Hip-hop music, developed in the South Bronx in the early 1970s, has long been tied to social injustice in the United States, particularly that of the African American experience. Hip-hop artists have spoken out in their lyrics against perceived social injustices such as police brutality, poverty, mass incarceration, and the war on drugs. The relationship between hip-hop and social injustice can be seen most clearly in two subgenres of hip-hop, gangsta rap and conscious rap.
Political hip-hop has been criticized by conservative politicians such as Mississippi State Senator Chris McDaniel as divisive and promoting separatism due to some hip-hop artists' pro-black and anti-establishment lyrical content. Musicologist Robert Walser disputes this, arguing that many white youth who are exposed to hip-hop as children are more likely to have positive relationships with African Americans and resist racism from their parents or other sources out of respect for black artists they admire.
History and background
Social injustice in American history
Social Injustice in American History starts from the very beginning from when America was first discovered in 1492 the year Columbus set sail. Once they discovered America they discovered something else, a new idea called "race". Colonialism was the first social injustice to happen in American History. Colonialism was a geographical project that consisted of conquering other people, settling in foreign lands and extracting natural resources. Later in American History beginning in the 17th century African men, women and children were kidnapped and were brought to the Americas under horrible conditions where it is believed that more than 2 million Africans died on the voyage to America. Slavery mainly consisted of labor in the fields while a select few did domestic work around the owners home. It wasn't until 1863 that Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation that would put an end to slavery. These men, women and children were discriminated against and treated very poorly. Discrimination is defined as "treatment on the basis of inadequately justified factors other than race that disadvantages a racial group". After Slavery though things didn't get much better for Black people. Almost immediately they were segregated from the whites while not having a lot of say in the government because of literacy tests and taxes and the grandfather clause which stated that if your grandfather could vote than you don't have to take the literacy tests or pay the tax. After many years of hard fought political battles for black people in 1964 the civil rights act of 1964 was passed which made it illegal to discriminate against a person because of their color and it also ended segregation. Now modern era social injustices include employment discrimination amongst women, police brutality amongst minorities and educational inequality with poor areas of the United States.
History of hip-hop
Hip-hop is a cultural movement that became extremely popular in the 1980s and ’90s. It has also lead to the backing music for the rap genre. The musical style incorporates rhythmic and rhyming speech that became the genres longest lasting and most influential art form.“Hip-Hop.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., www.britannica.com/art/hip-hop.
Social injustice in music
Music has long had a close relationship with politics and social injustice. Before the advent of recording technology and popular music, classical composers during the French Revolution composed music to support the democratic ideals of the revolution. An example of this is Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 3, originally entitled Bonaparte and dedicated to the French emperor Napoleon I, which was renamed Eroica after Beethoven felt Napoleon had forsaken the ideals of the Revolution. Similarly, Italian opera composer Giuseppe Verdi's third opera Nabucco, which is based on the Biblical books of Jeremiah and Daniel, served as a rallying cry and anthem of sorts to the Risorgimento movement of Italian unification against the occupying Austrian empire.
Social injustice in popular music
American folk music has a long tradition of music dealing with social injustice, a tradition which only became more popular and widespread with the advent of recording technology and the development of popular music. Some early music of this kind includes "Strange Fruit" by Billie Holiday and "The Bourgeois Blues" by Lead Belly, which decried injustices against the African American community.
Protest music took on a new form in the 1960s and 70s with the advent of psychedelia and punk rock. Notable artists in this genre such as the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, and Sam Cooke composed and released music that opposed the Vietnam War, supported the civil rights movement, and advocated for world peace. Many of these artists were involved in or influential towards the "hippie" movement of these decades. Since the 1980s and the rise in popularity of hip-hop, much of American hip-hop has come from this genre.
Gangsta rap
Gangsta rap, pioneered in the mid 1980s in Los Angeles, is characterized by explicit, often violent lyrics in opposition to police brutality, mass incarceration, and systemic racism. Despite its socially conscious elements, exemplified by songs like Ice-T's "6 in the Mornin'" and N.W.A's "Fuck tha Police", the genre often tended to utilize extensive profanity and misogynistic lyrics, negatively affecting the public perception of the genre. As the genre developed, more Southern California artists such as 2Pac and Snoop Dogg emerged and brought the genre to mainstream success with hits like "Gin and Juice" and "California Love". The gangsta rap phenomenon spread across the United States, with similar styles of music emerging in New York City by artists like Mobb Deep, Nas, and the Wu-Tang Clan. The politically outspoken element of gangsta rap exists to this day. A particularly potent example of this is YG's 2017 album Still Brazy, which features tracks like "FDT", "Police Get Away Wit Murder", and "Blacks & Browns" which denounce systemic racism and police brutality and advocate for unity between minority groups.
