During my close look into the world of Hip Hop these past few months; I found that there was much more to this ‘street culture’ than meets the eye. Hip Hop has a couple of standard dictionary definitions.
The first definition:
A type of music that developed among African-American musicians using rap and samples that are repeated and combined with musical instruments.
A second definition:
An African-American street culture that developed in the United States in the 1970s, and includes djing and breakdancing.
And a third definition:
A music genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted. It developed from hip hop culture, a subculture defined by four key stylistic elements: MCing/rapping, Djing/, break dancing, and graffiti writing.
The fact of the matter is it is difficult to truly define Hip Hop in its totality. I believe Hip Hop cannot really be defined; it is more than just a definition. Hip Hop is a combination of community, culture, art, language, and expression. It is awareness, or a way to be. These traits reminded me of another subject I was studying at the same time: Religion. Religion, like Hip Hop, is also hard to define. Religion is something that is “lived”, it is awareness, as well as a way to be. I would like to go into and discuss the parallels between Hip Hop and religion. I would like to explore Hip Hop as a Religion and Religion in Hip Hop.