Cultural Appropriation in Hip-Hop
Hip-Hop is more than a musical genre. It is a transcending culture with its own rules and context. It’s a lifestyle that has reached beyond the inner-cities of the United States, and today, its power influences the entire world. Its message is unfiltered, at times angry, controversial, misunderstood, inspiring, and thought-provoking, and in many ways, hip-hop is the deafening voice of the minority. To many people who follow hip-hop almost religiously, the Mecca of hip-hop is the Bronx, New York City. The phenomenon started In 1975 when a local Jamaican immigrant and DJ named Kool Herc burst on to the scene with a new style of music in which he employed break-beats over samples of James Brown records. According to the writers of Old School Hip Hop.com “Kool Herc is the father of [the] underground sound from New York that found its way to becoming a worldwide phenomenon” (n.p). However, many other hip-hop historians credit James Brown much more than Herc, and even Kool Herc himself is quoted in a New Black Magazine. Com article crediting Brown with the words, “if it weren’t for James Brown, there would be no such thing as hip-hop” (n.p.) In short, if the Bronx is the Mecca of hip-hop, then James Brown is Allah, and DJ Kool Herc is the Prophet Mohammed. In the early years, hip-hop’s first emcees were DJ’s. It was their job to entertain the crowd, keep the party alive, and introduce the records that they were playing. Kool Herc was the first to employ other emcees to speak over his records for him. According to Piero Scarufi, author of “A History of Rock and Dance Music”, Herc’s emcees, known as the Herculoids, were Jamaican immigrants who appropriated the Jamaican tradition of toasting (a reggae artist speaking in rhyme over instrumental sections of a record) (n.p.). With Jamaican toasts over James Brown samples, DJ Kool Herc and the Herculoids had appropriated and incorporated the “Godfather of Soul” with the vibe of Jamaica to create their own musical genre. Kool Herc perfected the art of sampling, which is the basis of almost all hip-hop instrumentals in the history of the genre. He, like many other DJ’s and producers after him, sampled the work of James Brown, who according to Rolling Stone.com is the most sampled musical artist of all time (n.p.). One of Brown’s most influential pieces, Funky Drummer, has been sampled by an uncountable amount of hip hop artists, including the Beastie Boys, Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, and LL Cool J to name very few. The sampling of records which is at the very root of hip-hop culture, is an example of appropriation at its clearest. It is the nature of hip hop to take something old, twist it, and meld it into something new and creative. Famous musician, Ike Turner once said, “I can put a hip-hop beat to reggae. That is, I can have real reggae in the drums and in the rhythm, and on top of it I can put The Rolling Stones' feeling, anyone's feeling on top. Nobody has ever done this before” (n.p.) This idea explained by Turner is what many people believe to be the beauty of hip hop as an art form, yet others, discredit hip-hop, believing that it is a lower form of music because it takes things from other genres. Nonetheless, hip hop has adapted from other culturally dominant art forms to make its own way. Hip-Hop started in lower-class black communities, where young people appropriated aspects of other music and made it their own. This is true not only of sampling in instrumentals, but of the language in hip-hop. For instance, being “bad” can mean “good”, and the N-word can be used by a black person to describe somebody that’s respected. These are examples of how hip-hop culture has, in principle, taken majority America and turned it on its head. Taking the N-word, a word that in the past was used primarily used by white people in an effort to demean blacks, and changing it to use it in a different context is, in a nutshell, the spirit of hip hop. It is a counterculture which, in many ways, challenges the majority in an effort to express its frustrations. According to Richard Rogers, author of “Transculturation” in The Encyclopedia of Communication Theory, “cultural dominance refers to the use of elements of a dominant culture by a subordinate culture in a context in which the dominant culture has been imposed on the subordinate one” (967). In the case of sampling, the flipping of the meaning of the N-Word, and other slang, hip-hop culture has found its niche. It challenges authority and conventional wisdom, and it takes aspects of the past and changes them, for better or for worse. Of course, there are divergent views on hip-hop’s tendency to appropriate culture. A general criticism of rap music is that it can, in some cases, completely steal from someone else’s work. Insert Vanilla Ice, whose 1990 smash hit, Ice, Ice, Baby, used the recorded bass line and melody from the, David Bowie track Under Pressure. According to "The Song Remains the Same: A Review of the Legalities of Music Sampling", Ice, in turn, lost one hundred percent of his royalties to David Bowie (n.p.). In this particular case, a hip-hop artist paid the price for exploitation. In other cases, however, cultural appropriation by hip-hop artists is looked at as very positive. For instance, pop-star Rick James was elated when he “didn’t have to work anymore in life when rappers started sampling” (n.p.).On a more conscious note, Jay-Z, an artist who many fans consider to be the greatest rapper of all time had this to say about hip-hop’s tendency to appropriate culture;” Hip-hop has done more than any leader, politician, or anyone to improve race relations…That's why this generation is the least racist generation ever. You see it all the time. Go to any club. People are intermingling, hanging out, having fun, enjoying the same music. Hip-hop is not just in the Bronx anymore. It's worldwide. Everywhere you go, people are listening to hip-hop and partying together. Hip-hop has done that” (n.p.) After all is said and done, hip-hop will always be controversial. It may never be fully accepted, but its ability to change aspects of different cultures into something relatable, often edgy, emotional, and inspiring cannot be ignored.

Works Cited
Challis, Ben. (2003). "The Song Remains the Same: A Review of the Legalities of Music Sampling". Retrieved from http://www.musiclawupdates.com/articles/ARTICLE%2003thesongremainsthesame.htm

Dilworth, L. (1996). Introduction. In Imagining Indians in the Southwest: Persistent visions of a primitive past (pp. 2-9). Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.

Gordon, Jason. (2006) James Brown: The Most Sampled Man in the Biz. Rolling Stone Magazine [electronic version] Retrieved from http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/james-brown-most-sampled-man-in-the-biz-20061226

Hip Hop Quotes (2011) Brainyquotes.com. Retrieved from http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/hip-hop.html

Kadish, L. V. (2004, Fall). Reading cereal boxes: Pre-packaging history and indigenous identities. Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture (1900-present), 3.2.
Retrieved from http://www.americanpopularculture.com/journal/articles/fall_2004/kadish.htm

Kool Herc Biography (2010) Old School Hip Hop. Retrieved from http://www.oldschoolhiphop.com/artists/deejays/kooldjherc.htm

Rogers, R. A. (2009). Transculturation. In S. W. Littlejohn & K. A. Foss (Eds.), The encyclopedia of communication theory (pp. 966-969). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Salaam, Mtume. How J.B. Influenced us. The New Black Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.thenewblackmagazine.com/view.aspx?index=566
Scarufi, Piero. (2009). The History of Rock Music. Rap Music. Retrieved from http://www.scaruffi.com/history/cpt417.html