Jacqueline Aldrich

HUM 125: HIP-HOP THEORY & CULTURE

4/18/21

The Beginnings of Hip Hop

As Hip-Hop culture began to make its way into the mainstream in the early 1980s,

there’s a number of characteristics of early hip-hop that were present. Clothing,

accessories, makeup, and hairstyles all became ways of expression as hip-hop started to

find its way into the mass culture. The use of street slang and the being "cool" in music

has since found its way into the mainstream. These all started in the beginning of Hip

Hop and continued through the 1980’s.

African tradition has had major influences on Hip-Hop culture, as the readings

have referenced. One that stood out to me was the role of African bards. As explained in

“The Hip-Hop Reader”, in traditional African societies, this ‘bard’ is a singer/storyteller

who expresses culture and history through performances. Among these poets were

drummers making beats. It’s assumed that rap has a strong link to these traditional

African practices. It’s seen that Hip-Hop culture came from a mix of African and

Caribbean traditions and sprung from blues. Some also believe that rap was born from

traditional African chanting, where families surrounded each other and there was a

person chanting in the style of which would now be rapping, with a drum beat.
 The material in the article "The Sociology & History of African Americans" ties

into this discussion in a few ways. For one, a sociological factor involved in Hip Hop as

stated in "The Sociology & History of African-Americans", was the lack of employment

and adequate housing, and as a result, left African-American neighborhoods with not

much to work with and artistic freedom. The article analyzes why poverty and

oppositional ideology have influenced hip-hop culture. This is due to high poverty rates

in African American communities, which resulted in a lot of segregation, that eventually

led to oppositional culture, which resulted in "ghetto street culture," and that is another

aspect of hip-hop culture.

There are quite a few connections that can be made between the concept of "Cool

Pose" and observations of early hip-hop culture. As hip-hop began, there were quite a few

sociological factors that played a role in the rise. Hip-hop music and culture was heavily

rooted from the racism and prejudice towards African Americans. One sociological

dimension that contributes to hip-hop culture is black masculinity and being "cool". From

the reading “Cool Pose”, we can grasp that the concept of being "cool" in Hip-Hop refers

to how many black males view themselves in order to define their male identity. Cool

pose is a systematized type of masculinity that includes actions, plots, physical posturing,

image control, and carefully orchestrated presentation all aimed at conveying a message

of pride, strength, and command. This connects to early Hip-Hop c culture because this

is how they were seen and eventually they internalized it and it became almost the norm

of how those in the Hip-Hop world should act.