BARBERCRAFT

 As hip hop has a seen a shift in the means by which its artists express their masculinity, from violence and intimidation to wealth-flaunting and entrepreneurship, it has also seen the emergence of rapper branding.[180] The modern-day hip hop artist is no longer limited to music serving as their sole occupation or source of income. By the early 1990s, major apparel companies "[had] realized the economic potential of tapping into hip hop culture ... Tommy Hilfiger was one of the first major fashion designer[s] who actively courted rappers as a way of promoting his street wear".[181]

 By joining forces, the artist and the corporation are able to jointly benefit from each other's resources. Hip Hop artists are trend-setters and taste-makers. Their fans range from minority groups who can relate to their professed struggles to majority groups who cannot truly relate but like to "consume the fantasy of living a more masculine life".[182]

 The rappers provide the "cool, hip" factor while the corporations deliver the product, advertising, and financial assets. Tommy Hilfiger, one of the first mainstream designers to actively court rappers as a way of promoting his street wear, serves a prototypical example of the hip hip/fashion collaborations:

 In exchange for giving artists free wardrobes, Hilfiger found its name mentioned in both rhyming verses of rap songs and their 'shout-out' lyrics, in which rap artists chant out thanks to friends and sponsors for their support. Hilfiger's success convinced other large mainstream American fashion design companies, like Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein, to tailor lines to the lucrative market of hip hop artists and fans.[183]

 Artists now use brands as a means of supplemental income to their music or are creating and expanding their own brands that become their primary source of income. As Harry Elam explains, there has been a movement "from the incorporation and redefinition of existing trends to actually designing and marketing products as hip hop fashion".[183]

 Hip hop music has spawned dozens of subgenres which incorporate hip hop music production approaches, such as sampling, creating beats, or rapping. The diversification process stems from the appropriation of hip hop culture by other ethnic groups. There are many varying social influences that affect hip hop's message in different nations. It is frequently used as a musical response to perceived political and/or social injustices. In South Africa the largest form of hip hop is called Kwaito, which has had a growth similar to U.S. hip hop. Kwaito is a direct reflection of a post-apartheid South Africa and is a voice for the voiceless; a term that U.S. hip hop is often referred to. Kwaito is even perceived as a lifestyle, encompassing many aspects of life, including language and fashion.[184]

 Kwaito is a political and party-driven genre, as performers use the music to express their political views, and also to express their desire to have a good time. Kwaito is a music that came from a once hated and oppressed people, but it is now sweeping the nation. The main consumers of Kwaito are adolescents and half of the South African population is under 21. Some of the large Kwaito artists have sold more than 100,000 albums, and in an industry where 25,000 albums sold is considered a gold record, those are impressive numbers.[185] Kwaito allows the participation and creative engagement of otherwise socially excluded peoples in the generation of popular media.[186] South African hip hop has made an impact worldwide, with performers such as Tumi, HipHop Pantsula, Tuks Senganga.[187]

 South Sudanese musician Emmanuel Jal uses hip hop to heal war-torn African youth. Jal pictured at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York.

 In Jamaica, the sounds of hip hop are derived from American and Jamaican influences. Jamaican hip hop is defined both through dancehall and reggae music. Jamaican Kool Herc brought the sound systems, technology, and techniques of reggae music to New York during the 1970s. Jamaican hip hop artists often rap in both Brooklyn and Jamaican accents. Jamaican hip hop subject matter is often influenced by outside and internal forces. Outside forces such as the bling-bling era of today's modern hip hop and internal influences coming from the use of anti-colonialism and marijuana or "ganja" references which Rastafarians believe bring them closer to God.[188][189][190]

 Author Wayne Marshall argues that "Hip hop, as with any number of African-American cultural forms before it, offers a range of compelling and contradictory significations to Jamaican artist and audiences. From "modern blackness" to "foreign mind", transnational cosmopolitanism to militant pan-Africanism, radical remixology to outright mimicry, hip hop in Jamaica embodies the myriad ways that Jamaicans embrace, reject, and incorporate foreign yet familiar forms."[191]

