Talking Point Nine: Hip Hop (Reflection) Tricia Rose

The reading this week was a little different for me simply because it was completely new to me.  It is a topic I've never really discussed or studied before so in a sense I was kind of out of my element I suppose.  Nonetheless I thought Tricia Rose's Q&A with TIME Magazine and her YouTube were both really interesting.

The extent of my knowledge of the Hip Hop community is small; I never really listened to hip-hop occasionally I'd like a song but I wouldn't say I was a Hip Hop fan....except for Tupac, I loved Tupac & Notorious B.I.G haha.


I'd like to point out that I thought it was really important that Tricia Rose made it a point in her Q&A to let TIME magazine and its readers know that no one is right about hip-hop and that her book The Hip Hop Wars takes on all sides of the arguments.
--I thought it was awesome that right off the bat she was letting her readers know that there was no clear, definitive conclusion or right answer and that as an author she was not going to take a single stance on the matter but show you all the different stances and sides of the argument.

During her interview she talks about the "underground" in reference to the hip hop community:
"That's why they call it the underground-because it is in fact buried.  But it's not dead; it's an underworld.  It's like the Matrix, an alternative world that has its flaws but is part of a living force."

She's talking about the underground in reference to commercial hip-hop being dead but having a rich world of hip-hop (the underground) that is still very much alive...flawed but still living and thriving.

I also found it really interesting that hip-hop wasn't always the rhyming it is today, that it had political content in it such as education, learning about one's history, asking questions and making better choices to try and better yourself and change society.

In one of her Q&A's Tricia Rose talked about (in a nutshell) images that sell.  She explains that sexist images, sexuality, sexual domination and racial stereotypes can found throughout hip-hop culture and why?  because they sell.  The people in charge of these images have the power to portray people of color in such violent, stereotypical ways and portray women as objects because they can...because it is the view people are forced to have of people of color so it sells so it becomes financial gain and those in charge gain and maintain power.

For Class:

I'd like to talk more about the images found in hip-hop culture such as sexist images, sexuality, sexual domination and specific racial stereotypes.  I'd also like to discuss why hip-hop has also been seen as such a violent culture.  Because this topic was so new to me I am really interested to see what everyone else thought of the Q&A and the YouTube and everyone else's thoughts on hip-hop culture.