“The poverty line, we not above /So out come the mask and glove cause we ain’t feelin’ the love/ We ain’t doing crime for the sake of doing crime/ We movin’ dimes cause we ain’t doin’ fine” - Jay Z, Say Hello. These four lines are the embodiment of the relationship between hip hop and what happens in the less glamorous parts of the nation’s star city, New York. For decades New York has been the hip hop headquarters, to a point where the goal was and is still to be named “King of New York.” Hip hop was born in New York in the late 1970’s due to the many problems facing the black community, such as the mass impoverishment of the New York slums and the school-to-prison pipeline, which pushed kids out of school, into gangs, and then into prisons. Many blacks looked for an outlet and, for some, that outlet was music. Hip hop was
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The American Civil Liberties Union defines the school-to-prison pipeline as “the policies and practices that push our nation 's schoolchildren, especially our most at-risk children, out of classrooms and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems.” This process begins from the lack of money circulating within New York. Because of the deficit of money, the Government hardly spent time and money on standard government-issued services, such as schools and police stations. Poor schools did not help students grow mentally, but encouraged dropouts and flooded the streets with unsupervised teens. These teens joined up for protection and caused anarchy throughout the streets of New York with their violent altercations or stealing just to get by. When the police can make it to these slums, it often ends in the unlawful death of American teens or the unreasonable incarceration of someone who made a mistake. The lack of resources in many black urban neighborhoods led many black men ages 16-26 into gangs and/or prison during the 1960’s and
The American Civil Liberties Union defines the school-to-prison pipeline as “the policies and practices that push our nation 's schoolchildren, especially our most at-risk children, out of classrooms and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems.” This process begins from the lack of money circulating within New York. Because of the deficit of money, the Government hardly spent time and money on standard government-issued services, such as schools and police stations. Poor schools did not help students grow mentally, but encouraged dropouts and flooded the streets with unsupervised teens. These teens joined up for protection and caused anarchy throughout the streets of New York with their violent altercations or stealing just to get by. When the police can make it to these slums, it often ends in the unlawful death of American teens or the unreasonable incarceration of someone who made a mistake. The lack of resources in many black urban neighborhoods led many black men ages 16-26 into gangs and/or prison during the 1960’s and