Hip Hop's Song Analysis

Hip-Hop’s Disapproval of the 43rd President and Hurricane Katrina
Hip-Hop’s criticism of George W. Bush is a good example of hip-hop’s reflection of Black public opinion. The Republican candidate who already had a low approval rating of 57% amongst African-Americans received an even lower approval rating after his lackluster efforts to support Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 (Jones, 2003; Cillizza & Sullivan 2013).
Prior to 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, Atlanta rapper Jadakiss expressed his discontent in his 2004, chart topping single “Why?” This song, filled with skepticism, questioned President George Bush, the Republican administration, the 2000 national election and the events of September 11, 2001. For these reasons, “Why?” received

New Orleans has coined the bounce sound. Houston originated chopped and screwed, slowing down the bpms (beats per minute) to half time and cutting and looping a song. Atlanta is very diverse, as they have sampled from all of the other centers, but can closely associated with the up-tempo heavy-bass Miami sound (Speyer, 2003). Memphis, on the other hand, is known for a "Halloween kind of sound, real scary and creepy" and 'slowly but surely' areas like Jackson, Mississippi, and Charlotte, North Carolina are developing their own scenes (Speyer, 2003).
Houston kicked off the Southern hip-hop trends in the 1980's with pioneers such as the Geto Boys and UGK. Both groups we're overtly conscious discussing not only poverty, but also the implications of drug dealing and violence (Smith, 2004; Sanneh 2005). The early 1990's brought in Houston's signature chopped and screwed sound when DJ Screw made his name is a "psychedelic remixer" (Sanneh, 2005.) But the Houston sound took a while to expand to the rest of the US because like the other epicenters the sound of the artist on the independent labels stayed local (Speyer,

Black men have been taught from a young age to be wary of how they speak to the police (Hughes, 2014). Grandparents of millennials have told their grandchildren firsthand stories of segregation. Flags of the Confederate Army still fly high in some of the South’s state capitals. It didn’t take the highly publicized deaths of Trayvon Martin or Jordan Davis for Southerners to realize this country’s systematic injustices, as the South has been well aware of the countries racial injustices since the days of slavery.
Troy Davis, convicted of the 1989 murder of Officer Mark McPhails in Savannah, Georgia, was executed by lethal injection on September 21, 2011 (MTV, 2011). Atlanta Rapper Big Boi and several other artists rallied behind Davis in support of him not being executed. To their dismay, after outcries of Southern artists via song and Twitter for clemency, and despite numerous attempts to appeal, Troy Davis was executed at 11:08 pm. His final words were “I did not personally kill your son, father and brother,” Davis said speaking to the family of the slain officer, “I am innocent” (MTV,