Summary: The Hip Hop Generation

When Shawn “Jay Z” Carter and Kanye West proclaimed their membership to the new black elite, they were being modest in their declaration because the Hip Hop echelon had arrived long before 2011. Many of them had not only accumulated a vast amount of wealth a decade prior, but took part in the shift in qualities that determined ones elite status. This alteration from the previous black elite during the fourth wave first emerged when the Hip Hop generation was born. It ultimately came full circle when black and brown youth in urban ghettos in New York united through privations and the fervent need to alter their grim futures. The Hip Hop generation was the first cohort of African Americans born in a post civil rights era. According to Bakari Kitwana in his book The Hip Hop Generation, most …show more content…
For these impoverished youth, their culture and the social relationships connected to their culture was the most valuable feature they had. Hip Hop was created in the early ‘70s in the South Bronx out of two key moments: the death of Cornell “Black Benjy” Benjamin and the Hoe Ave peace meeting in 1971. Black Benjy, a well-known youth who was a political leader with the Ghetto Brothers, a music group and gang who were heavily involved in political activism, was killed while he was trying to stop a fight between two rival gangs. After his death, fears grew that retaliation would ensue causing a riot however; the Ghetto Brothers saw this as an opportunity to unite the gangs of New York at the Hoe Ave peace meeting, which brought forth a truce to stop the violence. Although peace was never completely restored, this meeting allowed black and brown kids to cross boroughs safely in order to party with each other and share their culture, music and fashions which birthed Hip Hop culture and furthered the influence of rap