Felicity Linville
When I think of hip-hop, I most definitely think of politics, the two go hand in hand for me. Especially in 2019 when rappers like Kanye are going to the white house and helping make prison reform bills to help incarcerated women. Hip-hop, no music in general is a way that artists and listeners make sense of the world. It reflects our anger, our happiness, the pressures we face and the disappointment of society’s structure. Author Jeff Chang said in an interview “Although not all hip hop is exclusively political, a good amount of it speaks to the kinds of pressures that young people have been facing because of globalization, changes in policing and the incarceration of youth and oftentimes, the breakdown of institutions and structures in the communities that hip hop comes from” (Riley 2012). This claim is thought provoking and makes me think of artists like Lil Peep that became popular because of his open discussion about anxiety and depression. A lot of the way we think of hip-hop has to do with the feminist perspective and that Joan Morgan called “Hip-hop feminism;” it “is concerned with the ways the conservative backlash of the 1980s and 1990s, deindustrialization, the slashing of the welfare state, and the attendant gutting of social programs and affirmative action, along with the increasing racial wealth gap, have affected the life worlds and worldviews of the hip-hop generation” (Durham, Cooper, Morris 722). Our countries police system and social welfare is set up in a way to maintain white supremacy, both authors point out that hip-hop is a way to talk about topics like our political climate and spread it throughout our communities. Cardi B is another artist that comes in mind that connects these two pieces perfectly, she is a woman of color who is pro sex and is involved in our current political climate. She was just recently asked to give a talk to democrats after tweeting about immigration. I hip-hop has always being an avenue in which we can hear the voices of communities of color and I hope that never stops.
In Kanye West’s song “New Slaves”, he talks about capitalism and how that has turned us all into slaves of the system. He also talks about his mother grew up during segregation and how that continues today when sales clerks do not allow black kids to touch anything in the store because the employees think they will steal it. Tupac Shakur’s song “Keep Ya Head Up” is another hip-hop song rooted in politics, as in the Durham, Cooper, Morris piece they talk about “misogynoir the hatred of black women and girls,” his song is about empowering and respecting women, especially women of color (730).
AFRAM337 