How Hip Hop Followed in the Footsteps of Malcolm X
Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five and the Origins of Hip Hop

Abstract

This paper examines the manner in which the hip hop grew out of the Civil Rights Movement and became a way for disenfranchised black youths, marginalized by society, to express their thoughts and feelings on a world that did want them to rise up. The history of hip hop and its culture is thus a rich one and a complex one that both celebrates youthful joys and energy while also taking different roads towards instigating a dialogue as well. Some hip hop artists have been thoughtful and have challenged the status quo with lyrics and albums that have provoked discussion in a sober-minded way (such as was the case with Tupac Shakur), while others have been more provocative and have set out to disrupt the status quo through a kind of shock and awe approach (such as with NWA, 2 Live Crew, Beastie Boys, and Snoop Dogg). In the end, hip hop’s history and culture is eclectic, fresh, vital, and representative of a movement rooted in black empowerment but also indicative of the oppression that is universally felt by all people of all races and genders at times in their lives no matter where they live. Its use of sampling tracks from other songs and artists that are not in any way associated with hip hop has enabled the genre of music to reinvent songs and sounds in a way that brings new life and new blood to art form. By sampling other artists hip hop culture has transcended the status quo and incorporated everything that has come before into something that is unique in much the same way African American musicians did in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when they developed the musical genres of jazz and blues by incorporating other musical traditions into their own musical experiences and creating something wholly their own. Hip hop history and culture is thus a blend of the black experience in America that is linked to black identity but not limited to blackness, as white artists and audiences have also gravitated to the genre, inspired by its freshness and meaning.

Hip Hop History and Culture

Hip hop began in the 1970s in New York, where emceeing took place at block parties and people like DJ Kool Herc got a name for themselves running a turntable and creating new sounds by manipulating the beats of records (BBC). One of the most common characteristics of emceeing was that the rhymes and lyrics tended to be confrontational and antagonistic to the authorities, boastful, and sexually provocative. These were lyrics and rhymes designed to effect a reaction from the audience. Hip hop artists that emerged from this scene tended to take a serious stance on social issues, however, and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five was no exception. As Jon Pareles points out, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five “proved that hip-hop was more than party music with their 1982 hit ‘The Message,’” which catapulted them to the forefront of the genre with lyrics like: “It's all about money, ain't a damn thing funny You got to have a con in this land of milk and honey” (Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, “The Message”). This is the same kind of lyric that NWA would be rapping about a decade later on the opposite side of the country. However, what it showed was that hip hop came from the streets and was about the real experiences of black youths who saw the hypocrisy and despair of the American Dream, saw the cruel oppression of modern American life in the faces of the homeless and the marginalized. They were simply rapping about the truth of the world they saw and were not attempting to candy-coat it or put a smiling face on it. They were rapping the truth as a way to free themselves from the propaganda and...…knew—but they also moved onwards from this. For instance, Ice Cube celebrated the Nation of Islam for helping him and other blacks to gain a sense of self-respect that was missing in the black community. Just as Malcolm X had converted to the Nation of Islam and clawed his way out of the gutter where he found himself immersed in drugs and crime, so too did Ice Cube turn to a higher path to escape the waywardness of the street life; while for Malcolm X the path was through speaking, for Ice Cube the path was through hip hop: “Soon as we as a people use our knowledge of self to our advantage we will then be able to become and be called blacks,” Ice Cube argued (Decker. 53). Hip hop was a way for him and others to rise above. The same could be said of Beastie Boys, Snoop Dogg, or even 2 Live Crew, whose lyrics were often seen as sexist and explicit.

2 Live Crew was deliberately antagonizing the moral majority, however, and their explicit lyrics were meant to shock and offend. While they may not have reached the heights that other artists reached, the group did show what could be done by way of sampling music, and sampling became a way for hip hop artists to change the world they found around them into something that they could call their own.

In conclusion, Hip hop was about rejecting the status quo and asserting one’s own take on things, borrowing what had come before and putting a new spin on it. It was also about lifting oneself up and sometimes it was just about being provocative and shocking. In the end, however, hip hop was for everyone who felt that they needed a way out of the dull and oppressive world that surrounded them—and thus it may have originated in black experience, but blacks, whites, Asians and everyone could soon identify with it.

Works Cited

BBC. “The birth of hip hop.” BBC.…