 In the developing world, hip hop has made a considerable impact in the social context. Despite the lack of resources, hip hop has made considerable inroads.[85] Due to limited funds, hip hop artists are forced to use very basic tools, and even graffiti, an important aspect of the hip hop culture, is constrained due to its unavailability to the average person. Hip hop has begun making inroads with more than black artists. There are number of other minority artists who are taking center stage as many first generation minority children come of age. One example is rapper Awkwafina, an Asian-American, who raps about being Asian as well as being female. She, like many others, use rap to express her experiences as a minority not necessarily to "unite" minorities together but to tell her story.[192]

 Many hip hop artists from the developing world come to the United States to seek opportunities. Maya Arulpragasm (A.K.A. M.I.A.), a Sri Lanka-born Tamil hip hop artist claims, "I'm just trying to build some sort of bridge, I'm trying to create a third place, somewhere in between the developed world and the developing world.".[193] Another music artist using hip hop to provide a positive message to young Africans is Emmanuel Jal, a former child soldier from South Sudan. Jal is one of the few South Sudanese music artists to have broken through on an international level[194] with his unique form of hip hop and a positive message in his lyrics.[195] Jal has attracted the attention of mainstream media and academics with his story and use of hip hop as a healing medium for war-afflicted people in Africa and he has also been sought out on the international lecture fora such as TED.[196]

 Many K-Pop artists in South Korea have been influenced by hip hop and many South Korean artists perform hip hop music. In Seoul, South Korea, Koreans b-boy.[197]

 Scholars argue that hip hop can have an empowering effect on youth. While there is misogyny, violence, and drug use in rap music videos and lyrics, hip hop also displays many positive themes of self-reliance, resilience, and self-esteem. These messages can be inspiring for a youth living in poverty. A lot of rap songs contain references to strengthening the African American community promoting social causes. Social workers have used hip hop to build a relationship with at-risk youth and develop a deeper connection with the child.[198] Hip hop has the potential to be taught as a way of helping people see the world more critically, be it through forms of writing, creating music, or social activism. The lyrics of hip hop have been used to learn about literary devices such as metaphor, imagery, irony, tone, theme, motif, plot, and point of view.[199]

 Organizations and facilities are providing spaces and programs for communities to explore making and learning about hip hop. An example is the IMP Labs in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. Many dance studios and colleges now offer lessons in hip hop alongside tap and ballet, as well as KRS-One teaching hip hop lectures at Harvard University. Hip hop producer 9th Wonder and former rapper-actor Christopher "Play" Martin from hip hop group Kid-n-Play have taught hip hop history classes at North Carolina Central University[200] and 9th Wonder has also taught a "Hip Hop Sampling Soul" class at Duke University.[201] In 2007, the Cornell University Library established a Hip Hop Collection to collect and make accessible the historical artifacts of hip hop culture and to ensure their preservation for future generations.[202]

 The hip hop community has been a major factor in educating its listeners on HIV/AIDS, a disease that has affected the community very closely. One of the biggest artists of early hip hop, Eazy-E, a member of N.W.A, had died of AIDS in 1995.[203] Since then many artists, producers, choreographers and many others from many different locations have tried to make an impact and raise awareness of HIV in the hip hop community. Many artists have made songs as sort of PSA's to raise awareness of HIV for hip hop listeners, some songs that raise awareness are Salt N Pepa – Let's Talk About AIDS, Coolio – Too Hot and more.[204]

 Tanzanian artists such as Professor Jay and the group Afande Sele are notable for their contributions to this genre of hip hop music and the awareness they have spread for HIV.[205] American writer, activist and hip hop artist Tim'm T. West who was diagnosed with AIDS in 1999, formed queer hip hop group Deep Dickollective who got together to rap about the HIV pandemic among queer black men and LGBTQ activism in hip hop.[206][207]

 A non-profit organization out of New York City called Hip Hop 4 Life, strives to educate the youth, especially the low income youth about social and political problems in their areas of interest, which includes hip hop.[208] Hip Hop 4 Life has held many events around the New York City area to raise awareness for HIV and other problems surrounding these low income children and their communities.

