Aivaras Vaitiekunas

Where was Hip Hop originated from?

• Hip Hop is a fairly new genre dating back only around 40 years which is quite some time ago but not as far away as RnB would have been. The roots of hip hop are a combination of African and American. African music and the spoken traditions were told to be brought by the West African slaves to North and South America where they developed their own music styles. This started from church music and evolving into other types of genres for example Gospel and Jazz these genres would mix up and create hip hop. Caribbean's had their own style of music, Jamaica being one of the countries who had discos which DJ’s began to put their own little twists on the tracks they were releasing to the public which then turned into ‘dub’ and new form of reggae. These influences were brought together by Clive Campbell who emigrated from Jamaica to the U.S. In 1967 when he was only 13 years of age. He introduced the ‘dub’ method to his West Bronx neighbourhood in New York City. Later on Campbell became a popular DJ, better now known as DJ Kool Herc with the style that influenced many others and grew hooked on what is now known as Hip Hop.

How has the genre evolved over time?

• Hip hop has evolved over time by firstly it was just for the new genre and how exciting it became hearing someone speak their minds in music but now hip hop has changed into violence and gang crimes due to the fact that hip hop is used against other gang members or crews with the music while they rap about the crew. Hip hop was changed when people used hip hop as an excuse to create violence and hate, but some artist just use it to explain a story in their song or to tell them about something.

How are the artists in the genre represented ?

• During the 1990’s I think that hip hop artist were represented as ‘cool’ people where every teen would like to grow up as having so much money and being in gangs, but nowadays I think that hip hop songs have changed dramatically from rapping about drugs violence and shootings to rapping about girls and sex. These days hip hop has an affect of the teens because they release songs to do with sex and the encourage sex in hip hop but for teens that is inappropriate content. Some hip hop songs still do have the old school feel to them where they rap about life and what they been through. I think that some artists such as Drake are role models because his popular songs don't encourage violence or any inappropriate content but he raps about the good things in life. Some of the artist do have real hip hop talent nowadays but some others just get famous because they know someone who is in the hip hop industry and this gets them popularity.

Main ideologies in current hip hop music videos

• Hip hop ideologies differ between different artist but the main ideologies of hip hop are that each video should include money to show that they are wealthy and expensive things like sports cars and expensive jewellery, this is really common in hip hop videos to show the audience that they are wealthy and have money to spend. They also have girls thrown at them as if they can get any girl they like the reason they do that is because of the money so this shows that the money is the power and that they can get anything they want if they have money, this is why money is the key to having a hip hop music video. Also drugs in music videos of hip hop are also common and they use this as a normal acceptable activity which in reality drugs are illegal but this shows the rebellions side of them which hip hop music portrays to the audience.

Examples of artist which conventionally fit the genre

• One the most popular artist this day is Drake he is iconic to most people and produces a variety of hip hop songs, he also collaborates with various artist.

• Another artist would be Tyga who has recently just blown the hip hop scene with his new songs which loads of people do enjoy. He also uses some ideology of hip hop in his videos with expensive jewellery and loads of girls in his videos.

• The Game has been into hip hop but he just started hitting the charts again and he uses most ideology to his videos with gang members and shooting.

What do I need to consider in my video

• I am going to try add expensive clothing into the video and try to get someone who has an expensive car.

• I'm also going to add good camera angles and fast phase changes into my video this is common with hip hop videos.