Hip Hop is Art
Excerpt:"Arts
Same Old Song: What’s holding back hip-hop?
By Andrew Bertell
April 24, 2006
Regardless of who you are or where you’re from, there’s a good chance that hip-hop has now become a recognizable and regular part of your daily life. Whether in movies or fashion, in clubs and on radio and television commercials, hip-hop has reached a nexus that few other movements in art have been able to reach. But what is holding it back? What about hip-hop’s coarse nature and undisguised counter-cultural assertiveness is keeping it from being considered a legitimate art form? The same thing that has propagated it and allowed it to reach nearly every facet of American life and culture: commercialism.
Hip-hop is a full-fledged and legitimate art form already and there is no way to reverse that or deny it.
Actual music aside, most hip-hop is a fair and genuine representation of the lives of many who do not have a voice and while many others have allowed that voice to shape their routine activities, it does not negate the fact that real artists are representing true sentiments. Couple this with the new and highbrow approach to beat-making, and you now have yourself a full and powerful movement in music, which, as we have already seen, is beginning to penetrate other genres and influence artistic movements.
A particular gripe of many is that any music rooted in sampling is disingenuous and lacks a basis in innovation that should be required of new art. However, sampling is not something limited to only the musical spectrum. Literature, for instance, is a widely respected and age-old part of earthly life. On numerous occasions, too many to list in fact, writers have borrowed themes and characters from other writers in order to mold them into a new creation. A famous example is the stellar work done by Michael Cunningham in his novel “The Hours.” He weaves the character of Mrs. Dalloway, a creation of Virginia Woolf more than fifty years prior, into his own dramatic prose. How is this creation any different from Lil’ Wayne borrowing a bass line from the Isley Brothers and weaving his own instrumentation and lyrical abilities around it?"