Hip Hop Activism - Evolution and Context

Evolution and Context

The mid-1990s were a particularly active period for the hip-hop agenda. In 1994, C. Delores Tucker told a Senate panel that the hip-hop generation, "coaxed by gangster rap,' would "trigger a crime wave of epidemic proportions that we have never seen the likes of." And then added, "Regardless of the number of jails built, it will not be enough."

In his book Can't Stop Won't Stop author Jeff Chang traces the evolution of the hip hop activist movement noting that it was initially mostly grass roots and locally focused. But as movements against the prison-industrial complex and police brutality emerged simultaneous to movements against corporate globalization, many young hip hop activists began to organize nationally.

As hip hop has become a globalized art form, hip hop's progressive, activist agenda has traveled with it around the world. Organizers in Paris, Cape Town, Sweden, New Zealand Chile and in countless other countries have employed the tools of hip hop to work for change in communities, empower youth and give voice to unchecked issues. While gangster rap has been blamed by cultural critics for triggering crime waves, hip hop activism has stood up against the prison industrial complex, addressed environmental racism (many went on to encompass green politics) and corrupt systems that cause poverty around the world. Global hip hop activism does not only employ rap music, but also works within the other pillars of hip hop, such as creating youth empowerment projects by teaching graffiti art or break dancing. In the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, a movement called Afro-Reggae was started by former drug dealers to help keep favela children out of the drug trade by teaching them to be emcees and break dancers. The movement gained international fame in the documentary "Favela Rising"

The Anti-Injustice Movement (aka The AIM) is a rapidly expanding international hip-hop activist movement composed of political emcees (aka 'raptivists'), protest poets, DJs, street dancers, graffiti writers and activists who are fighting many forms of global injustice via peaceful and creative means.