Positive impact of hip-hop culture

By Umaymah Rashid
The Collegian

AFTER READING THE Oct. 11 opinion article by Phillip Porras about the fallen state of hip- hop, I felt strongly compelled to present an alternative perspective on the current state of hip-hop as I see it today.

First, I am never surprised that society and the media love to talk about the negative things associated with hip-hop while ignoring the positive contributions that the hip-hop community and artists make.

Whenever you here about hip-hop, the topics are usually confined to the negative ideals associated with the genre and never the positive. Society criticizes and judges hip-hop so intently that I often wonder why so much attention isn’t given to the state of rock, country or alternative music and what messages they espouse.

I also wonder why there isn’t such a furor over the violence and sex portrayed in the mainstream media every hour of everyday, yet hip-hop is so commonly berated for expelling the same ideals that the media does so regularly.

Since most people aren’t aware or don’t want to be aware of the positive contributions that hip-hop makes, I would like to enlighten those people with some new information.

Although a lot of people believe there are no mainstream hip-hop artists with positive messages that deal with the losses and struggles of everyday life, I believe there are.

Artists like T.I., Snoop Dog, Ice Cube, Kanye West, Jay-Z, Ludacris, Jada Kiss and Akon provide a lot of social commentary and attempt to participate in political dialogue.

I know most of the songs we hear on the radio may not be up to par, but the artists listed above have songs on their albums that deal with issues pertinent to the struggles of the communities they represent across the United States.

It is not their fault that hip-hop is now defined and controlled by corporate powers who exploit artist to line their own pockets by requiring that songs be appealing to a target market that is not interested in hearing songs of substance.

Even if we don’t agree about the honesty and validity of most artists’ lyrics, shouldn’t we at least give accolades to the many hip-hop artists who contribute positively to the hip-hop culture?

For example, the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network, which is an organization that is “dedicated to harnessing the cultural relevance of hip-hop music to serve as a catalyst for education advocacy and other social concerns fundamental to the empowerment of the youth,” is made of mostly mainstream hip-hop artists.

The HSAN is a non-profit, non-partisan national coalition of youth leaders, civil rights proponents, education advocates, entertainment industry leaders and hip-hop artists unified in the belief that hip-hop is a catalyst for social change and dedicated to the war on poverty and injustice.

The media doesn’t want to highlight how the HSAN along with many hip-hop artists, including artists like Lil Jon and the YinYang Twins, helped register over 11,000 new voters at a single hip-hop event.

They don’t want to highlight how the HSAN collaborated with the Alliances for Quality Education and mobilized hip-hop artists and 100,000 New York City public school students to a protest rally at city hall which eventually persuaded Mayor Bloomberg to restore 300 million dollars in proposed cuts to NY city public schools.

No one cares that the HSAN fought for the repeal of Rockefeller Drug Laws, which required mandatory prison terms up to life for the possession or sale of small amounts of drugs.

Aside from the HSAN, there are many hip-hop artists who use their individual power to wield change.

Nelly created an organization that emphasizes the need for more African American marrow donors and has a goal to increase the number of donors in the National Marrow Donor Program Registry across the United States.

David Banner’s organization “Heal the Hood,” collaborated with artists such as Nelly, Jeezy, Jim Jones and others in an effort to help rebuild New Orleans after hurricane Katrina.

P-Diddy and Jay-Z donated $1 million to the Red Cross for the same cause.

I could go on and on about the contributions of hip-hop artists to the hip-hop culture and the community as a whole, but I won’t.

Just remember that not only does negativity come from hip-hop, it comes from society as well.

So the next time you want to focus on how bad hip-hop is, try to remember how much positivity comes from hip-hop as well.

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