Hip-Hop Sub-Culture and the Black Eyed Peas
Let's Rap About Love: A Journey to the End of Hate
One song, that I think had a great effect on many sub-cultures all over the world, and was one of the first hip hop songs to have a really universal meaning is: “Where is the Love,” by The Black-Eyed Peas. In this song, they question everyone's ideologies regarding prejudice, and outlet their feelings towards racism, war, intolerance, greed, United States politics, terrorism, media, and love. Their hip hop sub-culture is seen in their clothing, and lyrics. However, they agreed to mainstream or sacrifice some of their original style in order to gain wider acceptance, which contrasts their main message. The reasons for this song's success can be identified through the band's sub-cultures, its diverse member composition, their style, the time period the song reflects, and their highly relatable message.
Popular culture is composed of numerous subcultures, which all have intertwined relationships and influences. To procreate, musically physically or mentally is the essence of what is right in the world. Haphazardly, one can ingest this information along with millions of other messages from the media including song-lyrics. However, when one finds a song with a deeper meaning, or a symbolic reference, or even a controversial vibe, it tends to stick in one's mind better, and result in massive amounts of sharing, because it is human nature to share one's experiences with others. This is how popular culture, or hegemony is brought upon humans who have friends or own a computer. Hegemony, in my view, is another word for ephemeral popularity that appears to be natural, but is in fact pervasively imbedded into our sub-consciousness by social interactions. If there were only fifty people on the earth, their hegemony would be quite static and unchanging. When you quantify this example into modern standards, the amount of people, interactions, and sub-cultures happening at least 1 million times per second is dizzying.
One song, that I think had a great effect on many sub-cultures all over the world, and was one of the first hip hop songs to have a really universal meaning is: “Where is the Love,” by The Black-Eyed Peas. In this song, they question everyone's ideologies regarding prejudice, and outlet their feelings towards racism, war, intolerance, greed, United States politics, terrorism, media, and love. Their hip hop sub-culture is seen in their clothing, and lyrics. However, they agreed to mainstream or sacrifice some of their original style in order to gain wider acceptance, which contrasts their main message. The reasons for this song's success can be identified through the band's sub-cultures, its diverse member composition, their style, the time period the song reflects, and their highly relatable message.
Popular culture is composed of numerous subcultures, which all have intertwined relationships and influences. To procreate, musically physically or mentally is the essence of what is right in the world. Haphazardly, one can ingest this information along with millions of other messages from the media including song-lyrics. However, when one finds a song with a deeper meaning, or a symbolic reference, or even a controversial vibe, it tends to stick in one's mind better, and result in massive amounts of sharing, because it is human nature to share one's experiences with others. This is how popular culture, or hegemony is brought upon humans who have friends or own a computer. Hegemony, in my view, is another word for ephemeral popularity that appears to be natural, but is in fact pervasively imbedded into our sub-consciousness by social interactions. If there were only fifty people on the earth, their hegemony would be quite static and unchanging. When you quantify this example into modern standards, the amount of people, interactions, and sub-cultures happening at least 1 million times per second is dizzying.