Understanding African American Aspects In Hip-Hop Cinema

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There is much more to music than just beats and rhymes. There are powerful meanings behind the lyrics that artists write. As said in the book Understanding African American Aspects in Hip-Hop Cinema, they are “reflective of an African spiritual past, of connections between self and community” (pg. 5). Songs like “Fight the Power” from Public Enemy is an example demonstrating the call for the black community to take action together to build a just and equal society. Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” successfully expresses the ideas Craig Werner mentioned in Understanding African American Aspects in Hip-Hop Cinema. The ideas which follow the steps of “acknowledging the burden, bearing witness, and finding redemption” (pg. 5). A “Fight the Power” lyric, “People, people we are the same” which links individual and community experience. In Understanding African American Aspects in Hip-Hop Cinema, the Werner’s first step is acknowledging the …show more content…

This meaning that in order to bear witness to the atrocities of racism they have to power through the bad by sticking together and being a part of the beloved community. In Understanding African American Aspects in Hip-Hop Cinema, “the spoken word and songs among enslaved people allowed them to resist the dehumanizing situations of forced labor, poverty, rape, and loss of family members” (pg.10). African Americans powered through all the insanity and took refuge in each other and in the songs they were singing. In the song “Fight the Power” the lyric “What counts is that the rhymes/ Designed to fill your mind” shows how he is educating his listeners about the inequality that blacks are facing. He later states that once you know about it and “realized the pride has arrived” you have “pump the stuff to make us tough”. Meaning the black pride is gaining attraction you need to join and keep fueling each other to make each other strong enough to “fight the powers that

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