The Expanding Brand of Hip-Hop by Legacy

From the April 2004 Issue of
POLITRICX E-MAGAZINE

The Expanding Brand of Hip-Hop by Legacy

By now you know Hip-Hop represents all the finer points of basic American life. We
hear Hip-Hop in commercials selling all types of products including toothpaste to cars.
With the computer age heavy into full swing over the past 4 years Hip-Hop has been
selling video games as well. EA Sports has been the forefront of such activity with
including some of the hottest artist out and debuting talent on their video games as
well.

I mean how many of you remember Ludacris doing the opening for Madden Football a
couple of years back? Well leave it to the video game word to now expound even more
on the Hip-Hop genre with again EA Sports Big franchise to release a sequel to Def
Jam Vendetta. With the birth of this game do you feel Hip-Hop has now touch every
outlet that it can touch?

With the topic of Hip-Hop now in the presidential race and being circulated into the
mass commercial media where can Hip-Hop go from here? The answer is from my point
of view anywhere we want to take it. Yet, who is going to harbor the responsibility to
respect and see our culture live on? Clearly the answer should be everyone that claims
to be apart of this culture. Hip-Hop has gone from the corners of neighborhood parties
to the everyday grind of mainstream media. Yet with this expansion we have yet to
govern Hip-Hop to make it be represented in a serious state. Ok I am lying but then
again there are many set backs along this trail. The stripper videos or nice but Hip-Hop
is more then shaking asses. And people let’s stop putting the streets into the argument
as an excuse to release negative music. Now true not everyone can be Talib Common
and Mos, but not everyone should be 50 Cent neither. With Hip-Hop selling images of
killing and murder almost 90% of the time you tell me how important it was for Kanye
West’s album to drop in the game. Are more people going to see that as the call for the
flip over from thuggish “I don’t give a fuck” music to a more conscious vibe? I doubt it
because Hip-Hop was a lash out against the norm and for the American norm the
ghetto is the outcry to “traditional” American life. But with the “traditional” life
changing with the change of the generation in power we now have more races and
ethnic creeds being exposed to Hip-Hop and that can help and hurt the Hip-Hop culture.
My generation is now the mid twenty something’s and we will soon be running the
world of politics and classrooms in a more nominal role and Hip-Hop has guided us to
react and expose our feelings in ways generation before us couldn’t. Now with other
races and ethnic groups seeing each other’s life styles we now have a better
understanding of what the “other side” lives like and what they do. But where do we go
from here?

Can you imagine a presidential inauguration with In the Club or Fight the Power
playing in a victory party? Probably not but that could be a future that can come true in
the foreseeable future. With Hip-Hop not only being the voice of the youth where are
we the generations of the 70’s and 80’s going to take our culture when we are the
middle aged and the dominant working class? In the Classroom and into the future I
hope with us governing our culture and not making it define us not only by our have-
nots but also by where we are in the world as citizens of a higher cause so I hope.

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