In the book,'Hip-Hop connection - beat, rhyme and culture' written by YJY which is one of my favorite book. He said "Rap/Hip-Hop was born in east metropolis and moved into west metropolis, and developed with these regions in its center." In another book,'Hip-Hop paradise' written by Lee HY and Seo DI, they said "between 1995 and 1998, east side and west side started a war", as well as you can see that when someone talk about hip-hop, he or she will divide hip-hop into the two parts, east and west.
In my post, I'll comapre east and west style hip-hop and introduce american culture, Hip-Hop.
I don't know how big United States is, however, as a small size country like korea has number of local feelings and traits, apparently, every culture has various regional differences, especially in a huge size country like America. I can imagine the size of America. If you want to go from NY to LA, the center of east and west hip-hop, It takes at least four or five days by car, therefore their cultural difference is due result.
The advent of east and west hip-hop has similar background, although the start was in east side. Bronx where it was a settlement for black from the west Indies. and colored races started rail construction in 1959, after that time, seperately with rail standing for modernization, south Bronx became extremely blight and perfect slum.
In 1970s, as new black people came into Bronx and economic and social isolation was accelerated. This spot was more impoverised. So the black in south Bronx made their own cultural network as survival way and countermeasure.
This isolation and deprivation was spread to all of the east area with metropolis in its center. At that time, white people normally worked in day-time and went to a rich village or residential area in suburb in night-time. As metropolis became residential area only for black and colored people. they who rarely got any protection from government were negelcted socially more and more.
In this circumstance, slum and ghetto was made, and Rap,hip-hop culutre which was mixed with anger, frustration and resistance, started being made.
Now we need to look at east side hip-hop style's feature. Actually hip-hop was used in block part of ghetto party, but with debut of 'Furious Five', the new paradigm was appeared. They talked about black's social problems, not an exciting party, and used strong rock beat for gathering eyes. So this rap is called 'Hard Core Rap' this feature became main idea of eastern hip-hop.
Let's think about west side hip-hop style. Many people would think that western style was appeared in 1992. But you can meet 'Ice-T in latter 1980s. in his music, he described sex and violence straightforwardly, and his rapping was so harsh. These features became main idea of west side hip-hop and called 'gangster rap'. West side hip-hoper take over violence and aggresion from hard-core rap, however, they replaced social conscious message by voluptuous and hedonic things. As well as eastern sound is rather then rough and dark, on the other hand, western has easy melody to sing and rather than luxury playing sound. They also deride rather than instructive and emphasized black east side style in they thoroughly outrageous and private view. In particular, as a number of hip-hop music comes out after middle of 1980s. The level was more serious.
As we've seen above, east and west side has several differences. And we think that nobody can judge which one is better, however, 1990s, each part of hip-hoper's thinking was totally different. Their argument between east side and west side was very strong east side rapper, ‘Tim Dog’, published his new album, ‘Fuck compton’. ‘compton’ is a ghetto in Los Angeles and ,many people think the place is home ground of gangster rap. A lot of similar situation started being in east and west region, and mass media helped the battle more extremely by judging which one is best and exaggerative communication. As a result in 1996, ‘2Pac’ standing for western hip-hop and gangster rap was killed by someone as well. This incident became opportunity to consider about their music, themselves and real value, so unification of east side and west side was progressed. .
In my opinion, the reason why their culture is very powerful is based on
anguish they suffered from discrimination. Their isolation gave them a opportunity to think about themselves and their own culture, moreover, as their discrimination was stronger and stronger, their desire to express themselves might have been bigger and bigger. Since the suffering period was so long, their culture can gather enough power to dominate whole America.
Secondly, I thought that the root of the battle between hard-core rap party and
gangster rap party is also discrimination. Most of black did not have any chance to be able to relieve their stress agonized from isolation and discrimination, so when they found different opinion and style, their anger was exploded as the form of
condemnation and despising Nowadays, many people said that America stands for freedom and equality for a long time, but we should know that there was or is some paradox, and for making people realize this social problem, a number of sacrifice and effort. In Korea, hip-hop music is very popular and a big potion of young people, but I did not know about hip-hop’s background. Before this study, my view of hip-hop fashion is just cute and fashionable, however, now I have known that the fashion come from prison or poverty, as well as I can understand their sadness.
Hip-Hop 4ever
