Hip Hop and Inequality: Searching for the "Real" Slim Shady By S ...

cultures from which it has emerged. Chang also notes that its origin had serious issues of representation and political awareness:

Despite this history of struggle and change, hip hop has become central to the process of capitalist accumulation and the justification of inbuilt inequality within that system. Hip hop culture is also used to market certain images—globally standardized, frequently stereotypical, and jadedly modern—and social values that have a tendency to reinforce the ideology of domination by the mainstream in society. Hip hop for the twenty-first century has moved out of the crucible of inner-city ghettos into the major boardrooms of corporate America, and through the process of global commodification, it serves to perpetuate that system of domination. Hip hop becomes a medium through which power and inequality produce “sugar-coated gall” served up to both the dominated and the dominant. And, just like “sugar-coated gall,” the sweet taste soon dissipates and the bitter taste of domination, discrimination, and social discrepancy is surely revealed. Despite the co-optation of highly commercialized hip hop culture which perpetuates the hegemonic ideology, there are elements of hip