| Chapter 2: | What is Hip Hop? |
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associated with hip hop—for example, sneakers, weapons, gangster rap, and bling-bling (flashy jewelry)—in truth have nothing to do with it.
The movement’s founders continue to remind observers that much of what is labeled hip hop actually is not. Until now, however, the implications of their warnings have been ignored by virtually everyone commenting on the movement. Hip hop is closest to anarchic social philosophies, such as the 18th-century mutualism of the French activist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, or to the individualism of the English rationalist and utilitarian William Godwin. These philosophical systems also emphasize openness, inclusion, and evolving self-definitions that change over time; like hip hop, they have conceptual and value limits. The story of how hip hop came about provides a sense of how its philosophy developed.
A Peace Movement among Gangs
During the 1970s, DJ Kool Herc and Afrika Bambaataa participated in efforts to foster peace between warring street gangs in the South Bronx. The writer Jeff Chang has done an excellent job describing the South Bronx and the gangs that emerged in this period (2005). Other observers have asserted that hip hop is the result of young people’s being locked out of the American economic mainstream (Kitwana, 2005), making them part of the economic disenfranchisement that plagued black American communities (Perry, 2004). During this time, only one in four high school students in the Bronx graduated, and only one in ten African American teens had work (Chang, 2005, pp. 48, 178).
Closer examination reveals that the origins of hip hop may have had more local and specific community roots. Every element of hip hop’s worldview is the result of hard-fought attempts by gang members to forgo violence related to turf control and to practice honest communication with mutual respect. The leaders in this effort, hip hop’s founders, had to find ways to encourage individuals to accept one another as they were; they had to refrain from acting as if they were better than their rivals. Gang leaders had to connect one on one before any trust or peace could develop