On August 11th 1973, during a birthday party in an apartment building in the West Bronx of New York, “Hip-Hop” was born. “Hip-Hop” became the most popular genre of music, with artists telling stories through the raps they write with a rhyme scheme, metaphors, and symbolism, similar to poetry itself.
Poetry is literary work that expresses feelings and ideas by using a distinctive style and rhythm. It’s about capturing beauty, intensity, and raw emotion. Both rap and poetry use literary devices like alliteration and assonance. Rap is musical-verbal art, while poetry uses verbal-musical typography. Rap is the most dominant musical and cultural genre in the country because artists express themselves through raw and amazing lyrics and “Boom Bap Beat” instrumentals.Â
The Hip-Hop community spawned influential emcees, rap groups, and underground or gangsta rappers, including “Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Roxxane Shante, Public Enemy, J.Cole, Mobb Deep, Tupac Shakur, A Tribe Called Quest, Nas, Lauryn Hill, Queen Latifah, Young MA, Biggie Smalls, Wu-Tang Clan, N.W.A, Kendrick Lamar, Bestie Boys, Onyx, Mulatto, TLC , Salt-N-Pepa, Outkast, G-Unit, Run DMC, Rico Nasty, Nicki Minaj, Missy Elliott, Saweetie, De La Soul, Gang Starr, Naughty by Nature”, and many more that impacted the music industry with their songs, their style, and their Hip-Hop culture. They also showed the reality of their lifestyles and where they live, and displayed social activism on such topics that still rage on in today’s world, such as “War on Drugs,” “Gang Violence”, and “Police Brutality.”
Hip-Hop is continually reborn in the eyes of a new generation of fans that want to see it prosper, with compelling stories of artists who had to work their way up from the bottom to the top. These artists send messages of why Hip-Hop is amazing and why they feel the way they do, pouring emotion into their songs.
The beauty of rap and poetry is what lies inside it, and like poems the culture of Hip-Hop will be passed down for others to come across as long as we live.
