Rap music's effect on American culture - Research Paper Example

Corporate brands such as Nike, Coca cola, Sprite, McDonalds, in addition to many more corporate giants have been able to capitalize on this phenomenon. Despite the fact that hip hop and rap culture critics seem to be fixated on messages like violence, harsh language, and sex, the genre has a plethora of positive tenets ascribed to it. This art form has substantial potential of mending ethnic relations (Dill 2009). Between 1950 and 1960, the ‘beat culture’ acted in challenge of the status quo in a manner that has greatly unified individuals (the youth in particular), across a diverse ethnic spectrum.

Recent years have seen mounting controversy surround rap music, and at the heart of the American media. From the West Coast-East Coast hype that marked the murders of rappers Notorious B.I.G and Tupac Shakur, to the castigation of modern music in light of Littleton Colorado’s school shootings, it appears that media and political groups have quickly blamed rap for an apparent trend of youth violence. Rap music, in a similar fashion to other music forms, cannot be comprehended until it is studied minus the frame of its social and historical context.

Today, rap music ascribed its origin to the hip hop culture of urban, working-class, young African-Americans, and its roots in the oral traditions of Africans. Its function is seen as the voice of an otherwise underrepresented group, and its popularity has grown along with appropriation and commercialization by the music industry. The paper herein discusses the rap music as a genre and its influence on America (Dill 2009). Rap’s commercial history can be traced back to 1979, the year during which ‘the Sugar Hill Gang’ released the considerably successful song known as ‘Rappers Delight’.

Contemporary rap music’s beginning can be traced back to the mid-1970s in the Bronx. Rap music was a way for the urban black youth to express themselves rhythmically. Rap music together with