Pre-reading week 12

Is hip-hop conventionally seen as a tool for social justice or critique? Why or why not?

This question deals much with the idea of what the ideal of hip hop is, versus what it has become today.  At first, hip-hop was seen as a means of expression for African Americans and other minority groups to speak out about what was going on in their communities.  Acts of oppression and police brutality that were seen in the neighborhoods of such minority groups were often the topics brought out in hip-hop music.  It was from this oppression that hip-hop got its basis.  Upon its introduction as a new genre of music, hip-hop was this edgy and unprecedented form of sound that espoused ideals such as black power and overcoming the negative conditions that exist in the world.  
Today hip-hop and rap has transformed into a whole different form of music that doesn't really hold on to its original roots.  Today we too often hear of violence, sex, money, and drugs in rap and hip-hop.  So, when at first hip hop was seen as this form of critique of the social sphere, is now a debased form of what it was originally designed to uphold.  

What are some of the barriers to hip-hop artists creating and marketing critical hip-hop?

As seen from the video, large corporations bought out the music genre and then controlled the type of media that would be produced from the genre itself.  This “buying out” of the genre can be seen as its shift from a form of critique to that of a form of media that creates stereotypes of those that are in it.  Before the introduction of these corporations and large corporate labels and deals, the music represented retaliation and expression against oppression.  Higher authorities, seeing the genre as going against their own agendas, then saw it as their duty to take control of it and then suppress it so that the message that they wanted to be displayed was seen by the public.  This is when hip-hop moved to more of a “thug” concept.  And that is what it is today.
Furthermore, in the video we saw that people base their opinions on African Americans from what they see in the music itself.  The students interviewed in the video obviously came from a town where they had never met a Black person before.  In the interview they talked about how the hip-hop videos helped them learn a little bit about the culture of other people.  How can we have people that are so ignorant and oblivious? What is seen in those videos is not an accurate representation of the lives of those participating in the video, but too often people base their opinions on other races based on the videos alone- and that is exactly what the corporations and higher authorities want to be imposed on us.  

This all stems from the idea of social control and manipulation that goes on around us.  

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