Defining Hip Hop Culture

What is Hip Hop Culture?

Too many people are unclear as to what Hip Hop Culture really is and tend to use the term frivolously. Hip Hop Culture is commonly recognized by its main elements: Graffiti, Djing, Breakdancing (B-boying), Mcing (Rapping), and Beatboxing.  However, these elements are simply forms of art designed to express a deeper meaning.  At its core, Hip Hop is so much more than mere art and entertainment.  Hip Hop is the constantly evolving spirit and consciousness of urban youth that keeps recreating itself in a never-ending cycle.  It is joy, sorrow, pleasure, pain, victory, defeat, anger, happiness, confusion, clarity, humor, intensity, dream, nightmare, life, death, and everything else in between.  It is the spirit that connects the past to the present and lays a path towards the future.  The spirit of Hip Hop is the same as Jazz, Reggae, Blues, Doo-wop, Be-bop, and a multitude of other types of expressions, be it musical or otherwise, that African people throughout the Diaspora have given birth to and introduced to the world.  That very spirit is what breathes life into a simple idea and transforms it into a living cultural movement.  Hip Hop Culture cannot be assimilated, integrated, diluted, watered-down, sold for profit, or pimped.  It will always exist, in this incarnation or another. What the mainstream promotes as Hip Hop is only a commercial product misleading you into believing that it represents Hip Hop in its totality.