Is hip-hop dead?

Résumé du document

Two years ago, Nas, one of the greatest American rapper, brought out a new album, titled ?Hip Hop is dead'. The title speaks for itself. Since the mid-90s, hip hop and rap have lost their values. In fact, hip hop qualifies a culture or a way of life including music, values and dressing codes and rap is the most exposed part of hip hop trend. Rapping has been a great success since the 70s, first in the American slums, and then all around the world. However, rapping is also quite controversial. The global opinion is quite divided: while a lot of people seem to adhere to the rap trend, some say that it's not music, others that it's only a way to make money, and others that it's so violent that it might be forbidden. The point is that there isn't one rapping style, but several ways to rap, so that you can broadcast several messages, make totally different things, under the tag of rapping. Let's have a short look to the original message rap wanted to broadcast.

Extraits

[...] This kind of music, born in Chicago, knows a great development nowadays. It's a return to the real origin of rap music, to the “Rhythm And Poetry”. The lyrics are quite far from the violent one, are very soft, claiming message of peace and fighting spirit, nearer from the original rap than from the PIMP rap. They claim their difference from the US rappers and from the materialist trend. Finally, the bling bling rap, thanks to the criticizes he provoked, led to a reborn of a greater hip hop culture, less dealing with money, sex, drugs and violence than with hope and great virtues. [...]

[...] Two social divides explain this feeling. First the fact that rappers are mostly black American, so they suffer from segregation and racism, and then the fact that they live in slums. This two social divides lead them to a situation of double segregation, a racial one, and a spatial one. This feeling to be isolated leads them to reject the society as through the administration and the system than through “exterior people”. Reach a great level of life without dealing drug or be dipped into crime business seems to be a great struggle. [...]

[...] The break-up of the 2000's Bling bling mode got outdated during the 90's, but it knows a new golden age since the early XXIst century. This time, bling bling accessories are only showy matters and are a way to show the wealth of rappers. This phenomenon results of a general trend, with the generalized development of a money cult. To be happy, people have to be rich. Far from their will to be emancipated, rappers became desirous to get richer and richer. [...]

[...] This introspection shows that hip hop isn't really dead, as rappers are aware of the rapping drift to a kind of permanent display of materialist symbols. This commitment going upriver show that hip hop's consciousness is not definitively dead, that hopes subsist. C. The Reborn ? As a conclusion, this will to overstep rap's wandering trends lead to the development of new kinds of music as for example a mix between slam and rap, notably in France, with the great success of singers as Hocus Pocus or Grand Corps Malade. [...]

[...] We can for example mention 2pac, an east coast rapper, shot dead in 1996. But the legend says that he's not dead and that he lives hidden from those who tried to kill him. Videos are often published on the web, showing 2pac alive: it symbolizes the sacralization of ancient rappers. This sacralization is also an evidence in the lyrics, lots of rappers pay tribute to those legends as 2pac, BIG or Afrikaa Bambata : Snoop Dogg untitled a song “y'all gonna miss It's a way to show that there are still respect in rapping, and that rap is about to be a kind of religion, with its own codes and its own gods. [...]