Politics and Music: Class Meetings

Professor Courtney Brown

Meeting #22: Hip-hop I (Rap and Gangsta Rap)
LECTURE NOTES
SELECTIONS played in class:
Video Selections:
Gangstresses (a documentary)

Songs (lyrics only read aloud and discussed)
Tupac Shakur: "Violent" and "Words of Wisdom"

QUESTIONS and DISCUSSION: The focus today was to present the origins of hip-hop. We then went into the gangsta rap and used two songs by the late Tapac Shakur to demonstrate how late-period hip-hop reflects an angry response to very difficult inner city life. The brief segment from the "Gangstresses" video helps to identify the these difficulties from a woman's perspective. You should now be asking how this highly stressed inner city musical expeience carried so powerfully into the white suburbs to be embraced by many alienated white youths. Ponder this. The answer is more interesting than most might imagine.