Rap Music

Often times when people hear about hip hop/rap music, they fill paint a picture in their heads of black men cussing, guns, marijuana, cocaine, lots of gold, and girls looking like prostitutes. Parents and teachers put an image in their kids' head that rap music is bad, and they don't want their kids to be influenced by something that is negative. With the way Rap music is advertised in the US, I would have to agree with that looking at it from an average parent's point of view. But what people don't know is that hip hop isn't just a type of music, it's a culture. It's a culture full of original elements, and it's also a place where people can show others what they have got and who they are. This is one thing I am passionate about and that is music, especially rap/hip-hop music.

Rap is a form of popular music developed especially in African - American urban communities and is characterized by spoken or chanted rhyming lyrics with a syncopated, repetitive rhythmic accompaniment. That is one of the many dictionary definitions of rap. Within this original society called Hip Hop, there are basically two main elements, MC and DJ. And each is represented by millions of people all over the globe. When the two come together, it makes hip hop music, and people live the music instead of listening to it. MC-ing is what people know as rapping. The role of the emcee (MC) arose to introduce the DJ and the music, and to keep the audience excited. The MCs would speak between songs, giving shouts to dance, greetings to audience members, jokes and anecdotes. Eventually, this practice came to be more stylized, and was known as rapping. Later on hip hop had become a commercially recorded music genre, and began to enter the American mainstream. It also began its spread across the world. In the 1990s, a form called gangsta rap became a major part of American music, causing controversy over lyrics which were perceived as promoting violence, promiscuity, drug use and misogyny. Nevertheless, by the beginning of the 2000s, hip hop was a staple of popular music charts and was being performed in many styles across the world. DJ-ing is what is know as making your own beats or taking various beats from previous songs and mixing them with other songs. The common thread of hip-hop music is not rapping, but the beat. Whatever someone does over a break beat can be considered hip-hop music.

Rap is often used to describe life in the inner

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