Political Rap
| Political hip hop | |
|---|---|
| Stylistic origins | |
| Cultural origins | 1980s |
| Derivative forms | Conscious hip hop |
| Other topics | |
| List of political hip hop artists | |
Political hip hop is a subgenre of hip hop music that was developed in the 1980s as a way of turning rap music into a call for action and a form of social activism. Inspired by 1970s political preachers such as The Last Poets and musician Gil Scott-Heron, Public Enemy was the first predominately political hip hop group. It has helped to create a new form of social expression for subordinate groups to speak about their exclusions, injustices and lack of power. Political hip hop is the use of hip hop music to send political messages to inspire action or to convince the listener of a particular worldview. There is no all-encompassing political hip hop ideology; rather, there are multiple perspectives that range anywhere from Libertarianism to the values of the Five Percent Nation.
Conscious hip hop, or socially conscious hip-hop, is a subgenre of hip hop that challenges the dominant cultural, political, philosophical, and economic consensus, and/or comments on social issues and conflicts. Conscious hip hop is not necessarily overtly political, but the two are sometimes used interchangeably. The term "nation-conscious rap" has been used to more specifically describe hip hop music with strong political messages and themes. Themes of conscious hip hop include afrocentricity, religion, aversion to crime & violence, culture, the economy, or depictions of the struggles of ordinary people. Conscious hip hop often seeks to raise awareness of social issues, leaving the listeners to form their own opinions, rather than aggressively advocating for certain ideas and demanding actions.
Before the emergence of political hip hop, the Black Power Movement and the emphasis on black pride arising in the mid-1960s and blossoming in the early 1970s inspired several commentaries that incorporated Black Power ideological elements.The proto-rap of Gil Scott-Heron is an early influence on political and conscious rap, though most of his earlier socially conscious and political albums fall within the jazz, soul, and funk genres. Songs expressing the theme of black pride include James Brown's "Say it Loud" (1969), and Billy Paul's "Am I Black Enough for You?" (1972). The ideals articulated by Gil Scott-Heron and other artists were not a reality. Following Ronald Reagan’s election as President, conditions in inner-city black communities worsened and the economic, political, sociological and technological forces in the 1980s put changed the commentaries in R&B. “Since the 1980s, R&B, and Hip Hop political commentators have been forced to address worsening social problems, including high unemployment, police brutality, incarceration, inadequate public schools, political apathy, and dysfunctional behaviours that perpetuate oppression. Changes in predominant African-American musical genres were closely correlated with major transformations in the sociopolitical and economic environment for African Americans. One of the first socially conscious hip-hop songs was "How We Gonna Make The Black Nation Rise?" by Brother D with Collective Effort. The first big hit hip hop song containing conscious rap was Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five's "The Message", an influential political and conscious hip hop track, decrying the poverty, violence, and dead-end lives of the urban poor of the time. Furthermore, the complex sociopolitical issues before hip hop and during all of its stages severely influenced its birth and direction.
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