Rap's Expression Of African American Culture

Rap is used as a method of communication, “ Rap is used to communicate a crisis beyond the public spaces occupied only by black rappers and black audiences.” (Bohlman) The rap genre used to only be for black audiences and the people who were experiencing the things that the rappers were rapping about. After the Rodney King Trial and all the songs that followed, rap became a method of communication for people to know what was happening in the inner city through an African American’s point of view. The article stated, “The message did not simply stay in the improvised neighborhoods.” (Bohlman) The message of these songs spread throughout the entire country. People who have never listened to rap before were listening to the songs about the Rodney …show more content…
Rap has documented racial-injustices and has embodied the profound tensions of this history. (Bohlman) If you listen to songs from the past you can see a history leading up to now and how African Americans have been mistreated by not only police. In the journal article The State of Rap they said, “Rap music is a collective expression of African American culture.” (Decker) The lyrics in most rap songs show what life was and is like living as an African American. For instance in the song Trapped by 2pac he says, “If one more cop harasses me, I might just go psycho.” This shows that so many cops have harassed him; he has had enough of it. Harassment makes people go crazy when it happens too much and too often. Ice-T, also a famous rapper, said that his song Cop Killer is “the complaint of a homie fed up with police brutality.” (Neal) Ice-T now plays a cop on TV, which I think is ironic because his song Cop Killer was a very popular song in this “war” against the police. It’s hard to think if he is a sellout and if he still believes what he was rapping about in that song or he changed his beliefs. In the journal, Pop and Circumstances they said, “Hip-Hop nationalist are organic cultural intellectuals to the degree that their music is directly linked to everyday struggles of black folk” (Decker) I think what the author of this is saying is that the …show more content…
Marvin Gaye wrote in his song Inner City blues, “Trigger happy policing, panic is spreading.” (Neal) This song was about the problems for people living in the inner city, and of course police brutality is a big issue so it had to be mentioned. He mentioned that these cops are happy to pull the trigger on people who are from the inner city. The second part of Gaye’s lyric about panic is what is really happening in the inner city. People are becoming panicked when they see police because they fear for their lives, and it is spreading. The very famous singer Bruce Springsteen wrote a song called American Skin (41 shots) about a man who was shot and killed by 19 of the 41 bullets that were meant for him by police. A lyric in the song is, “You get killed just for living in your American Skin.” This man was killed for being an immigrant and living the American Dream. NO one should get killed for living in American and not being white. A rock/punk band called Rage against the Machine has a song called Killing in the Name of. This song is very powerful because of its lyrics. They repeat the same line many times throughout the song. The most powerful line in the song is, “Some of those that work forces, are the same that burn crosses.” They were saying that the police officers are part of the KKK, which is a very racist group toward African americans. They do not like anything that the African