Social Justice In Hip Hop

Like so many things that have achieved massive success in the United States and around the world, hip hop has had to endure its fair share of obstacles. Hip hop is an art form that is inherently postmodern, progressive, and urban, and one that includes modes like street graffiti, breakdancing, and rapping – all which have had some degree of difficulty finding respect in a country trying desperately to hold onto the past. When Jazz came to the American scene in the early twentieth century, it too was a predominantly African-American venture, with deeply-seeded African roots in
New Orleans, and a dignified respect for European music. In much the same way, hip hop emerged from New York City about seventy years later, with equally deep roots in African American culture. The
Conscious hip hop and its knowledge-based approach is used by artists to combat the social, political, and economic bulwarks that have systematically repressed urban African Americans for generations. By listening to the words of conscious hip hop artists, and identifying themselves with hip hop culture, we see a revitalization of the words spoken by political thinkers prior, within the lyrics of Afrika Bambaataa, Common, Killer Mike, and countless others.
Social Justice theory is an incredibly broad and extensive field, in which anybody can get lost for years studying, Because of that and for the sake of this paper, we will only be examining the works of a few thinkers. John Rawls writes extensively on this topic in A Theory of Justice, in which he discusses justifiable distribution of wealth and liberties in society. In contrast, we will also look at Robert
Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia, as an advocate for the minimal state, and how a minimalist government might react to and support those left behind by a society moving too quickly forward. In addition, we will examine the classical works of