The Importance of Hip Hop In Our Culture-review by Sherri Rosen Publicity, NYC
What prompted this blog piece was a book a friend suggested I read called “Hip Hop & Philosophy Rhyme2Reason, edited by Derrick Darby & Tommie Shelby, Foreword by Cornel West.
This white girl didn’t have a clue about the origin and philosophy of Hip Hop and Rap. Always had the curiosity, and finally took the time to read this amazing book.
The book opened up my mind and my world to understanding this important part of our culture. Such an amazing addition to our culture of richness, something new and alive, a way of taking injustice and putting into the music.
“They show and prove that rap classics by Lauryn Hill, OutKast, and the Notorious B.I.G. can help us uncover the meaning of love articulated in Plato’s Symposium. We see how Run-D.M.C., Snoop Dogg, and Jay-Z can teach us about self-consciousness and the dialectic in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. And we learn that Rakim, 2Pac, and 50 Cent knowledge us on the conception of God’s essence express in Aquinas’s Summa Theologica.
From project recreation centers to outdoor street parties fully equipped with DJs, MCs, fat speakers, graffiti artists, and breakdancers, hip hop came from the streets. So did philosophy. Not from the streets of NYC but from the streets of ancient Athens.
As quoted by Cornel West “hip-hop music was created by talented black urban youth in the USA that fused New World African musical forms and rhetorical styles with new postmodern technologies. Like the blues, spirituals, and jazz-the greatest art forms to emerge from the USA-hip-hop music expressed and enacted Socratic parhesia (bold, frank, and plain speech in the face of conventional morality and entrenched power.) The basic aims of hip-hop music are threefold–to provide playful entertainment and serious art for the rituals of young people, to forge new ways of escaping social misery, and to explore novel responses for meaning and feeling in a market-driven world.”
There’s also a beautiful chapter (2) in the book called “Ain’t (Just) ’bout da Booty: Funky Reflections on Love which was by Tommie Shelby. It’s beautiful. The entire book brings it on down if you want to take the time to read it, understand it, and it’s not a requirement to even agree with it. But it’s important for you to realize how much this music has added to our culture.
I highly recommend reading it.
Tags: african american, authors, books, hip hop, music, NYC, philosophy, publicist, publicist nyc, publicity, publicity nyc, rap, Sherri Rosen Publicity, writers
This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 1st, 2011 at 2:03 pm and is filed under Clients, Friends and Colleagues, Industry News, Press Releases, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
January 18th, 2013 at 7:54 am
Excellent post. I used to be checking continuously this weblog and I am inspired! Very helpful information specially the remaining phase 🙂 I maintain such information much. I used to be looking for this particular info for a very long time. Thanks and good luck.
December 9th, 2013 at 4:47 pm
. I see this site caters towards the urban genre. My firm assists the facebook accounts of hip hop artists.If your website is interested in promoting clients, let us know. Thanks!
July 28th, 2014 at 6:55 pm
This is really interesting, You’re a very skilled blogger.
I’ve joined your rss feed and look forward to seeking more of
your great post. Also, I’ve shared your website in my
social networks!
August 21st, 2014 at 4:55 pm
No one routes for the evil villan who’s run off with the hero’s beau,
same applies to a site that’s been stuck in Google‘s naughty corner.
* Let you know there are things you can do
to improve y0ur ranking. But it seems Memorial Day wasn’t important enough to Google.