Hip Hop and Rap are Not the Same Thing
posted by Joshua Dungee | October 30, 2020 | In Arts and Culture, NewsThe terms “hip-hop” and “rap” are often used interchangeably and though these words are similar, they are not the same thing.
Hip-hop is a whole culture made up of many different components whereas rap is more so a form of music that has derived from hip-hop.
Avery Johnson, a senior nursing major at Fayetteville State University says that she feels people separated hip-hop from rap because “rap became mainstream, and it became about musicality and not lyricism.”
In his song “Hip Hop vs. Rap,” New York rapper, KRS-ONE says “Rap is something you do. Hip Hop is something you live.”
According to Shaka Shaw at Ebony, Keith Cowboy of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five is the originator of the term hip-hop, but “it was Afrika Bambaataa who is credited with using ‘hip-hop’ to describe the culture that emceeing/[rap] belonged within.” The term hip hop began in the 1970s, and it mostly consisted of just emceeing, which is the act of making and preforming music according to Next Level’s blog “Rap VS. Hip Hop.”
As it got more popular, it grew into a community with four main elements: deejaying, emceeing, graffiti, and dance (specifically breakdance). Fast forward to 2020, graffiti of course is not as popular as it was in the ‘70s, but the other three are still major factors within the world of hip-hip.
Rap falls along the lines of the emceeing portion of hip-hop. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, when dissecting rap music, it is often broken up into 3 segments, “content (what is being said), flow (rhythm, rhyme), and delivery (cadence, flow).” This why many people believe the word “rap” is an acronym for “rhythm and poetry,” according to The Free Dictionary by Farlex.
Dylan Smith at Digital Music News states that “The hip hop movement, for its part, consists of rap and several cultural elements, including one’s lifestyle and experiences. Rapping is a specific vocal delivery.”
Over the years, the state of rap has drastically changed, some argue for the better, others say for the worse but there is no doubt that it is different. Conscious rap is “is a sub-genre of rap that focuses on creating awareness and imparting knowledge,” according to Henry Adaso at LiveAboutDotCom. Some people believe that the conscious rappers are in the hip-hop category and everything else is in the rap category since conscious rap is most similar to how rap was when it first started. However, this is not the case; conscious rap is a sub-genre of rap itself and as stated before, rap is constantly changing, but hip-hop on the other hand, has remained the same since the beginning.
Musical artist Rob Level even goes as far to say that artist and rappers are two different things as well. “To be completely honest, anyone can rap” he said. “That’s why everyone and their brother is a rapper nowadays. What they are not though, is an artist. They are not pieces of culture that change the way people live their lives.”
Is it okay to still refer to rap music as hip-hop? Yes, rap music is still hip-hop, and it is completely accurate to describe it as such. However, when using the two words, just remember there is a difference between the two, and they don’t always mean the exact same thing.
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