http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/H/htmlH/hill
streetb/hillstreetb.htm.
Thompson, Robert J.Television’s Second Golden Age:
From “Hill Street Blues” to “ER.” Syracuse, N.Y.:
Syracuse University Press, 1997.
Sidney Gottlieb
See also African Americans;Cagney and Lacey;
Crime; Demographics of the United States; Domes-
tic violence; Gangs;L.A. Law; Latinos; Marriage and
divorce; Organized crime; Reaganomics;St. Else-
where; Television; Women in the workforce.
Hip-hop and rap assassination attempt
Definition African American cultural forms
Beginning in the late 1970’s, hip-hop culture and rap mu-
sic began to diversify, influencing dress, music, language,
and film in the United States. At the same time, the culture
and music began to make inroads in European and Asian
countries.
Although the first major rap hit single was “Rapper’s
Delight,” released by the Sugar Hill Gang in 1979,
hip-hop culture in the form of baggy pants and
sweatshirts, artistic graffiti, and break dancing had
been a part of teenage life in the South Bronx of
New York City since the early 1970’s. While break
dancing and graffiti would soon become passé within
the United States, all the other elements of hip-hop
would be widely adopted and perceived as definitive
aspects of the culture. Neither hip-hop culture in
general nor rap in particular, however, would have
become the international phenomenon they both
are without a number of technological and cultural
developments that facilitated their growth beyond
their local place of origin.
Chief among the technological developments was
the boom box, or “ghetto blaster,” an enlarged ver-
sion of the earlier transistor radio. Unlike the Sony
Walkman, which hit the market in 1979, the boom
box, a creation of the mid-1970’s, permitted teenage
pedestrians to emphasize the public, if not commu-
nal, nature of the music. More important, the boom
box became the primary mode of publicity for rap
singles; it was the technological equivalent of word-
of-mouth news.
Among the cultural developments, the debut of
the cable channel MTV (Music Television) in 1981
was the decisive factor in the national and interna-
tional emergence of hip-hop culture and rap music
as dominant economic and social forces. Yet, even as
hip-hop culture and rap music began to garner na-
tional attention in the 1980’s, divisions within the
communities began to emerge, leading to the so-
called East Coast/West Coast split in the late 1980’s.Political Consciousness Versus Gangsta Rap Al-
though many commentators on hip-hop culture see
the release ofYo! Bum Rush the Show(1987) andIt
Takes a Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back(1988) by
East Coast-based Public Enemy as defining the polit-
ical stance against whichStraight Outta Compton
(1988) by the West Coast-based N.W.A. was the defi-
ant retort, this is only partly the case.
From its inception, rap music was riddled by rap-
as-politics versus rap-as-entertainment divisions. On
one hand, the most popular form of rap in the early
1980’s (and beyond) was “party” rap, exemplified by
“Rapper’s Delight.” The Sugar Hill Gang began a
trend that DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince (Will
Smith), the Beastie Boys, Run-D.M.C., Kid ‘n’ Play,
and others would follow: rap as pure entertainment.
At the same time, Grandmaster Flash and the Furi-
ous Five’s smash hit “The Message” indicated that
another segment of the rap public was willing to en-
gage social and political issues. KRS-One, Eric B. and
Rakim, and others would join Public Enemy in insist-
ing on socially responsible music and lyrics. The
emergence of gangsta rap in the mid-1980’s, sig-
naled by N.W.A., Schoolly D, Ice-T, Dr. Dre, and oth-
ers, opened up a third “thug” front even as Queen
Latifah, Roxanne Shanté, and Salt-n-Pepa were for-
mulating a “feminist” fourth front in the music.
The analogues to these divisions in rap music
were also evident in break dancing and graffiti. Both
had utilitarian and aesthetic poles. Break dancing
contests were originally used by street gangs as an al-
ternative to violence. Graffiti was once used to con-
vey public messages to other gangs, usually in the
form of boasts, threats, and elegies. Once break
dancing was popularized as an aesthetic form of ex-
pression, however, largely via rap videos, its connec-
tion to gangs was jettisoned; it simply became an-
other dance trend. Meanwhile, graffiti became a
mode of artistic expression, and many graffiti art-
ists—including some former gang members—
found themselves being invited to display their work
in the art galleries of Manhattan. Among artistsThe Eighties in America Hip-hop and rap 465