About
About Hip-Hop Linguistics .Com
HHL is an underground-based hip-hop website and online hip-hop magazine created to give hip-hop heads a portal into the positive, conscious, and thought-provoking hip-hop ignored by mainstream media outlets and web sites. HHL is among the Internet’s best sources of the following:
Hip-Hop Reviews: Mama used to say, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” This statement is the basis of our reviews section. Unlike many hip-hop review publications, HHL does not publish negative reviews. Our goal is to recommend only the best hip-hop in the underground, and our reviews section contains only albums recommended by our staff of reviewers.
Hip-Hop News: Hip-Hop news is not unlike national news. Everyone tells the same stories, most of them are based around celebrity gossip or society’s negative perceptions of hip-hop, and the news providers assume that most readers are ignorant. The HHL hip-hop news section contains news stories you do not find on all the other repetitive publications. Our goal is to be the Internet’s premiere source of positive and intellectual hip-hop news stories and articles - updated daily.
Hip-Hop Politics: Let’s face it - U.S. politics revolves around a bunch of old baby boomers who are still fighting all the same battles, and the majority of media outlets serve only to reinforce this agenda. The HHL politics section reports on politics from a hip-hop perspective, and current events that matter to the hip-hop generation. Our goal is to provide insight into the world of politics from the hip-hop perspective.
Information: Our daily features have one main goal - to inform and educate. Our editorial schedule is listed below. We highly recommend visiting the site daily to stay up on HHL’s daily features and news postings:
HHL Weekly Editorial Schedule:
Monday - featured hip-hop album
Tuesday - featured hip-hop editorial
Wednesday - featured in hip-hop politics / current events
Thursday - featured in underground hip-hop
Friday - featured editor’s piece and weekly wrap up
HHL Mission Statement
Encyclopedia.com defines hip hop as a “genre originating in the mid-1970s among black and Hispanic performers in New York City, at first associated with an athletic style of dancing, known as breakdancing. The word rap, derived from a 1960s slang word for conversation, generally consists of chanted, often improvised, street poetry accompanied by a montage of well-known recordings, usually disco or funk. Detractors have criticized most rap music as a boastful promotion of violence and misogyny; others have admired it as an inventive manipulation of cultural idioms and credit many rappers with an acute social and political awareness.”
Dictionary.com defines linguistics as “the scientific study of language … the humanistic study of language and literature.” So I guess that would mean that hip hop linguistics is the study, both scientific and humanistic, of the language demonstrated in rap music or poetry. The more we use this language to study hip-hop culture, the more upsetting it becomes that people actually think the sign above is accurate, that hip hop is “just like real music, except for the profoundly stupid lyrics.”
Many people I know, and the majority of older people I know, have this negative vision of hip-hop. A major reason for this is in my opinion the negative perception given to hip-hop by parents, politicians and the media over the years.
Initially, hip-hop was discredited by popular culture as a group of people who rapped because they couldn’t sing, and that rapping was a simple art form that anyone could do well. Then, hip-hop was discredited by popular culture as a borrowed art form, due to the fact that it relied on a DJ who used other people’s records to make the music.
Once these myths appeared to be dispelled, as people realized the advancement of music in hip-hop production and the advancement in flow, making the art of rapping one of the most difficult spoken skills around, people found other reasons to discredit hip-hop. As Encyclopedia.com said above, “detractors have criticized most rap music as a boastful promotion of violence and misogyny.” Nowadays, an absurdly large number of people still view hip-hop as this thug, gangster type of art form.
It has become clear to me that factions of society are on some blind quest to discredit hip-hop. The radio stations and television stations only play the same music and videos every hour, consisting of almost nothing but the materialistic, violent and misogynist videos and songs, denying the public easy access to introspective and thought provoking hip-hop. The goverment holds congressional hearings to determine the part of rap music in crimes and murders, most likely in an attempt to pull blame from themselves. And the media makes it a point to cover every awards show gang fight involving hip-hop artists, while paying no attention to any positive events or community service hip-hop artists and fans produce.
Perhaps they need a scapegoat, some evil group of people to blame for our country’s inability to help its poor, our parents’ inability to raise their children, or our judicial system’s inability to prevent crime or rehabilitate criminals. Or maybe these senators and newscasters and parent teacher associations realize that hip-hop could become one of the most effective forms of social and political commentary this country has ever known. Maybe the rising voice of this world’s ever-increasing urban society makes these people fear for their material possessions, or false senses of security, or advanced positions in society.
Whatever the reasons, Hip Hop Linguistics was created to tell the truth. The truth about what real rappers are saying. The truth about the music’s themes and lessons. The truth about hip-hop.
Hip-hop is much more than a style of dance or a type of music or a group of fads picked up by the mindless majority. Hip-hop is a way of life, a system of beliefs and philosophies that influence the way we live our lives. Something we are passionate about. Something we are constantly learning from. Something that, at one time or another, may have saved us. And it is our goal to make the masses understand that by analyzing and interpreting real hip-hop lyrics, showing that they are instead “profoundly smart.”
Thank you for visiting this site. Peace.
