All that Raps is Not Hip Hop

I was 10 years old when I fell in love with hip hop. It was during the heat wave summer of 1995 on the south side of Chicago. The streets, too hot to host sessions of double Dutch and hide and seek, were empty. The usual crowd was forced to retreat inside to the home of the only neighbor with a cable television hookup. It was inside the air-conditioned walls of Ms. Jones’ two flat that I discovered the sounds and lifestyle that would speak to my soul and help me through the most troubling of times.

Hip hop is defined by urbandictionary.com as, “a culture and form of ground breaking music and self expression with elements that consisted of the elements of graffiti art, deejaying, emceeing, and breaking...the expression of the relationship between urban youth and their environment. The art of the streets.” The American Heritage Dictionary defines 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.“ While both of these definitions offer some basic understanding of the term, the latter definition makes the common mistake of confusing hip-hop culture with mainstream rap culture.

To those of us who live and breathe hip hop, it is more than a genre. Hip hop is an art. Unfortunately, the terms hip hop and rap have been used interchangeably far too often by those who define music genres to the mainstream. Describing hip hop to those who live outside of its reaches is like describing a dream. No matter how vivid and unfeigned it is in your head, the explanation set to words just does not do it justice. Perhaps Sydney Shaw, a fictional character from the hip-hop themed movie “Brown Sugar” said it best: “So what's the difference between rap and hip hop? It's simple. It's like saying you love somebody and being in love with somebody. Rap is only a word.”

Common, De La Soul, Mos Def, A Tribe Called Quest, The Fugees, Talib Kweli, The Roots and other hip-hop artists have been unfairly lumped under the same category as 50 Cent, Nelly, Ludacris and the other chain-wearing, gun-toting rappers on MTV. Actually, hip hop and rap are polar opposites.

Rap music glorifies fancy cars, big spending, distrust for authority, and a forget-the-world attitude. MTV keeps rap music videos in heavy rotation. The foul lyrics, scantily dressed women booty shaking toward the camera and the flashy hype is characteristic of the rap music videos that dominate the mainstream. Hip-hop, however, is about uplifting. The lyrics of hip-hop songs offer listeners a bit of hope. The messages of struggle and keeping the faith relate to the listeners. Hip-hop music attempts to reach people beyond the superficial level. Hip-hop artists are poets with a microphone.

Yes, rap is a dimension of hip hop. All hip hop contains rap, but not all rap is hip hop. The act of rapping is simply talking rhythmically with the occasional clever rhyme thrown in for effect. Hip hop is a lifestyle; it is a culture that arose from the underground scenes of the Bronx and spread to urban underground scenes everywhere. Hip hop did not aspire to become a multi-billion dollar industry. In fact, even today most hip-hop artists fly under the radar. The messages and stories found in their basic, true-to-life style is lost in a sea of club songs, hood anthems and nonsensical chants. Meanwhile, rappers put out the latest video demeaning women and glorifying violence, and hip-hop artists take the rap for it.