The State of the Hip-Hop Generation: How Hip-Hop’s Cultural Movement is Evolving into Political Power

Abstract

In the short decade between 1985 and 1995, the dominant cultural movement of our time, hip-hop culture, has become, seemingly overnight, mainstream American popular culture. This centering of hip-hop art, most specifically rap music, in American popular culture has given young African Americans unprecedented national and international visibility, at a historical time when images via the 21st century’s public square of television, film and the internet are more critical to identity than ever. This visibility, and most certainly the often anti-Black and stereo-typical images that accompany it, forces distinctions to be drawn between today’s Black popular culture and traditional ideas of Black culture, including what is art and what’s at stake in cultural commodification.