Political hip hop
| 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. 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. 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.
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. 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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