IrieCrew HipHop

AN INTRODUCTION TO HIP HOP

Presented By Master Teacher, KRS-One

When people think of hip-hop they tend to think of rap music and its related activities. For most people hip-hop is a popular music genre, and this is how most people approach hip-hop. Regardless as to how the original founders of Hip Hop depict and interpret THEIR culture, most professors and activists alike approach hip-hop in the way that mainstream corporations approach it—as a product to be bought and sold. Because of this, those who practice the artistic elements of Hip Hop as well as those who may teach some aspect of hip-hop limit themselves to a corporate point of view where hip-hop is approached as an object to be sold, and not as a subject to be learned.

Such a limited view of Hip Hop is then perpetuated in the academic arena where objectivity sets the foundation for how anyone approaches anything. As a result, when it comes to the actual teaching of real Hip Hop, many professors fall short because they don’t actually LIVE Hiphop; they are still objective with it, they are still observing it as opposed to being it; they are still reading about it as opposed to actually doing it. They may teach a history of hip-hop, or they may have even been a Hip Hop pioneer themselves, but when it comes to actually being Hiphop and then imparting useful Hip Hop knowledge and techniques designed to enhance and empower the actual lives of real people, many hip-hop courses remain wholly inadequate.

This short introduction to Hip Hop is designed to get you prepared for the deeper lessons on Hiphop that must be experienced in order to be known. These lessons are for those who are serious about the teaching of Hip Hop and its needed preservation. Before we begin, let us first go over the basics.

AN INTRODUCTION TO HIP HOP—LESSON ONE

Hiphop = our unique Spirit, our unique collective consciousness; the creative, causative force behind Hip Hop’s elements. Hiphop is the name of our lifestyle and collective consciousness. It is a perceptual ability that causes one to self-create and raises one’s self-worth. (represented by Kool DJ Herc)

Hip Hop = the creation and development of Breakin, Emceein, Graffiti Art, Deejayin, Beat Boxin, Street Fashion, Street Language, Street Knowledge, and Street Entrepreneurialism. It is what we call ourselves and our activity in the World. Hip Hop is the name of our culture. (represented by Afrika Bambaataa)

hip-hop= Rap music product and those things and events associated with Rap music entertainment—hip-hop is a music genre. (represented by Grand Master Flash)

Hiphoppa = the manifestation of Hiphop. Those that live the principles of our culture are called Hiphoppas and not Hip Hoppers because to live Hip Hop is to think Hiphop. A Hiphoppa is Hiphop and performs or presents Hip Hop which is then sold as hip-hop.

Hiphop Kulture = or, Hip Hop’s culture, is the name of our unique community; it is the name of our tribe. Hiphop Kulture is the manifested character, patterns, beliefs, sciences and arts of OUR collective consciousness; it is our reality and mental landscape. Hiphop Kulture is an international community of specialized urban people.

Traditionally, Hip Hop is first approached as an art form that consists of four core elements; B-Boyin (break dancing), MC-ing (rap), Aerosol Art (graffiti writing) and DJ-ing (the cutting, mixing and scratching of recorded materials). These are called the “core four” elements of Hip Hop. However, Hip Hop’s “core four” elements also encompass specific and unique urban clothing styles, language styles, business and trade techniques as well as a collective body of knowledge derived from its internal experiences with itself and the world. Therefore, from our initial “core four” elements we get our nine cultural elements; Breakin, Emceein, Graffiti Art, Deejayin, Beat Boxin, Street Fashion, Street Language, Street Knowledge and Street Entrepreneurialism.

These cultural activities have created uniquely rich Hip Hop stories, Hip Hop tragedies and triumphs, Hip Hop legends and myths, original Hip Hop arts, popular Hip Hop music and thought provoking Hip Hop poetry that critiques and interprets the world in which the Hip Hop community exists. The music and dances of Hip Hop come from our collective urban view of the world which inspires such music and dance to occur. It is Hip Hop’s cultural worldview that inspires (or rather causes) its music, arts and dances to occur.

