Gangsta' rap: Empowerment by Music

1. Rap: Culture & Identity (introduction)


Serious social critics could once dismiss hip hop's purveyors as a bunch of crude vulgarians extolling ghetto-centric lifestyles. In spite of this, Hip hop has become one of the most influential U.S. cultural exports. In every city on the planet, there are hip hop communities that not only have adopted the percussion-heavy music and spoken-word vocals, but have appropriated the sartorial and attitudinal style of the black and Latino youth who created the genre.
Perhaps the most exportable aspect of hip hop is its existential sensibility – its celebration of place, despite limitations. With verbal dexterity, hip hop's creators transformed themselves from ghetto dwellers into esteemed characters involved in complex narratives. Hip hop infused their neighborhoods with cultural currency and mythical resonance. Hip hop culture renamed and re-imagined.
Some 25 years after its birth, the genre has become a $5 billion industry but remains tr...