In chapter four I will discuss the 1990s and its so-called political nihilism. Because they have to this day a bigger cultural influence, the Nation of Islam and Malcolm X are mentioned and explained more explicitly than other leaders and movements that have worked for African American civil rights. They represent the zeitgeist and its music best and most pointedly. Since Public Enemy and Boogie Down Productions are still considered icons and idols, I will solely refer to them as representatives of this era. Nevertheless, they share sympathy for Black Nationalism and therefore have a skeptical opinion of the American institutional system. Both of them refer to the Nation of Islam in general or Malcolm X in specific, but both from a different perspective. Chapter three will deal with the rebellious and radical era of political rap in the 1980s, coined by rap groups such as Public Enemy and Boogy Down Productions. I will describe the circumstances, politically and economically, that led to and accompanied the evolution of Hip Hop, with a special focus on Hip Hop’s birthplace, New York City. I will show that from the early beginnings “relationships between black cultural practice, social and economic conditions, and racial politics, and the institutional policing of the popular terrain are complex and in motion” in rap (Rose XV). The second chapter will be about the first decade of Hip Hop, the 1970s. The first chapter of this paper will deal with the first 300 years of African American music in the US and will present an overview of the developments in African American music that lead to Hip Hop as we know it. Until Obama appeared the changes have mostly been stylistically, afterwards it mostly changed content-wise. With every step taken in African American history, considering being brought to America as the first and Obama being elected president the most recent one, African American music has changed. African music which supported and stressed a way of life and a cultural identity was forced to encounter a European worldview that did not recognize Africans as humans (Craddock-Willis, 32).
But this is nothing new when we see rap as heritage of an African American musical tradition that has started long before Africans were shipped to America and enslaved there. Throughout the three decades of Hip Hop’s existence, rap music, when politically motivated, has mostly been motivated by disaffection against politics.
Rappers have hardly, if at all, supported the system and its representatives until now. The political idol has always been rather Malcolm X than Martin Luther King, rather the radical than the pacifist. Hip Hop as an African American subculture has always referred to the African American roots within the US and has always been founded on distrust against a society and a system that did “not care about black people” (Kanye West on a NBC telethon after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Obgar 2006 71). Since “usic cannot be separated from social, political or cultural context from which it develops” (Ogbar 2007 144) rap music has changed with Obama appearing on the national and international scope. Moreover, and this will form the thesis of this paper, Obama has changed Hip Hop as well. Just by campaigning Obama changed the world’s views on the United States.
His words inspired millions all over the world, not only in the US. Nearly 400 years after slavery in the United States (US) begun an African American, actually a man of half African and half American descent, has probably changed the United States forever, just by having been elected.ĭuring his election campaign, he promised hope and change. Nearly 400 years later, on January 20th, 2009, a man whose father came from Kenya and whose mother was from Kansas became the 44th President of the United States of America: Barack Hussein Obama. The legitimacy of bondage was undermined by the Civil War, but the black presence remained, and blacks continued to be victims of the ruthless oppression and exploitation of the white society (Morris 3). Since the first African slaves were brought to Jamestown, USA in 1619, blacks have existed either in complete bondage as bondsman and slaves or in a particular state of semifreedom. "everybody act according to season that they're born in/ some in the night, some in the morning" Young Jeezy - My President is Black feat. POLITICAL RAP EQUALS POPULAR RAP: THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION GUNS, VIOLENCE, DRUGS AND JEWELRY: THE 1990SĤ.1 Gangsta Rap and Black Nationalist Ideasĥ. HIP HOP AND RAP: CHILDREN OF THE 1970SĢ.3 Hip Hop as a Counter Reaction to the Conditions in the GhettoĤ.