Papers by Abdelwahab Drofix
While trying to find common ground, my sixty-year-old father-in-law and I began talking about his... more While trying to find common ground, my sixty-year-old father-in-law and I began talking about his new job as a speech communications instructor at Eastern Illinois University and my position as a teaching assistant in Southern Illinois University's history department. As he spoke about the speeches that he had assigned to his classes he stopped to ask me what "hip hop" is. 1 He explained further that two of his students had asked to do speeches on hip hop and he was not sure if it would be "an appropriate topic." Not knowing exactly how to bridge this generational (and cultural) divide, I tried to explain what I knew of hip hop. I quickly realized that my understanding of hip hop was hard to express. Having recently become interested in the HBO series Russell Simmons' Presents Def Poetry, I played a video tape of one of the episodes, somehow thinking that thirty minutes of hip hop poetry could fill my father-in-law in on a subculture with a thirty year history. 2 Since hip hop's origins during the mid-1970s it has grown from a localized urbanarts pastime to a multi-billion dollar a year industry. Its effects have spread from the urban streets to classrooms and boardrooms. The impoverished youths of African and Latin ancestry that once comprised the entire cast and audience of this subculture are now amid a rainbow of economic, generational, and ethnic diversity. How did a subculture that was, in large part, the most overlooked and unappreciated segment of society come to dominate a large segment of modern popular culture? The objective of this project is to determine what hip hop culture is, how it is being defined by the artist creating it, and how it will continue to gain significance by examining its history and its evolution as a 1 "Hip hop" is used as both an adjective and a noun throughout this paper. When used as an adjective it will include a hyphen. According to Microsoft Word 2000, 'hip hop" requires a hyphen regardless of its use in written language. Some authors include the hyphen when "hip hop" is used as a noun, but most do not. 2 My father-in-law, Jim Coleman, is used here as a representative of typical American middle-class values and cultural awareness. He married his wife at relatively young age, had three daughters, is a regularly attending Catholic ("for the community aspect, not for the dogma") and is tolerant of my, sometime, extremely liberal views of society.
While trying to find common ground, my sixty-year-old father-in-law and I began talking about his... more While trying to find common ground, my sixty-year-old father-in-law and I began talking about his new job as a speech communications instructor at Eastern Illinois University and my position as a teaching assistant in Southern Illinois University's history department. As he spoke about the speeches that he had assigned to his classes he stopped to ask me what "hip hop" is. 1 He explained further that two of his students had asked to do speeches on hip hop and he was not sure if it would be "an appropriate topic." Not knowing exactly how to bridge this generational (and cultural) divide, I tried to explain what I knew of hip hop. I quickly realized that my understanding of hip hop was hard to express. Having recently become interested in the HBO series Russell Simmons' Presents Def Poetry, I played a video tape of one of the episodes, somehow thinking that thirty minutes of hip hop poetry could fill my father-in-law in on a subculture with a thirty year history. 2 Since hip hop's origins during the mid-1970s it has grown from a localized urbanarts pastime to a multi-billion dollar a year industry. Its effects have spread from the urban streets to classrooms and boardrooms. The impoverished youths of African and Latin ancestry that once comprised the entire cast and audience of this subculture are now amid a rainbow of economic, generational, and ethnic diversity. How did a subculture that was, in large part, the most overlooked and unappreciated segment of society come to dominate a large segment of modern popular culture? The objective of this project is to determine what hip hop culture is, how it is being defined by the artist creating it, and how it will continue to gain significance by examining its history and its evolution as a 1 "Hip hop" is used as both an adjective and a noun throughout this paper. When used as an adjective it will include a hyphen. According to Microsoft Word 2000, 'hip hop" requires a hyphen regardless of its use in written language. Some authors include the hyphen when "hip hop" is used as a noun, but most do not. 2 My father-in-law, Jim Coleman, is used here as a representative of typical American middle-class values and cultural awareness. He married his wife at relatively young age, had three daughters, is a regularly attending Catholic ("for the community aspect, not for the dogma") and is tolerant of my, sometime, extremely liberal views of society.
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Papers by Abdelwahab Drofix