Hip-hop rose out of a particular regional confluence of creativity, economic despair and strong African, Caribbean and Latin rhythmic and cultural roots.

In the early 1970s, the New York City borough, the Bronx, was home to thriving but increasingly isolated African American, Caribbean, and Latino communities. Large government-planned public transportation and public housing projects removed many single-family homes, leaving behind blocks of demolished structures. The South Bronx, cut off from the rest of the borough by the construction of the Cross Bronx Expressway, became further isolated from the surrounding city.

A departure from the discos popular of the day, underground and often spontaneous outdoor dance parties spread throughout the borough, featuring the dance, lyricism and DJing that would form the backbone of hip-hop culture. Responding to the lack of access to conventional power in the form of jobs, education and property, the music contained expressions of personal bravado and communal party enjoyment poetically delivered through specific contemporary forms of African American and Jamaican storytelling.

The hip-hop cultural movement was initially defined by four main elements: B-boying (or breakdancing), graffiti art, DJing, and rapping, or MCing. Rap, the practice of performing or rhyming to music or beats, soon propelled hip-hop into the mainstream.

Major themes in the lyrical content of early hip-hop had much to do with analyzing the economic systems surrounding contemporary urban poor communities. At the same time, stiffer sentencing for non-violent crime swelled the prison population in New York and nationwide. When the crack epidemic exploded in the 1980s, making a highly potent and addictive form of cocaine widely available, crime rates soared and many families were ripped apart. Racial disparities in incarceration in U.S. prisons skyrocketed: in the 1980s, the number of African Americans admitted to state and federal prisons increased from 39 to 53 percent.^[1]

The cultural response, largely within communities of color, was to resist against these intense pressures with animosity and confrontation. As commercial rap spread to white America via radio airwaves and television screens, what was initially a form of primarily African American expression and potential political resistance became a multi-million-dollar marketing force. Consumers of hip-hop craved sensationalist music, and, as the record industry already knew, sex and violence sells.

Controversial issues in commercial rap and mainstream hip-hop culture include media representations of masculinity, misogyny and homophobia. How can consumers maintain media literacy in the face of such images? As hip-hop in the twenty-first century has become a worldwide marketing force and the definition of a generation in itself, these issues are no longer limited to a subculture, but are also representative of general American culture.

The national broadcast of HIP-HOP: Beyond Beats And Rhymes is supported by a comprehensive national Community Engagement Campaign designed to educate both young consumers and media makers about issues of gender, race and community values.

References
1. Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice