Hip Hop

Monique W. Morris

Hip hop was created by youths of African American and Caribbean (including Latin-Caribbean) descent in the early 1970s. At the time, the counter-disco movement was developing, and gangs in the Bronx, New York, were becoming the subjects of books and films that depicted black and Latino youths as savage predators incapable of rehabilitation. Contradicting this stylized and oversimplified presentation of the Bronx as a site of decay was an artform that would emerge into international significance through expressions that include rapping/MCing, deejaying/mixing, break-dancing, and graffiti. This artistic and cultural movement produced a generation of people—“hip hop America”—who would embrace not only its distinct language, music, and fashion but also its politics, vices, and other social realities. Hip hop culture became popular during the same time that African Americans were responding to the aftermath of the politically charged civil rights movement of the 1960s. While hip hop was developing in basements ...

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