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An Element of Hip Hop Culture that is hardly spoken about is Hip Hop Activism. When people do talk about it, they generally refer to the late 80's when Public Enemy, KRSONE, X-Clan and others were more involved in social issues. But Hip Hop Activism really begins with the birth of Hip Hop Culture.
The early block parties and park jams were more than just entertaining events, they were in essence, demonstrations. Remember, those jams were illegal. Poor Blacks and Latinos could not afford to go to the discotheques, so the Park Jams were “anti-disco” demonstrations. So much so, that when DJ Kool Herc was not allowed to come Deejay at certain clubs, he would hold his block parties near by and completely empty out the club. Eventually, the clubs began to hire him and other Hip Hop Deejays.
Breakers and Graffiti Artists performed and painted on the streets in protest of the fact that art and dance schools were practically non-existent in the inner-city. These art forms also challenged the popular notions that dance has to be rigid and routine, or that art must be defined using traditional methods.
The idea that Hip Hop Culture was always meant to be simply a form of entertainment simply does not fit the facts of history. Bambaataa saw it as a way out of the violent gang life, thus it was partly a social movement. Kool Herc, and his sister Cindy, saw it as a way to supplement their salaries or lack of it, thus is was partly an economic movement. KRSONE saw it as a tool to teach, thus it was partly an educational movement. Chuck D and X-Clan saw it as a way to mobilize the masses towards change, thus it was partly a politcal movement.
People tend to remember “The Message” as the first attempt to use Emceein to speak on a conscious level, but that was not released until after “Rapper’s Delight” had its success. In fact, Melle Mel was not the original writer of the song and Grandmaster Flash did not want to release “The Message” because he did not like its commentary. Flash believed that people would not like it because they were coming to the parties to forget about their troubles for a while, not to hear the ghetto life reflected in a song. And long before Melle Mel ever picked up a mic, Afrika Bambaataa was instructing his Emcees to deliver positive messages to the crowd.
“The Message” may have been the first Hip Hop song to popularize the idea of Conscious Rap, but it was not the first Conscious Rap song. In 1979, the same year the Sugar Hill Gang hit the scene, an Emcee named Daryl Aamaa Nubyhan, with his group Brother D and the Community People, released “How We Gonna Make a Black Nation Rise” on the Black-owned Clappers Records. Brother D was a member of the cultural organization Nation Black Science. He, along with Lister Lowe, owner of Clappers Records, proclaimed, “Clappers Records were never meant to be entertainment, it’s a weapon without compromise.”
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NOTE from the Author: I would like to thank everyone who took the time to read these articles that I have contributed to this site for Hip Hop History Month. I hope that you have found these writings to be informative, as I have done my best to find information that is not generally found in the mainstream media. For those of you who would like to continue studying Hip Hop Culture, here are some of the references I used to research these writings:
"Can't Stop, Won't Stop" by Jeff Chang
"The Gospel of Hiphop" by KRSONE
"The Hip Hop Generation" by Bakari Kitwana
"Fight the Power" by Chuck D
"Ruminations" by KRSONE
"Cut 'n' Mix" by Dick Hebdige
"The Autobiography of James Brown" by James Brown
"The Autobiography of Malcolm X" by Alex Haley
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