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

Tracing the Rap/Hip-Hop Dichotomy in Popular and Underground MusicRap symphony has experienced a innate increase in popularity in the last five years. In the year 2000, hydrant became the second-best-selling writing style in music, capturing 12.9 percent of the years $14.3 billion in total script 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 order to achieve commercial success, each rap album must be more negative and offensive than the last does not help to address 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. But black empowerment and social progress dont sell some as many records as the themes of mistreating women, abus ing substances, and accumulating vast piles of wealth, so these are the messages that rap/hip-hop has come to embody in popular perception. However, as an prefatory piece on a web site called The Hip Hop Headrush clearly states Hip-hop is not violence, 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 few 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 Good Library. 26 October 2001.Stern, Jane. Rap. Jane & Michael Sterns encyclopaedia of Pop Culture. New York Harper Perennial, 1992. 412-15. Turkish, Tavia Nyongo. Whos Afraid of Marshall Mathers? Gay & Lesbian Review 8.3 (2001) 14. Academic Search Elite. Palni SiteSearch. Goshen College Good Library. 26 October 2001.Tyler, Robin. Eminem Pied quayage 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 Law (And I Cold Won) Hip-Hop in the Mainstream. College literary productions 26.1 (1999) 10. Academic Search Elite. Palni SiteSearch. Goshen College Good Library. 26 October 2001.