Opinion: Strength of Street Knowledge: Citrus needs a history of hip-hop class

“N***a.”

The taboo five letter word that has been long associated with black culture and hip-hop is perhaps the most controversial yet prime example as to why the genre needs understanding.

To many, rap was a scapegoat. It was a music genre that was put to blame for the spread of youth violence because of its explicit content with lyrics about guns and drugs. However hip-hop has a rich history with societal, political and economic messages. For example the seminal L.A.-based ‘90s rap group N.W.A. (Niggaz Wit Attitudes) struck up controversy and popularized “Gangsta Rap,” a subgenre of hip-hop. Their music was a product of police brutality and the hard knock life as a minority group in a poverty stricken environment.

By studying the black, inner-city communities then you can understand why it is more than necessary to introduce a history of hip-hop course to Citrus College.

Hip-hop is a genre of music that should be researched and brought as an educational course because it is an American innovation. It introduced record scratching, break dancers and poetic lyricism to mainstream music. It is more important than studying classical music or rock music because of its huge cultural impact on everyone from the young, urban, working-class African-American to suburban white folk to everyone in between.

Dr. Todd Boyd is the Professor of Cinema and Media Studies and the “Katherine and Frank Price Endowed Chair” for the Study of Race and Popular Culture in the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts. He has written four other books that touch on black culture and its growth into the American mainstream.

“Over the course of the past twenty years, however, [hip-hop] culture has gone from being a marginal New York subculture to being a phenomenon that not only has saturated mainstream America but also has had a massive impact at a global level,” according to Boyd’s 2002 book titled “The New H.N.I.C. (Head Niggas in Charge): The Death of Civil Rights and the Reign of Hip Hop.”

With the rise of streaming music services like Spotify and Apple Music, hip-hop has finally come to light as the most popular music genre in the United States. Hip-hop/rap has been on the radar with well-known innovators from every generation since the early ‘70s, but it has yet to get the respect it truly deserves.

Photo illustration by: Darius Johari

While rock music icons like Pink Floyd, U2 and David Bowie become household names and rockstars, the under appreciated hip-hop community stemmed from young, inner city African-Americans.

Hip-hop music and the culture started in the early ‘70s with the spawn of DJs, record scratching, Master of Ceremonies and break dancers known as “break boys” or “break girls.” To be more precise, hip-hop was born on August 11, 1973 at a house party in the west Bronx in New York City with DJ Kool Herc.

After DJ Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa came along with their contribution to record scratching and “break beats,” a term in which the DJ would have two identical records and loop the drum instrumental which would then spark a dance frenzy amongst the crowd.

This was merely the start of hip-hop as the genre then spread from the East Coast to the West Coast with other landmarks in between, including the South Side and Midwest.

The possibilities are vast when it comes to studying hip-hop culture.  The course can be covered under humanity studies as hip-hop played a role in urban youth and the lives affected within minority groups in the big cities. Hip-hop can also be looked at as a theater art form just as Lin-Manuel Miranda’s popular Pulitzer Prize winning musical “Hamilton” did with its incorporation of singing and rapping. 

Universities like Cornell, Harvard, University of Southern California, University of Arizona and North Carolina University have courses in hip-hop.      

If these opportunities are provided on a university level then why hasn’t it been recognized at a community college level?

Citrus College has a music course on the History of Rock & Roll in which students learn about the evolution of popular music dating back from the 1940s up until the present. A lot of different genres are covered in the History of Rock & Roll course including hip-hop, but it just grazed the surface.

Photo illustration by: Darius Johari

If done correctly, a history of hip-hop course can be a success. Topics to cover can date back to African roots and “griots”, West African oral historians and praise-singers, to covering hip-hop’s inspiration from jazz, soul, gospel and reggae. Other topics that would help reinforce the class would be the effects of oppression and poverty had on the African-American community in the ‘60s and ‘70s, the rise of the East vs. West Coast feud, the significance of Tupac Shakur and Christopher Wallace (Notorious BIG) and present day hip-hop/rap and the different sounds and styles that come out from regions all around the world.

“Gangsta Rap” is a subgenre of hip-hop that was most active between the late ‘80s until 1996, falling with the death of Tupac Shakur. It is at this point where rap was in its golden age, with its artist’s lyrics focused on the “street life” and hustling in a poverty stricken environment to make a living.

Learn to look past the negative criticism and look at hip-hop with an open mind. It’s influence on society is ever-growing and we see this as mainstream music has finally adapted to the ways of hip-hop. it is time for Citrus College to get on board and provide a course study on this rich, innovative and important part of American history.

“Hip hop, a social movement in and of itself, has been the most visible expression of this societal trepidation in regard to a full embrace of American society,” according to Todd Boyd’s book “The New H.N.I.C.” “Hip hop has become the most compelling contemporary articulation of this age-old American question. It is this examination of post-civil rights African Americans and their struggles regarding this dilemma of assimilation, as expressed through hip hop, that again underlies the motivation for this book.”