Just Looking ...

After we discussed about hip-hop culture outside North America, I realized that I didn't know the "purpose" of Asian hip-hop culture though I'm listening their music almost everyday. Then, I began to read some articles about hip-hop culture in other countries rather than North America. I think hip-hop has become a universal tool for talking back to the mainstream of any society. For example, youths in some regions such as Japan, England, France, and Germany adapt American patterns to their own demographics. In London, marginalized East Indian youth blend Indian melodies and Hindi with English rap as a street form of protest. In Paris, poor Jewish, Middle Eastern and West African youth coming out of the projects use hip-hop styles and rap to talk about their poverty and police brutality. In Japan, female hip-hoppers use the genre to defy gender restrictions for women. However, like the problems in North America, the very success of this genre has created something of a schism in hip-hop culture. Community-based underground rappers are drowned out by the mass appeal and commercialization of the big-time, best-selling artists, some of whom are marketing a gangster persona with songs that focus on wealth, possessions and crime, often with a misogynistic attitude toward women. Fine. You're making money, but what are you going to do for the community? For the basic purpose of hip-hop culture (the freedom of self-expression), or at least for the music, I think someone has to do something about this global problem...