hip-hop culture and rap music played—or did not
play—into racial stereotypes.
The influence of hip-hop on film was enormous,
especially in the late 1980’s. Not only did more rap
songs start showing up in sound tracks but also more
films based primarily on the gangsta rap ethos of vio-
lence were made in Hollywood, though the first
commercially successful hip-hop comedies,House
Party(1990) andHouse Party II(1991), would appear
shortly after the end of the decade.
Subsequent Events The emergence of laptop
computers, Napster (the first “free” online site where
fans could share and trade music, bypassing the tra-
ditional record companies and retail outlets), and
MTV Yo’ Raps (an offshoot of MTV, dedicated exclu-
sively to hip-hop culture and rap videos) in the
1990’s made hip-hop culture an international force.
A number of developments indicated that this
particular form of African American culture had
gained unparalleled appeal to the youth of such
countries as Belgium, France, Japan, Russia, Egypt,
Spain, South Africa, and Brazil: the ubiquity of hip-
hop lingo in advertising and everyday conversation;
its creation of a whole new mode of fashion known as
urban gear; the evolution of rap into “cowhop” (U.S.
Southwest), “trip hop” (England), and “New Jack”
(New York), among others; and the merging of
American gang violence ethos with Chinese and Jap-
anese martial arts in films, making starts of veteran
Asian actors Jackie Chan, Jet Li, and Chow Yun-Fat.
During the 1990’s and into the twenty-first cen-
tury, two more facets of hip-hop culture emerged:
hip-hop literature and spoken word poetry (some-
times called “floetry”). While there has been a tradi-
tion of “street literature” in the urban centers of the
United States since at least the early twentieth cen-
tury, the fascination with the gritty realism of these
novels turned into a multimillion dollar industry.
Citing legendary urban crime fiction writers such as
Iceberg Slim and Donald Goines as their heroes,
young hip-hop activists/writers churned out pulp
fiction that, like their film counterparts, viewed with
the often-brutal world of drugs, gang wars, and the
rap music industry through the lens of ordinary
young men and women. These writers included Erica
Kennedy, Renay Jackson, Vickie Stringer, Bertice
Berry, and Sister Souljah, whose novelThe Coldest
Winter Ever(1999) was a runaway best seller.
At the same time, rap music rhythms were adapted
to poetic meters, resulting in the revitalization of po-
etry as oral performance. So successful was this kind
of poetry that local and national poetry slam con-
tests emerged, drawing on the talent developed in
local coffeehouses and clubs. Because performance
poetry circulated primarily on compact discs (CDs),
it made best-selling stars of performers such as Saul
Williams and Patricia Smith.
Clearly, the widespread appeal of hip-hop culture
and rap music across the world has constituted the
most viable alternative to the “straight” life, however
defined in any particular culture or nation, since the
countercultural movements of the late 1950’s and
the 1960’s.Further Reading
Hebdige, Dick.Cut ’n’ Mix: Culture, Identity, and Ca-
ribbean Music. New York: Methuen, 1987. Hebdige
examines the Caribbean sources of rap music in
“toastin” parties in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s,
focusing in part on DJ Kool Herc, a Jamaican im-
migrant widely considered the father of rap music.
Rose, Tricia.Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture
in Contemporar y America. Hanover, N.H.: Wesleyan
University Press, 1984. Rose’s comprehensive anal-
ysis of hip-hop culture focuses on the social and
political forces in the United States (such as Rea-
ganomics) that led to the rapid development and
expansion of hip-hop culture. Her critique of the
sexism and machismo within rap music remains
unparalleled.
Ross, Andrew, and Tricia Rose, eds.Microphone
Fiends: Youth Music and Youth Culture. New York:
Routledge, 1994. This collection of essays from
various authors examines the cultural, gender, and
aesthetic impact of hip-hop culture and rap mu-
sic. The most outstanding essays take a broad in-
ternational perspective on the culture and music.
Tyrone WilliamsSee also African Americans; Break dancing; Cable
television;Do the Right Thing; Fashions and clothing;
Film in the United States; MTV; Music; Music videos;
Public Enemy; Television.468 Hip-hop and rap The Eighties in America