In the 1950’s and 1960’s you had civil right leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Rosa Parks. In the 1980’s, 1990’s, and 2000’s you have hip hop music stars 2 Live Crew, DMX, Tupac, and 50 Cent. They may be getting their message out differently, but the message is almost identical. The message is one of empowerment for African Americans. As opposed to using weapons such as guns and knives, they want to use their weapon of their voice. The Civil Rights Movement had a more passive sense of struggle and now the hip hop community wants us to know that the movement is still continuing just not in the way you may expect.
Free Hip Hop and R&B Music is much more political then you may think. It wants to push itself into the everyday culture of the world and wants to make you think. It has changed the meaning of some of the vilest and offensive words in the hip hop and R&B community and made it stand for something they believe in. You hear it in the music they write, and you see it in the free hip hop videosthat many websites show of the underground hip hop music world. Even the most popular free hip hop music videos by JayZ that so many of the black youth listen to has meaning of affirmation to the Hip Hop and R&B community.
Once considered useless noise has turned into a culture phenomenon that has taken over mainstream America and many other countries as well, such as Asia. The hip hop music has made a global impact that the Civil Rights Movement could never compete with. They have gotten their message across in a big way, and will continue to do so without the protest of the larger more political groups. No longer are people saying that they don’t want the hip hop music and R&B music in our communities. In fact, people are clamoring for this music in the way of making hip hop music the best selling of all time. It is more popular than disco ever was, or even Madonna. Many of the white singers are now crossing over to share the message of the hip hop community in their music that they sing.
Though the roots of hip hop music and the hip hop community may have started in clubs deep in the South or subcultures of the bigger cities like New York City, it has come to be bigger than the most compelling articulation of Martin Luther King Jr. It represents their struggles and their need to get rid of ignorance, which is what the Civil Rights Movement was about to begin with. It’s just now that more people are actually listening.
