| Chapter 1: | Introduction |
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does not live there. From the students’ perspective, the credibility of experience, or one's “street cred,” is simply the ability to survive in an urban environment and live to tell the story while having an exceedingly opulent lifestyle. One male, a graduating senior, said,
The driving beat of rap and hip hop started in a 1970s Bronx basement, but for historical accuracy, it is a beat that spans centuries and goes back to the roots of African soil—a motherland where music exists without cultural embargo. Derrick Alridge notes, “Hip hop from its beginnings called for a spiritual and cultural connection among African-descended people throughout the Diaspora. In fact, Hip Hop itself represents an art form that is spiritually connected to Africa and its people” (2005, 245). Michael Eric Dyson, commenting on the essential nature of hip hop, notes, “Hip hop is still fundamentally an art form that traffics in hyperbole, parody, kitsch, dramatic license, double entendres, signification and other literary and artistic conventions to get its point across” (2007b, xvii). For the eager dancers on the all-time favorite American television show, Dick Clark's American Bandstand, uttering the refrain “It's got a good beat and I can dance to it” was an accolade that rated songs with an immediate seal of youth approval. Regardless of the era, from the fabulous fifties to the disco eighties to the rap and hip hop world that surrounds us in the twenty-first century, the beat—heartbeat or dance beat—is the driving force in successfully selling music, its rhythms, iconic images, and lifestyles, to a