3. Rocawear is a brand of apparel created by rapper Jay Z in 1999, who had tremendous influence in the hip hop industry from as far back as twenty years ago. It was a spin off Roc-A-Fella Records, based in New York, the home of hip hop music, and designs a range of clothing, shoes, and accessories replicative of hip hop fashion, “becoming the destination for fashionable and street savvy consumers” that “continues to focus of providing clever innovations in design, fabrication and application to its customer.” The style for both the men and women lines, include formal and informal design, with many of the pieces of clothing displaying the “Rocawear” label. “It may merely look like oversized jeans and hooded sweatshirts, but the $5 billion male urban-clothing niche is growing faster than any other apparel category,” contributing to the Rocawear success” (Wadlington, 2004, pg. 8).
a. The intended audience is a middle class group because T-shirts rangefrom twenty dollars and up and jeans costs starting at sixty dollars, which
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This club emulates hip hop culture because it is a typical scene from hip hop videos where the settings take place in an upscale club, where people can drink and party, privately, protected by the club’s exclusiveness, where many of the guests dress to impress each other, as the dress code directly states. Partying and the club seen is a prominent part of hip hop culture because this culture originally began with backyard and street parties, similar to the ones that take place at the 40/40 lounge . In these club settings, historically and presently, “pressures to sexualized interaction with other young people on the hip hop dance floor may well be present in the interpretations that young people of the visual imagery of the people dancing in the club, of hip hop music videos and their lyrics,” a stereotypical image that many artists and hip hop enthusiasts seek to maintain and participate in” (Munoz-Laboy &Weinstein & Parker, 2007, pg.
In modern day society, popular culture has gained equal status to world issues and politics. Music, movies, and literature have started cultural revolutions and challenged the straight-forward thinking many individuals have accepted in the past. But while popular culture can advance new ideas and create movements, it also has the ability to challenge advancements society has made. Imani Perry’s essay, The Venus Hip Hop and the Pink Ghetto, focuses on hip hop and its negative impact on women and body image.
Hip-Hop became characterized by an aggressive tone marked by graphic descriptions of the harshness and diversity of inner-city life. Primarily a medium of popular entertainment, hip-hop also conveys the more serious voices of youth in the black community. Though the approaches of rappers became more varied in the latter half of the 1980s, message hip-hop remained a viable form for addressing the problems faced by the black community and means to solve those problems. The voices of "message" hip...
When looking at the landscape of Hip-Hop among African Americans, from the spawn of gangsta rap in the mid 1980s to current day, masculinity and an idea of hardness is central to their image and performance. Stereotypical to Black masculinity, the idea of a strong Black male - one who keeps it real, and is defiant to the point of violence - is prevalent in the genre. This resistant, or even compensatory masculinity, encompasses: the hyper masculinity rife in the Western world, misogyny, and homophobia, all noticeable in their lyrics, which is in part a result of their containment within the Black community. The link of masculinity and rap music was established due to this containment, early innovators remaking public spaces in their segregated neighbourhoods. A notion of authentic masculinity arose from the resistant nature of the genre, but the move to the mainstream in the 90s created a contradiction to their very image - resistance. Ultimately, this in part led to the construction of the masculinity defined earlier, one that prides itself on its authenticity. I’ll be exploring how gender is constructed and performed in Hip Hop, beginning with a historical framework, with the caveat of showing that differing masculine identities in the genre, including artists
"Kanye West: The Evolution of an Icon's Clothes." Esquirecom Article. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Mar.
As hip hop culture became prevalent in pop culture, so did black culture. Hip hop stems from black struggle. Their vernacular, songs, and spiritual ways were different from what whites were used to. Their different lifestyle of “living on the edge” was intriguing yet inaccessible for the whites living among them. Thus, this initiated America’s fascination with the culture. It became about what people assume and perceive about black people rather than what they actually are. In essence, an essential to cool is being on the outside, looking in. In the media and celebrities today,
In the words of rapper Busta Rhymes, “hip-hop reflects the truth, and the problem is that hip-hop exposes a lot of the negative truth that society tries to conceal. It’s a platform where we could offer information, but it’s also an escape” Hip-hop is a culture that emerged from the Bronx, New York, during the early 1970s. Hip-Hop was a result of African American and Latino youth redirecting their hardships brought by marginalization from society to creativity in the forms of MCing, DJing, aerosol art, and breakdancing. Hip-hop serves as a vehicle for empowerment while transcending borders, skin color, and age. However, the paper will focus on hip-hop from the Chican@-Latin@ population in the United States. In the face of oppression, the Chican@-Latin@ population utilized hip hop music as a means to voice the community’s various issues, desires, and in the process empower its people.
These articles depict the controversies of the hip hop industry and how that makes it difficult for one to succeed. Many of these complications and disputes may be invisible to the population, but these articles take the time to reveal them.
