The Hip-Hop Culture
Hip Hop emerged in the 1970’s as a form that reflects the street culture of New York’s black people. The tense
environment that has developed as a result of the distressed and marginalized lives of black Americans in the
settlements in the city center called “inner-city”, has emerged as a street gang called Bambaataa in Africa,
gained another dimension by the emergence by directing the anger of the black youth living in the South Bronx
to music, dance and graffiti. Hip Hop culture has generally been manifested by rap music and has even been
referred to as the black American urban youth version of the British punk movement. This culture created a
community matched real and imaginary relationships with people who expressed the true face of displacement,
deceit and helplessness.
The frenzy of the free market economy supported by the capitalist system has caused the Hip Hop boom, so
that the highly influential Hip Hop culture, especially between 1985 and 1995, suddenly became the main
American culture. In these periods of high levels of poverty and at the same time the rate of black people
imprisoned, there have been huge changes in popular culture and these changes have been committed by the
black youth. The origins of rap music and Hip Hop culture are also based on this changing popular culture. Rap
music artists have also tried to describe the increasingly diminished job opportunities, prison conditions
against black people, and inadequate education. In this context, the ability to speak in rhythm has been called
Rap art, which has become an excellent tool to express the anger, pride and value of the individual in society.
Experts acknowledge that these changes affect society in general, but those young black men with low levels of
education are adversely affected. The reasons for this are increasing unemployment, especially in urban
centers, poverty, deterioration of family unity, the displacement of middle-class black Americans leaving the
city center and the gap in the wages of low-skilled workers and university graduates. Considering that lowskilled workers have middle-class income, especially in the 1970s, it is seen that today, especially those who
live in the city center and who do the same work are poor and their income levels are insufficient for their
families and children. Under these circumstances, many black young men resort to drug dealing, which is the
easiest way to make money, because this is the most meaningful and most viable job opportunity for them.
Another important rule that prevails in the streets is “masculinity“. For the young men, in the deepest sense, the
woman is an object of sexuality. The female body and mind, as part of the sexual game in the mind of men and is
an object that must be gained. This does not arise as a result of sexuality, in favor of the winner, but as a reward
from the position of controlling another. According to the street rules, the more women a young man is with,
the more men he grows in that proportion.
Rap music, a form of Hip Hop, has an active artistic task of describing the marginal social life in the city, a
contemporary response to unemployment, poverty and weakening. While critics argued that this kind of music
would not last much longer when it first appeared, Rap music developed and has achieved an unpredictable
success today. In this context, Rap is an art form that reflects the nuances, unhealthy relationships and lives of
black American ghettos, and most importantly, the extraordinary endurance that this society has gained as a
result of all these negativities. Through this music of Hip Hop culture, especially low-income class black people
talked about the daily life of the poor and excluded, and they dealt with drug addiction that entered the lives of
young people. Rap music became a source of hope for the young generation of black because they were able to
present their problems so clearly.