 Since the age of slavery, music has long been the language of African American identity. Because reading and writing were forbidden under the auspices of slavery, music became the only accessible form of communication. Hundreds of years later, in inner-city neighborhoods plagued by high illiteracy and dropout rates, music remains the most dependable medium of expression. Hip Hop is thus to modern day as Negro Spirituals are to the plantations of the old South: the emergent music articulates the terrors of one's environment better than written, or spoken word, thereby forging an "unquestioned association of oppression with creativity [that] is endemic" to African American culture".[209]

Eric Barber Music

 As a result, lyrics of rap songs have often been treated as "confessions" to a number of violent crimes in the United States.[210] It is also considered to be the duty of rappers and other hip hop artists (DJs, dancers) to "represent" their city and neighborhood. This demands being proud of being from disadvantaged cities neighborhoods that have traditionally been a source of shame, and glorifying them in lyrics and graffiti. This has potentially been one of the ways that hip hop has become regarded as a "local" rather than "foreign" genre of music in so many countries around the world in just a few decades. Nevertheless, sampling and borrowing from a number of genres and places is also a part of the hip hop milieu, and an album like the surprise hit Kala by Anglo-Tamil rapper M.I.A. was recorded in locations all across the world and features sounds from a different country on every track.[211]

 According to scholar Joseph Schloss, the essentialist perspective of hip hop conspicuously obfuscates the role that individual style and pleasure plays in the development of the genre. Schloss notes that Hip Hop is forever fossilized as an inevitable cultural emergent, as if "none of hip-hop's innovators had been born, a different group of poor black youth from the Bronx would have developed hip-hop in exactly the same way".[209]

 However, while the pervasive oppressive conditions of the Bronx were likely to produce another group of disadvantaged youth, he questions whether they would be equally interested, nonetheless willing to put in as much time and energy into making music as Grandmaster Flash, DJ Kool Herc, and Afrika Bambaataa. He thus concludes that Hip Hop was a result of choice, not fate, and that when individual contributions and artistic preferences are ignored, the genre's origin becomes overly attributed to collective cultural oppression.

 Graffiti depicting US rapper 50 Cent. Larry Nager of The Cincinnati Enquirer wrote that 50 Cent has "earned the right to use the trappings of gangsta rap – the macho posturing, the guns, the drugs, the big cars and magnums of champagne. He's not a poseur pretending to be a gangsta; he's the real thing."[212]

 Hip hop music artists and advocates have stated that hip hop has been an authentic (true and "real") African-American artistic and cultural form since its emergence in inner-city Bronx neighborhoods in the 1970s. Some music critics, scholars and political commentators[who?] have denied hip hop's authenticity. Advocates who claim hip hop is an authentic music genre state that it is an ongoing response to the violence and discrimination experienced by black people in the United States, from the slavery that existed into the 19th century, to the lynchings of the 20th century and the ongoing racial discrimination faced by blacks.[213][214]

 Paul Gilroy and Alexander Weheliye state that unlike disco, jazz, R&B, house music, and other genres that were developed in the African-American community and which were quickly adopted and then increasingly controlled by white music industry executives, hip hop has remained largely controlled by African American artists, producers and executives.[215] In his book, Phonographies, Weheliye describes the political and cultural affiliations that hip hop music enables.[216]

 In contrast, Greg Tate states that the market-driven, commodity form of commercial hip hop has uprooted the genre from the celebration of African-American culture and the messages of protest that predominated in its early forms.[217] Tate states that the commodification and commercialization of hip hop culture undermines the dynamism of the genre for African-American communities.

 In contrast, Greg Tate states that the market-driven, commodity form of commercial hip hop has uprooted the genre from the celebration of African-American culture and the messages of protest that predominated in its early forms.[217] Tate states that the commodification and commercialization of hip hop culture undermines the dynamism of the genre for African-American communities.

