And yet, for most of its history, hip-hop has been regarded as the kind of music that you love despite its alleged flaws – a guilty pleasure. It may be the quintessential modern American art form, the country’s greatest cultural contribution to the world. Hip-hop remained proudly unreformed, but it kept seducing listeners. It’s not hard to understand why many concerned listeners and musicians – including Chuck D – have wanted to reshape hip-hop, hoping to transform it into a genre that would be a more unambiguous force for good in the world. The key to the genre’s continual rise has been its insistence on being, decade after decade, outrageously entertaining. In fact, hip-hop has not always told the truth often, the practice of rapping has seemed less like reporting and more like bullshitting. But as an analysis of the music, it is not particularly insightful, not least because it doesn’t make hip-hop sound like much fun. “The only thing that gives the straight-up facts on how the black youth feels is a rap record.”Īs a defence of hip-hop, this may be effective – a way to push back against all the people who say that rap records were worthless, or even harmful. #Hip hop rap tv#“Rap is black America’s TV station,” Chuck D told Spin magazine in 1988. Just as Bob Dylan helped popularise the idea that singers should be truth tellers, Public Enemy helped popularise the idea that rappers should be revolutionaries.Ĭhuck D, from Public Enemy, encouraged listeners to think of hip-hop as an authentic reflection of life in some of the US’s toughest neighbourhoods, and as an indispensable chronicle of the African American experience. Starting in the late 80s, Public Enemy honed a form of hip-hop that was militant and incandescently righteous – the group’s records made rapping seem like serious business. T he fake protesters who interrupted the Black Sheep album, complaining about the “ho zone”, reflected the influence of one hip-hop act in particular. “Rap music don’t have to teach you anything.” Hip-hop is entertainment, but more than other genres – more than country, or R&B, or even rock’n’roll – hip-hop has often been asked to provide something greater than mere entertainment. “Nobody else has stereotyped any other particular music as being something that has to teach,” he said. In 1992, in an interview with the Source, for years hip-hop’s most important magazine, Mista Lawnge, the Black Sheep’s resident producer, complained that too many hip-hop acts were rushing to meet the demand for “message”-oriented music. For similar reasons, rappers are eager to engage with their detractors – more than singers, they must worry about social standing, because that standing is what gives them the right, and the credibility, to speak and to be believed. And so rappers spend lots of time explaining who they are, what they’re doing and why they deserve your attention. But rappers are more exposed than singers, because their form of expression is more similar to speech. Singers can hide their words – no matter how formulaic or spurious – beneath a tune. Think Eminem’s iconic “Lose Yourself.”Ĭue up the theme music to Rocky, and let’s get to it.Black Sheep in Brooklyn in 1994. While not every rap song that inspires is necessarily an anthem, all anthems are inspirational, so it’s hardly surprising that our canon of all-time great motivational hip-hop songs is chock-full of them. There aren’t many musical experiences more beautiful than when a rapper waxes poetic over an earth-shattering beat-a core tenant of all anthems. An anthem is like a banger or slapper, in that it’s carried by the type of production that’ll have your group of friends throwing bows in the club like Disturbing the Peace circa 2000, only it doubles as gospel. Then there is the top tier of motivational rap songs, which is made up of tracks that embody qualities similar to the aforementioned group but share an unmistakable identity. Banger isn’t the word anthem, more like. Somewhere in the middle lies rags-to-riches classics (see “C.R.E.A.M,” “Juicy,” “Exhibit C”) that are inspirational largely because they tell tales of young men fighting their way out of poverty by any means necessary. On the opposite side of the spectrum, there are uplifting hymns like “Keep Ya Head Up,” “Ultralight Beam,” and “Love Yourz,” which inspire by radiating hope and positivity. There are certain tracks -songs like “Dreams and Nightmares” and “Knuck If You Buck”- that are motivational to the extent that, if played at a specific volume with a particular group of individuals, can convince you to commit violence against another person. You just know one when it smacks you upside the head. You know the ones that get you hyped, and the ones that make you move. Every interpretation of music is subjective, and people are motivated by different things, so there is no single way to define a “motivational” hip-hop song .
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