What is the Dispute Between Hip Hop and Rap Music

The roots of hip-hop actually go back as far as the West African civilization of the 1700's which was imported to the United States by the slaves who were captured from West Africa and sent to function in the cotton plantations of the South. When their descendants made their way to New York City in an effort to improve their lot by escaping the hidebound racism of the South, they brought the tradition of the West African griot, or public poet and storyteller, with them.

ut the griots of New York City were not those of Africa or yet the South, especially as the migrants of the 50's became the vanguard of the civic rights cause of the 60's. The griots of the 60's recited street poetry of a political nature - of rebellion, and defiance, and anger - yet of promise for a better future of equality and exemption from discrimination.And those street poems were finally set to a rhythmic beat that evoked both Africa and the Caribbean from which new immigrants of African origin were arriving in the urban ghettos of New York. Soon the ghettos would come live with the good of music featured at block parties, where styles and tribes mixed together to make a new man of urban musical fusion.These parties often featured DJ's who would use unusual techniques avoided by mainstream DJ's as they certainly caused harm to the delicate vinyl of the times. But audiences of block party guests scooped up the effects of the new DJ's, knowing that these were their own DJ's with their own style.Hip-hop was everything the disco of the 1970's was not - urban, edgy, non-conformist and powerful. It was merely a topic of a few days earlier it would scatter from Harlem and Brooklyn ghettos in New York to former inner city neighborhoods throughout the United States - and from there to the borders of mainstream music.The 1980's indeed marked that spread, from New York to former inner cities - and from there to the mainstream music scene in the United States and beyond. It also marked the beginnings of the controversial "gangsta" style, with raucous rhythms and blatantly vulgar lyrics of revolt and revolution against authority and all restrictions.By the 1990's, hip hop had gone mainstream, yet even mainstreamed hip hop performers like MC Hammer and the then boy wonder Lil Wayne never forgot from whence they came. They did not look down their music for their new audiences, and yet the young teenage Lil Wayne performed in a clear gangsta style, shocking and alternately delighting their new and traditional audiences alike.Now, in the first of the 21st century, hip hop is a share of the universal entertainment scene throughout the world. Lil Wayne, now in his late 20's, sells millions of copies of his albums, and hip-hop is featured in movies and at halftime shows during football games.