Masses of the Japanese population enjoy listening to American hip-hop today. Some youths actually visit the United States to experience what they believe to be real hip-hop culture. When one thinks of hip-hop culture, one would tend to imagine blowzy clothes, violent lyrics, drugs, guns, and chains. These are just some of the factors that outsiders tend to form together to form a generalization of hip-hop. Despite these negative associations, hip-hop has actually been dominating the Japanese culture and music industry. The Japanese hip-hop movement is economically, culturally, and generationally
The oppressive picture displaying the sexual objectification of women that most hip-hop artists paint while rapping can only be described as appalling. Many artists imply that a woman?s sole purpose is to gratify a man?s every sexual desire. For instance, ?Nelly?s ?Tip Drill? goes as far to portray scantily clad women as sexual appliances? (Weisstuch). Though Nelly is relatively mild when contrasted to other hip-hop artists, his actualization of women cannot be ignored. By calling women ?sexual appliances,? Nelly essentially promotes the idea that it is customary to view all women solely as sexual objects. Moreover, the generic ?sex appe...
Hip hop originated in the ghetto areas of New York during the 1970’s and is a mixture of DJ, MC, B boy and Beat boxing. In his studies of defining hip hop, Jeffries concluded that these mixtures of art forms do not define hip hop but rather that Hip hop itself is a culture of these elements. “Hip-hop is like a culture, it’s a voice for black people to be heard. Our own style, our own music” (Jeffries. 2011; 28). Jefferies identifies hip hop as a social movement, which stems from the concept of ‘collective identity’ (Jefferries.2011; 27). This can be defined as “an individual’s cognitive, moral and emotional connection with a broader community” (Polletta and Jasper. 2001; 84). Which relate to Smitherman’s views that hip hop is a celebration of black culture uniting these individual to form a collective community. (Smitherman. 1997; 20) .These Theorists generally accept that hip hop is culture and it’s the production of its creators and the individuals who consu...
Hip hop has permeated popular culture in an unprecedented fashion. Because of its crossover appeal, it is a great unifier of diverse populations. Although created by black youth on the streets, hip hop's influence has become well received by a number of different races in this country. A large number of the rap and hip hop audience is non-black. It has gone from the fringes, to the suburbs, and into the corporate boardrooms. Because it has become the fastest growing music genre in the U.S., companies and corporate giants have used its appeal to capitalize on it. Although critics of rap music and hip hop seem to be fixated on the messages of sex, violence, and harsh language, this genre offers a new paradigm of what can be (Lewis, 1998.) The potential of this art form to mend ethnic relations is substantial. Hip hop has challenged the system in ways that have unified individuals across a rich ethnic spectrum. This art form was once considered a fad has kept going strong for more than three decades. Generations consisting of Blacks, Whites, Latinos, and Asians have grown up immersed in hip-hop. Hip hop represents a realignment of America?s cultural aesthetics. Rap songs deliver a message, again and again, to keep it real. It has influenced young people of all races to search for excitement, artistic fulfillment, and a sense of identity by exploring the black underclass (Foreman, 2002). Though it is music, many people do not realize that it is much more than that. Hip hop is a form of art and culture, style, and language, and extension of commerce, and for many, a natural means of living. The purpose of this paper is to examine hip hop and its effect on American culture. Different aspects of hip hop will also be examined to shed some light that helps readers to what hip hop actually is. In order to see hip hop as a cultural influence we need to take a look at its history.
Since its emergence in the South Bronx in the 1970’s, hip hop has spread to both urban and suburban communities throughout the world. Once an underground genre of music, it is seen in commercials, movies, television shows, etc. It has transformed from music and expanded into a full culture. It has even made its way into fashion and art. Men have always been on the front line of Hip Hop. However, the lyrics and images have changed tremendously. Lyrics and images that once spoke upon the injustices and empowerment for the African American people is now filled with money, cars, jewelry, and of course women.
So began my two-year ethnography on the American rave subculture. The scene described above was my initiation into the underground subculture where rave kids, typically under twenty-one years old, are given secret invitations to attend private warehouse parties with dancing, drugs, and thousands of their closest friends. Because of my youthful and unorthodox appearance, I was invited to join the then-highly-exclusive underground scene and attended numerous raves in several major cities in North Carolina. Although my chosen subculture was not typically examined by academia, I conducted an academic ethnography of what Maton (1993) describes as a "group whose world views, values and practices diverge from mainstream North American and social science cultures" (747). As a result, I received three graduate credit hours for "supervised research in ethnography" and conducted what may be the only academic ethnography on raves.
"40 Years on from the Party Where Hip Hop Was Born." BBC Culture. N.p., 9 Aug. 2013. Web. 30 Apr. 2014.
This study will incorporate a mixed research design for data collection and analysis. Data for this dissertation was gathered from a wide range of sources including information from reliable hip-hop websites and radio stations as well as other online sources with relevant information. This study recognizes the problem created by the role of corporate America in hip-hop music. Corporate America’s involvement in hip-hop has contributed a lot to furtherance of stereotypes against black Americans, undermining of women and promoting crime. The people most affected are the young people across all races, who idolize hip-hop artists (Darby, Shelby, & Irwin, 2011). The study showed a great deal of information that point to the corporate worlds’ influence on hip-hop artists. This information will contributing to helping scholars and regulatory bodies to understand and sole the problem of negativity in the media. The information will also be relevant in resolving crimes in the country.