantity and vociferousness at about the same rate as the number of rap albums climbing the charts. And the growing evidence that, apparently, in pose to achieve commercial message success, each rap album must be more negative and offensive than the last does not help to dole out these criticisms. Unfortunately, the critics miss most of the rarely-seen other side of the genre Hip-hop, rap music that is true the art forms roots of black empowerment and social progress. exactly black empowerment and social progress dont sell nearly as many records as the themes of mistreating women, abusing substances, and accumulating vast piles of wealth, so these are the messages that rap/ blame has come to embody in popular perception. However, as an preliminary piece on a web site called The Hip Hop Headrush clearly states Hip-hop is not delirium, misogyny, and narcotic substancesif you believe that, then the media and commercial mainstream music buyers have you sadly confused (Mindless Music Sc 1). I will attempt to flush out this rap/hip-hop dichotomy by indulging a brief history of the musical form, examining criticisms and defenses of the branch of the form Ill define as rap, and investigating a fewer hip-hop groups that present thoughtful, positive worldviews rather than the sex/drugs/money/violence messages of their rap counterparts.... ... to the Mainstream The Political Power of Hip-Hop. Media, Culture, and Society 20.2 (1998) 219. academic Search Elite. Palni SiteSearch. Goshen College serious Library. 26 October 2001.Stern, Jane. Rap. Jane & Michael Sterns Encyclopedia of Pop Culture. New York harpist Perennial, 1992. 412-15. Turkish, Tavia Nyongo. Whos Afraid of Marshall Mathers? Gay & sapphic Review 8.3 (2001) 14. academician Search Elite. Palni SiteSearch. Goshen College Good Library. 26 October 2001.Tyler, Robin. Eminem Pied Pier of Hate. Gay & Lesbian Review 8.3 (2001) 12. Academic Search Elite. Palni SiteSearch. Goshen College Good Library. 26 October 2001. Wahl, Greg. I Fought the truth (And I Cold Won) Hip-Hop in the Mainstream. College Literature 26.1 (1999) 10. Academic Search Elite. Palni SiteSearch. Goshen College Good Library. 26 October 2001.