 These two dissenting understandings of hip hop's scope and influence frame debates that revolve around hip hop's possession of or lack of authenticity.[218] Anticipating the market arguments of Tate and others, both Gilroy and Weheliye assert that hip hop has always had a different function than Western popular music as a whole, a function that exceeds the constraints of market capitalism.[219]

 Weheliye notes, "Popular music, generally in the form of recordings, has and still continues to function as one of the main channels of communication between the different geographical and cultural points in the African diaspora, allowing artists to articulate and perform their diasporic citizenship to international audiences and establish conversations with other diasporic communities."[219] For Paul Gilroy, hip hop proves an outlet of articulation and a sonic space in which African Americans can exert control and influence that they often lack in other sociopolitical and economic domains.[220]

 In "Phonographies", Weheyliye explains how new sound technologies used in hip hop encourage "diasporic citizenship" and African-American cultural and political activities.[221] Gilroy states that the "power of [hip hop] music [lies] in developing black struggles by communicating information, organizing consciousness, and testing out or deploying ... individual or collective" forms of African-American cultural and political actions.[220] In the third chapter of The Black Atlantic, "Jewels Brought from Bondage: Black Music and the Politics of Authenticity", Gilroy asserts that these elements influence the production of and the interpretation of black cultural activities. What Gilroy calls the "Black Atlantic" music's rituals and traditions are a more expansive way of thinking about African-American "blackness", a way that moves beyond contemporary debates around essentialist and anti-essentialist arguments. As such, Gilroy states that music has been and remains a central staging ground for debates over the work, responsibility, and future role of black cultural and artistic production.[222]

 Old-school hip hop performer DJ Kool Herc, along with traditional hip hop artists Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Caz, originally held views against mainstream rap.[223] However, recent interviews indicate they have changed their ways to a certain extent.[224][original research?] However, rappers like KRS-One still feel a strong disapproval of the rap industry, especially through mainstream media.[225][original research?]

 In b-boying, most supporters have begun to slowly involve more industry sponsorship through events on the World BBoy Series and through the UDEF powered by Silverback Open.[226] Other b-boys have begun to accept using the term breakdance, but only if the term b-boying is too difficult to communicate to the general public. Regardless of such, b-boys and b-girls still exist to showing lack of support to jams and events that they feel represent the culture as a sport, form of entertainment and as well through capitalism. Battle Rap as an industry has also been strongly supported by old-school/ golden-era legends such as Herc, Kid Capri and KRS-One.[227][228]

 In 2012, hip hop and rap pioneer Chuck D, from the group Public Enemy criticized young hip hop artists from the 2010s, stating that they have taken a music genre with extensive roots in underground music and turned it into commercialized pop music.[229] In particular, seminal figures in the early underground, politically motivated music, such as Ice-T, have criticized current hip hop artists for being more concerned with image than substance.[230] Critics have stated that 2010s hip hop artists are contributing to cultural stereotyping of African-American culture and are poseur gangsters. Critics have also stated that hip hop music promotes drug use and violence.[231][232][233]

 Hip hop has been criticized by rock-centric critics who state that hip hop is not a true art form and who state that rock and roll music is more authentic. These critics are advocating a viewpoint called "rockism" which favors music written and performed by the individual artist (as seen in some famous singer-songwriter-led rock bands) and is against 2000s (decade)-era hip hop, which these critics argue give too large a role to record producers and digital sound recording. Hip hop is seen as being too violent and explicit, in comparison with rock. Some contend that the criticisms have racial overtones, as these critics deny that hip hop is an art form and praising rock genres that prominently feature white males.[234]

 Hip hop artist Lauryn Hill has been successful as a solo performer and as a member of the Fugees. This photo shows her performing at the Ottawa Bluesfest in 2012.

 The hip hop music genre and its subculture has been criticized for its gender bias and its negative impacts on women in African-American culture. Gangsta rap artists such as Eazy-E, Snoop Dogg, 2Pac and Dr. Dre have, primarily in the 1990s, rapped lyrics that portray women as sex toys and inferior to or otherwise dependent upon men.[235] Between 1987 and 1993, over 400 hip hop songs had lyrics that described violence towards women, including rape, sexual violence, assault, and murder.[236] These anti-women lyrics have led some male listeners to make physical threats toward women and they have created negative stereotypes of young urban African-American women.[237]