Currency, Lil' Wayne, and Remy Ma

Andy 02/17/2009 10:58:00 PM

I would add that hip hop culture also included djaying/sampling and fashion, and therefore collectively hip hop culture allowed youth to not only enjoy themselves but to carve their own identities. While the overarching idea is that hip hop consumers are always young, according to hip hop activist Toni Blackman, �really contrary to what the media presents, the hip-hop generation is really now fifteen to forty-five� (Richardson 63). The hip hop generation thus can be described as anyone living or born after the birth of hip hop culture in the mid 1970s who were involved in the culture in one way or another. Hip hop culture then, including graffiti, breakdancing, rap music, djaying/sampling, and fashion and hip hop culture now, mostly consisting of hip hop music and fashion (although breakdancers and other forms of popular dancing and graffiti artists still exist) were and are ways that African Americans express themselves and �bring together a tangle of some of the most complex social, cultural, and political issues in contemporary American society� (Rose 2). Furthermore, although hip hop music often reflects contradictory articulations of life, it is not a sign of lacking intellectual clarity, as Rose stresses, but are a part of discourses that �offer more than one cultural, social or political viewpoint� (2). It is only when these polyvocal discourses of the hip hop generation are ripped from the social contexts in which they are embedded that they seem irrational and unarticulated (2). ------------------------------------------------------------ Andy,