I’ve been wanting to write an essay on the correlations between rap music (as opposed to hip-hop, which is the culture the art of rapping emerged from) and warrior cultures in works of European medieval literature, like Beowulf and Arthurian legends. Rap music portrays a patriarchal shame-honor (as opposed to our patriarchal guilt-innocence) culture in which masculinity, reputation, plundering and boasting are the values one lives by in order to survive, and the cyclical irony of perpetuating that lifestyle in an effort to survive the very lifestyle being perpetuated...
Beowulf and the Arthurian legends were originally based on oral traditions, just as rapping is an oral art form. So, I want to view rap music through the lens of literature, despite what its surface content appears to advocate. I want to consider cultural context and the gap between our time periods, but, really, nothing’s changed. Humans are and have always been inherently violent and territorial, and, given the fact that humans will find any excuse to wage war on others for the purposes of gaining power and resources, the American military (the 'strongest' in the world) serves as a role model for America’s disenfranchised lower class (while frequently recruiting potential soldiers from that class)—in essence, the military could be considered just a really big gang...
Anyway, the above joints are by Styles P from The Lox. I want to focus most of the essay (if I ever get going on it) on him, because he’s pretty much the hardest rapper out there, and, at least as far as 'hardcore' rap, he's probably my favorite...
I should be reading for my classes...
No comments:
Post a Comment