We are uniquely Hip Hop because the repetition of such a unique being and seeing has created our specific Hip Hop way of life. And the Hip Hop way of life is what we call Hip Hop’s culture or Hiphop Kulture. As culture, Hip Hop is the specific behaviors, traits, expressions, patterns and institutions of OUR unique collective consciousness. It (Hip Hop) is OUR intellectual and artistic activity as well as the works produced by it.

According to the Hip Hoptionary: The Dictionary Of Hip Hop Terminology by Alonso Westbrook, Hip Hop is defined as the artistic response to oppression. A way of expression in dance, music, word/song. A culture that thrives on creativity and nostalgia. As a musical art form it is the stories of inner-city life, often with a message, spoken over beats of music. The culture includes Rap and any other venture spawned from the Hip Hop style and culture.

The Encyclopedia of Rap and Hip Hop Cultureby Yvonne Bynoe confirms that Afrika Bambaataa credits DJ Love Bug Starski with first using the term Hip Hop to describe the new music and subculture. The American Heritage Dictionary, 4th edition records hip hop as a popular urban youth culture, closely associated with rap music and with the style and fashions of African-American inner-city residents. The Modern Oxford English Dictionary displays a bit more cultural literacy in its record of hip hop: a style of popular music of U.S. black and Hispanic origin, featuring rap with an electronic backing. The sub-culture associated with this, including graffiti art, break-dancing, etc.

The Oxford American Dictionary & Thesaurus actually confirms hip-hop-per as a derivative of hip-hop and states that the origin of the word Hip Hop probably comes from hip meaning ‘very fashionable’. However, the first phrase recorded in the English language regarding hip hop was in 1672 by the second Duke of Buckingham (George Villiers 1628-1687). As he was being dismissed from the ministry of Charles II for misconduct, he is said to have stated; To go off hip hop, hip hop, upon this occasion is a thousand times better than any conclusion in the world, I gad. The last part I gad means here to go from one place to another, to wander about without any serious object, stopping here and there.

Hip Hop itself is not a person, a place or a physical thing; it is an awareness. You cannot actually go to Hip Hop, or wear Hip Hop, or eat Hip Hop. Hip Hop exists as a shared idea; it never enters physical reality, it is a way to be. You cannot drink a can of Hip Hop and suddenly know how to rap. You cannot put Hip Hop on as clothing, or read a book in order to understand Hip Hop. Hip Hop begins as an awareness; as an alternative behavior that causes one to rap, or break (dance), or write graffiti, or deejay. Hip Hop, in its true essence, is a shared urban idea—a unified feel. Rapping, breakin, graffiti writing, beat-boxin and deejayin are all expressions OF this collective urban idea commonly called Hip Hop.

We (Hiphop) are a very real People with a very real and specific cultural identity. When you say “Hip Hop” in the world today every urbanized person knows what you are talking about and can describe our cultural characteristics instantly. In light of this, Hip Hop becomes a proper noun and should be treated as such grammatically. It is a common linguistic rule of the English language that the titles or names of all cultures, nations, civilizations, ethnicities, etc., be spelled beginning with a capital (upper case) letter. Hip Hop is our culture, therefore it must always be spelled with the same grammatical respect one would give any other culture in the English language. Unless the term Hip Hop is being displayed in an art presentation or if translated into another language or culture where the grammatical rules of the English language do not apply, it (Hip Hop) should be spelled beginning with a capital H as Hip Hop or Hiphop.

Those who show little respect for Hip Hop still spell Hip Hop as hip-hop, even though Hip Hop is a proper noun. True Hiphoppas are advised to spell Hiphop with a capital H as it is the name of our collective consciousness; it is the force that animates our way of life, our culture, our tribe, our nation. When Hip Hop is spelled as hip-hop it refers to rap music product and its related activities. Even our dance moves come from our collective cultural worldview; our dances explain something very deep about our divinity as well as our natural experiences in our present time and space.