While in the media the genre was referred to as gangsta rap, some artists within the sub-genre referred to it as "reality rap", feeling that the explicit and violent nature was a reflection of the reality that they lived in or had grown up in.Cooper, Brittney, et al. PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, www.pbs.org/video/black-america-mlk-and-still-i-rise-part-2/.
Conscious rap
Conscious rap, also known as backpack rap or alternative hip-hop, is a subgenre of hip-hop which primarily features lyrical themes that highlight social injustice facing underprivileged communities in a more nuanced and subtle fashion than gangsta rap. Conscious rap has its roots in the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, with both poets and musicians such as The Last Poets and Watts Prophets kickstarting the movement of both artistic and political lyrics. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s many record labels were hesitant to sign conscious or political rappers due to their fears that it was a sub-genre without a large audience and that the strong progressive opinions voiced in the lyrics could have negative repercussions for the label from conservative politicians and commentators who disagreed with the stances expressed in the music. The first artists to gain popularity included Nas, A Tribe Called Quest, and Public Enemy, although the latter is often classified under Gangsta rap rather than conscious rap. Many of the most prominent figures in conscious hip-hop emerged in the early 2000s in Chicago and New York, with artists like Mos Def, Lupe Fiasco, Talib Kweli, and Common bringing the genre to a wider audience. Conscious hip-hop has continued to find success in the mainstream in recent years, as artists like Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole, Logic, and Joey Bada$$ have achieved mainstream success while promoting socially conscious messages.
Notable artists
Public Enemy New York City based rap crew Public Enemy was one of the first hip-hop artists to be both popular in the hip-hop community and outspoken about political and racial issues. Their lyrics contain criticism of law enforcement ("Fight the Power", "911 is a Joke") and white Americans and modern racism ("Fear of a Black Planet", etc.), and promote social change with regard to the treatment of African Americans by the white community ("Revolutionary Generation").
Public Enemy's lyrics were meant to be shocking and hostile, as they went against the norm for American culture at the time and cultivated an image in the media as a "gangsta group". Chuck D has also been outspoken about his views on capitalism and its link with racism, economic exploitation, oppression of minorities in the United States, and has called for unification within the black community. "They'll tell you capitalism sees no color, but at the same time the ones that all feel they have something in common with each other become the most powerful block right there, and it stomps upon those that don't fit that mold. And the only way that you can exist within that mold is that you have to put together a 'posse,' or a team to be able to penetrate that structure. [...] we [black Americans] as a constituency have to stick together and realize that we all have something in common with each other."
N.W.A
N.W.A was a Los Angeles rap group made up of future hip-hop legends such as Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, Eazy-E, and MC Ren. As pioneers of the gangsta rap subgenre along with Ice T, N.W.A. is best known for its politically charged, profanity filled singles "Fuck tha Police" and "Straight Outta Compton" which painted stark portraits of violence in the poverty-stricken ghettos of Compton, California and the prevalence of police brutality. However, the misogyny and profanity in the group’s lyrics as well as their image as violent and dangerous negatively affected the public perception of N.W.A., gangsta rap, and all hip-hop in general. Their debut studio album, Straight Outta Compton, was banned from radio stations and received virtually no promotion from any major media source, yet has gone on to receive triple-platinum certification from the RIAA and is widely considered one of the most influential albums of all time. A 2015 biopic film, also entitled Straight Outta Compton, helped solidify N.W.A.'s cultural legacy that culminated with an induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2016.
2Pac
Tupac Shakur, more commonly known by his stage name 2Pac, is one of the best-selling artists of all time and has influenced countless hip-hop artists, making his social commentary in his lyrics all the more visible. Shakur's parents were both members of the Black Panther Party, and Tupac's lyrical content had a relatively wide range which included violent and aggressive gangsta rap ("Hit 'Em Up", "Me and My Girlfriend", "Ambitionz Az a Ridah") to emotionally-charged conscious rap ("Changes", "Trapped", "Keep Ya Head Up", "Brenda's Got a Baby"). A few of these songs in particular serve as strong denunciations of social injustice.
Tupac has been an influence to hip-hop artists since his death as both a musical artist and as an icon of social justice. Artists such as Kendrick Lamar, Tory Lanez, J. Cole, and Eminem have all cited Shakur as an influence on their music and their message.
Kanye West