You Used To (You Used To) Yeah

In his essay, Hip Hop Planet, James McBride says that hip hop is a warning. Now what exactly does this mean? When I first read this, I pictured a car coming down Walcott Street, blasting rap music, and all the Saints kids dancing (very badly) to whatever song was playing.

It's easy to get swept up into hip hop music. It's catchy, it's fun and it's always been fairly popular since the 90s. Today we reference so many hip hop songs in television, movies, and just plain old everyday life. It's impacts are everywhere. (^^^) But why do we really love hip hop so much? We can easily relate to it.

Hip hop speaks of the issues regarding everyday life. It paints a picture for us of tough situations that people may be struggling with. It uses slang and swear words, to get a singer's point across. This is also why we relate since I know all of us can confess to using slang and swear words.

When we sing of struggles, we can either sing alone or we can sing together. Hip hop is meant to be sung together. Through one rapper or artist, the everyday people are given a voice.

 

Love The Way You Lie - Eminem & Rihanna 

This song brought to us the reality of domestic abuse and drug addiction. Eminem himself struggled with drug addiction. A lot of people loved this song not only because it was catchy but, because they could relate to it and find hope in it. Seeing Eminem sing about the pain of being on the abusive end of a relationship was inspiring. We didn't hate him for it, rather we acknowledged the fact that he knew he was wrong. He didn't want to be abusive but from his background, his struggle with drug addiction made it hard for him. He wanted to do what was best for his daughter and give her a role model to look up to and he wasn't that for a period of time. We did like any other human would do and we sympathized. 

This is also a warning. It warns the general public of the dangers and the realities of domestic violence. This is an issue that impacts more people than we realize. However, no one in society likes to talk about the issues that are taboo so it goes unnoticed. Eminem got us to notice. Hip hop warns us about what is really going on. It's a call to wake up and spread awareness for what should really matter to us. It's matter of fact and there's no guess as to whether there is a problem but people are left wondering what they will do to stop what that problem may be. Hip hop is a wake up call and it gets us to jump around and sing passionately about issues close to us. Through hip hop the world will hopefully change for the better.