Those who approach Hip Hop like it is exclusively a trendy dance (or entertainment) are usually those who repeatedly speak and spell the term incorrectly and care little for Hiphop as a community of real people. To spell Hip Hop or Hiphop incorrectly as hip-hop is to deny our right to exist as a People. The use of the term hip-hop to describe real people reduces those people to products.

Those using the English language to describe Hip Hop while misspelling Hiphop and/or Hip Hop as hip-hop are not only grammatically incorrect; they also undermine the importance of what Hiphop really is to Hiphoppas. They participate in Hip Hop’s enslavement by reducing our culture and way of life to a music genre and product to be bought and sold. Again, Hiphop is not a product to be bought and sold; it is the inalienable right of all Hiphoppas. Hip Hop is OUR name!

Pronounced with alternated vowels—drip drop, tick tock, tip top, flip flop, etc., Hip Hop as Hiphop is a form of intelligence; a knowing. The word hip has several definitions to it, but the definition that most Hip Hop scholars are concerned with regarding Hip Hop is hip meaning to have knowledge of, and to be informed or to be up to date, even in style and fashionable. Hip, in a social sense, can mean keenly aware of what is new and in style. Here, the word hip is applied to Hip Hop as a form of knowing; a kind of intelligence, being keenly aware. Such knowing is not necessarily an educated style of knowing, but more of an intuit knowing. It is the ability to know without being taught, it is your genetic memory; it is the consciousness of your innate cultural identity.

The word hop also has a variety of definitions as well, but the main definition we are concerned with here regarding hop is as a form of movement. Hop is an act or the action of hopping; a short springing or leaping especially upon one foot. Hop has also been associated with dancing as well as a dance like an informal, nonceremonial party. But, generally as it pertains to Hip Hop, Hop means to move by leaps with both feet or by one foot as opposed to walking or running.

Together, hip (informed/in style) as a form of intelligence, and hop (leaping/dancing) as a form of movement when associated with Hip Hop literally means intelligent movement, even in formed dancing aswellas an informed dance or party/gathering. Applying the simplest definitions of hip and hop to the term Hip Hop we find Hip Hop to literally mean intelligence moving, conscious movement or a movement aware of itself—“I am hip to my hop”, I know why I move. Here, we can see Hip Hop emerging as a form of self-awareness, and this is exactly how it is practiced in real life. Rap is something that is done, while Hip Hop is something that is lived.

Looking at the possible English etymology of Hiphoppa we come to the Old Icelandic term hoppa (meaning: to spring upward). The way in which we describe and spell Hiphoppa in the English language is influenced by the two terms hip and hoppa. The term hip meaning; keenly aware of what is new and in style, and hoppa meaning to spring upward or to hop reveals the hip-hoppa (Hiphoppa) as the actual intelligence that is springing forward. The hip-hoppa can be said to be a conscious mover,or one who moves with cultural awareness.

Such an awareness can never be known objectively. We are not just doing Hip Hop; we are Hiphop! And because we ARE what we are learning and ultimately teaching, our perspective on Hip Hop begins subjectively as opposed to being exclusively academic and/or objective in nature. Living Hiphop requires that you know it intimately, that you meditate daily upon its existence and practice its elements to the peak of perfection; that you actually care for the existence of Hiphop as yourself and seek to further its development with your actual being.

The true Hip Hop scholar/apprentice is studying to become Hiphop; not to just observe Hip Hop. How can anyone claim any authentic scholarship on something that they themselves are not and equally cannot actually produce? Where then is your authority to teach? Our perspective on Hip Hop and its culture is not an objective one; we seek to perfect our knowledge of Hip Hop because WE ARE HIP HOP! This is a true Hip Hop scholar—an attuned Hiphoppa, a cultural family member.