Respecting Hip Hop Culture

 

This blog post is basically a response to three interview videos by Hard Knock TV.  If you need a little background information about what I’m talking about, check out these three videos below.

Scarface interview:

Iggy Azalea interview:

Logic interview:

So basically, I’ve been hearing a lot lately about how Hip Hop music is not the same anymore and how Hip Hop music is “being controlled by white people” and how black people need to control of what was once theirs.  This is an interesting time for Hip Hop culture.  In this blog post, I’m going to be discussing where I’m coming from on all of these issues and give you my solution to these problems.

Before I started taking rapping seriously, I knew very little about Hip Hop culture except for my exposure to Hip Hop music.  I knew that Hip Hop was primarily a black culture, but I never saw it as JUST for black people.  I saw it simply as music that appealed to me.  When I started taking rapping seriously, I slowly started to learn about Hip Hop’s history as I became more interested in the culture.  As I started to learn more and more about Hip Hop’s history, I started respecting the culture more and more because of the humbling experiences that the black and hispanic people who first participated in this culture went through.  I believe if people took the time to learn about Hip Hop’s history, more people would feel the same way.  If ya’ll want to learn more about Hip Hop’s culture and its history, I suggest you read “The Beat Tips Manual.”

To me, it doesn’t matter what race you are.  It’s all about who’s respecting Hip Hop’s culture and its history.  Without that respect, Hip Hop as a culture will die out sooner than we think.  Once more people learn about Hip Hop’s history, we as contributors to Hip Hop should start respecting the culture and its history instead of seeing it as a means to an end.  Then we can then think about how we can change Hip Hop’s image for the better.  I believe we as people who are a part of Hip Hop culture know who’s in it for the love and who’s not.  How about we stop advertising who’s not respecting the culture and start promoting those who DO respect it?

Because we live in the digital age, this will be WAY easier to achieve than you think!  Because of the internet, everybody has opportunity to use a medium such as Hip Hop music as their way of self-expression.  This is great BECAUSE we have access to this information and now WE can control what we want to hear based on our own needs.  It’s a misconception that the record executives, commercial radio, and television networks have control of the music industry.  The digital age has given us the power back.  So I urge you, the reader, to stand up for Hip Hop when it’s clearly being disrespected by supporting Hip Hop music that you think deserves recognition because I know that if you’re reading this blog, that you DO respect and love Hip Hop.

David Hayder

http://www.davidhayder.com/listen.html

http://www.davidhayder.com/subscribe.html

http://www.facebook.com/davidhayderofficial

http://www.twitter.com/davidhayder