Hip Hop Fashion History

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Hip Hop finds its ethnic origins in Jamaican music and DJs in the seventies who used two

turntables to create longer drum breaks in records for dance parties giving rise to "break dancing"

and "break dancers" now known as b­boys and b­girls. DJs and MCs popularized the technique of

speaking over beats and the culture expanded to include street dance and graffiti art. Embraced by

working class urban and young African­Americans, the music stems from African American forms

of music including jazz, soul, gospel, and reggae.

Background

“Afrika Bambaataa basically is The One”, says Jeff Chang, hip­hop historian and author of the

book Can’t Stop Won’t Stop. Bambaataa’s role was carrying the gospel of hip hop.

Each city

contributed various elements to hip hop fashion’s its overall style visibleseen worldwide today.

Hip hop fashion has changed significantly during its history, and today, it is an important part of

popular fashion as a whole across the world and for all ethnicities. Popular accessories included

large sunglasses, bucket hats, name belts, and multiple rings. Heavy gold jewelry was also popular

in the 1980s. The heavy jewelry was suggestive of prestige and wealth, and some have connected

the style of Africanism. Hip hop fashion in this period also influenced high fashion designs.

Hip hop also changed society throughout time. Hip hop has had and overwhelming influence on

the black community in America, as well as society as a whole. Hip Hop is more than music, Hip

Hop is a culture. Over the past three decades, Hip Hop has influenced and uplifted America,

speaking up for generations and providing a voice to a group of people trying to deliver a message.

Opponents of Hip Hop culture argue that the music is aggressive in nature and promotes

Rap and Hip Hop has been criticized because of the sexismist, violence, and homophobia that are

present in many lyrics. Not all hip hop fits that category. In fact, the commercial rappers and hip

hop artists contribute less than 1% of the genre. Hip hop that began as party music back in the

black culture in South Bronx, New York around 1973 has been co­opted by corporate music

producers, kept dumbed down and offensive because it sells to the lowest common denominator.

The new trend in hip hop is a different kind of artistry that invites another look at a culture trying

to highlight and hopefully reverse the persuasion that has been wrongly viewed for so long.

Violence in rap is not a call to arms or to violence but an outcry from what is an already

exsitingexisting world view with little hope and the negativity that arises from long time deep

inequities divided mostly along racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic lines. It comes from subjugation

and socially produced irrational hate that is projected , hate projected toward people of color

blacks and self­hatred by people of color who have been blacks themselves taught to them