The different elements of Hip Hop culture

In the lecture on Hip Hop it was brought to light the many elements that make up the Hip Hop culture such as, graffiti (or as it was earlier known as, ‘writing’), break dancing, DJ-ing, rapping, and the use of urban spaces such as the city. Hip Hop started out as a culture that had a can-do attitude about it, there were no if’s or but’s about making it in the industry it was more about getting out there and making it happen yourself. You had to bang on doors, make some money, and sell your music. Graffiti was known as a form of writing before it was given a name, nowadays Graffiti is not always seen as an art form, but viewed as something bad when it is incorporated with ‘tagging’ and the like. There are walls that you can graffiti on in Auckland and these pieces of work look more like art, with bold colours, cool images and funky lettering incorporated into one big piece of exceptional eye catching work.

In a lot of Hip Hop influenced movies most of the dancing is break dancing or at least has break dancing in the set. You can see this on movies such as “You Got Served” which is reasonably recent and aimed at the younger youth audience of today. This movie is about a dancing competition in which the prize is money. A lot of the film is filmed on the street, with evidence or basketball courts, gang fights, shootings, death and those who are poor trying to get on, there is hustling and doing others dirty work who are higher up than you. DJ-ing and rapping are a big part of the Hip Hop culture, rapping in particular. Artists such as Snoop Dog, Icecube and Biggie are among the many who are skilled in this area. A lot of their lyrics are about drugs, women and hustling which are all incorporated in the Hip Hop culture. A lot of these video clips that rap artists are in have half naked women in them, with booty’s in a club usually, with the presence of marijuana – this is also a part of what makes the Hip Hop culture distinctive to others. A lot of the Hip Hop videos we see, or the movies or any of the films or documentary’s that are about Hip Hop are set in the city, whether it be Auckland, the Bronx, LA or New York – the urban space is very commonly associated with Hip Hop. You do not see people who represent the Hip Hop culture out and about in rural areas, they live for the darkness, seductive, luring of the city.