Why I Love Hip-Hop

I love hip-hop. Whenever Run the Jewels or Kendrick Lamar drop a new album, I don't listen to anything else for weeks. That's not to say I'm an expert. I love all music too much to really concentrate on any particular genre. But the proportion of music that I listen to that's hip-hop grows every year. It's visceral and authentic, but most importantly, hip-hop teaches me things about the world I never would have learned otherwise.

If you already love hip-hop, that's great, but this probably isn't for you. I'm trying to talk to the people who don't like hip-hop (who probably skipped this whole thing once they saw the title so I'm probably talking to no one at this point), and show them what they are missing. I'm also going to be expressing some honest opinions here, some of which (I kind of honestly hope) might get me into trouble.

Here, it is important to note, I am not talking about all hip-hop. It is easy to paint a musical genre with a broad brush (and it's also one of the largest hurdles I believe some people have in accepting hip-hop). But I believe people should be capable (even if they normally don't take the time and effort to do so) of judging an individual piece of art apart from the worst (or even the most typical) examples of it.

At it's greatest (in my opinion), hip-hop is the art of telling the truth. My favorite artists in the genre take the true stories of their lives and make them relatable to a lot of people. It's a walk in their shoes, that for me at least, produces a lot of empathy. Authenticity is one of hip-hop's highest virtues. Even if what the emcee is saying isn't strictly true for themselves, you can trust that they have observed similar stories in their lives.

Also, hip-hop (more than any other genre in my opinion) is unafraid to address important and controversial social issues that I care about. Whether it's police violence, the war on drugs, prejudice, or life in general (seriously, it's like Killer Mike can read my mind), there's something that opens my eyes and makes me think.

In my experience, however, hip-hop has a lot of detractors. I actually used to be one of them. It's a difficult genre to get into when you're a suburban kid raised on classic rock. A lot of hip-hop exists in a culture that is very foreign to me. And I think ignorance of that culture leads a lot of people into dismissing the genre.

Now, I'm going to address the elephant in the room. I'm white. You can't talk about hip-hop and not talk about race relations in America. Once again, I am not an expert. If you want to learn about racism and race-relations in America, there are a lot of better places to turn. One of those places is hip-hop.

Since at least the days of Grandmaster Flash, hip-hop has been a vehicle for those living in oppressed communities to get their message out. For people outside those communities (such as myself), it's difficult to know what it's like. Only through listening to hip-hop have I even begun to understand (and acknowledge that no matter what I do, I'll never completely understand) how different life can be for other groups of people.

It's one thing to read academic papers on white ignorance, and quite another to see the results eloquently spelled out for you or the anger it can produce. For those on the outside looking in, this can produce a lot of discomfort. As it should. These are uncomfortable topics. As is what I am about to say.

It is my opinion that one of the largest reasons people don't like hip-hop is that they are racist. Now they are going to give you all kinds of other reasons. It's misogynistic. It's too violent. It promotes drug and gang culture. And to a certain extent, these things are all true. But it masks the larger issue. These are excuses used to dismiss people's racial biases. So let's take a closer look.

A large amount of hip-hop music is misogynistic - but this is true of every other genre of popular music as well, as is of our society in general. Now it's true that hip-hop often makes explicit what other genres make implicit, so it may be easier to identify, but if someone refuses to listen to the entire genre because of this, I wonder why they don't paint other genres with the same broad brush (and if they do, I'm not talking about them).

I can make a similar argument about the violence. Let's be honest, large portions of Americans love violence. Movies, TV, and video games celebrate violence constantly. As does music that is not hip-hop. Here's a video with a quarter billion views all about shooting people. I don't remember there being a large outcry about it promoting violence. Apparently if you're white and back it with inoffensive pop-rock, it's fine.

But now I'm going to talk about culture. The most important thing hip-hop has taught me is that you cannot judge someone from a different culture from outside that culture. I believe people underestimate how many of their beliefs about morality and how the world works are formed by their surroundings and culture.

Life is a competition for resources. If you live in a time and place where resources are easy to come by, it's easy to forget this. But the most important moral imperative is survival. Your other moral beliefs are irrelevant if you're dead. Unsurprisingly, people will do what it takes to survive.

In some places, such as the oppressed communities that give birth to many hip-hop artists, resources are scarce and people do what they have to do to get by. By any means. And for many people outside those communities, it may be very easy to judge someone for stealing or selling drugs, but they should ask themselves what they would do in the same circumstances. Especially when one of the main reasons people have to do those things is the way they have been oppressed by the very people who judge them.

These are all complex issues with a lot of angles. I'm not justifying, condoning, or condemning anything. I don't have any answers. I'm just saying that hip-hop has led me to ask a lot more questions about the things I don't understand in the world. And if you keep your ears open, it could do the same for you.