Response "Hip Hop Planet"

Jodie Crutchley

09/21/14

English 1100 Writing Skills WorkShop

Professor Young

                   Response to “Hip Hop Planet”

               In "Hip Hop Planet" by James McBride, the author talks about his young adulthood. He explains the culture he grew up in and how he himself was raised on "Hip Hop Planet". James McBride grew up in the rise of hip-hop. When rappers like Biggie Smalls and Grandmaster Flash began making there names. 

              The identity of hip-hop was in one of McBrides nightmares, where his daughter brings home a young boy she says she's getting married too. The boy, a rapper, with a mouthful of gold. McBride sees himself in the boy. Though he hates the way it looks it was the soundtrack of his young adulthood. It seemed like everywhere around him people were gaining popularity as rappers. McBride says he must've walked by the corner where Biggie Smalls stood "amusing his friends" a hundred times. Yet he pretended not to hear him. He tried to get away from the music because it was everything he ever thought it was, and everything he wanted to leave behind. 

             “It is the music that defies definition, yet defines our collective societies in immeasurable ways. To many of my generation, despite all the attempts to exploit it, belittle it, numb it, classify it, and analyze it, hip-hop remains an enigma, a clarion call, a cry of “I am” from the youth of the world. We’d be wise, I suppose, to start paying attention”. This quote from McBride to me shows the switch in his feelings toward hip-hop. He sees how it us affecting other countries and how it isn’t just rapping, the words have color and class. These people are rapping about themselves just as we talk about ourselves. They are giving everyone a sense of who they are and what kind of world they live in. The generation of hip-hop.