A few weeks ago there was an online debate called “Hip Hop on Trial”. The motion was “Hip Hop doesn’t enhance society, it degrades it.” The panel put forward many arguments for and against the motion. Some of the arguments put forward were convincing and others were not. In the rest of this article I will give my own answer to the motion and briefly highlight some of the arguments made.
In my opinion one cannot simply generalise all of hip hop and state that hip hop degrades society. This is because Hip Hop is very broad, it is a culture with various aspects involved in it. So much that it cannot be generalised. As Dr Michael Eric Dyson pointed out if there is a debate on Hip Hop being negative there should be a debate on the Church with the motion “The Church on Trial” because some Christians have repeatedly shown prejudice, discrimination and injustice towards women.
Hip Hop has produced, many great artists with positive messages such as: Public Enemy, Tupac, Nas, Lowkey, Akala, Logic, Immortal Technique and M1 Dead Prez, Lauryn Hill and many more. All of these aforementioned artists rap about social issues from political, economic, racial or general global issues as well as encouraging the empowerment of women. These artists have not only helped organise movements, but they also have helped to spread knowledge to the masses through their music. For example, Akalas motto is “Knowledge is power”. This motto encourages his listeners to read in order to liberate their minds from false information. Furthermore, Hip Hop has given many African Americans a sense of cultural belonging. After being distanced from Africa the African diaspora in America needed something to identify themselves with. Hence came Hip Hop and all of the other black movements in America such as the “black is beautiful” movement in the 1960s. So the notion that Hip Hop degrades society is a completely inaccurate statement.
However, I cannot deny the fact that there are a lot of hip hop artists that have attempted to degrade our society. There are many artists who portray nothing but negative images in their music videos and lyrics. Such examples are rappers such as Rick Ross, Lil Wayne, Drake, Big Sean, Nicki Minaj, Tyga, 50 cent, and Snoop Dogg and the list continues. This list is even longer than the positive artists list, because if I ask a random Hip Hop fan to name me some positive artists, they will only name a few but they are more likely to name a negative artist. So this is a problem that Hip Hop faces. These artists promote misogyny, bad language, and violence, and as Tricia Rose pointed out they also promote “predatory capitalism” because of the materialistic messages and music videos. So it is fair to say that the majority of current mainstream Hip Hop artists are degrading our society and the Hip Hop artists that have positive messages are not being given radio or TV play as Benjamin Zephaniah pointed out in the debate that Lowkey and Logic are conscious rappers but their music is not being promoted by the media.
Nevertheless, it is not only mainstream Hip Hop that degrades society, some underground rappers in Britain and the US are doing exactly the same thing if not worse than what some mainstream artists are doing. Such examples are Uncle Murda, Giggs, DVS, Wacka Flocka, French Montana and more. These underground rappers promote bad messages through their lyrics which mainly consist of violence. So it is evident that elements of hip hop are degrading to our society. However, the dilemma is that it isn’t just generally mainstream hip hop that is degrading our society. Mainstream music can also be degrading such as pop, rock and R&B. For example, Rihanna glorifies a sexual image as was mentioned in the debate, pop artists such as Lady Gaga top the list in terms of being an artist that is ridiculing our society. So in short the media is what is degrading our society and not just hip hop. Additionally, we have films in Britain which always portray young people as delinquent, and pornography shown on social networking Medias such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and the television. So all forms of media degrade our society to a certain extent, so to only blame hip hop for the faults in our society is not only bias but unfair. So I assert that the motion should have been “Social media does not enhance society it degrades it?”. This question is far more plausible than saying “Hip hop doesn’t enhance society it degrades it?”
So overall the debate was very enthralling and I tended to agree with a lot of Tricia Roses points, and as hip hop is part of social media, some issues still need to be addressed more formally than how it was in the debate. The issues that need to be addressed on another debate is the use of the N word, calling women b*tches and h*es and encouraging capitalism and materialism in Hip Hop.
Written by Aaron