Native American hip hop is hip-hop culture practiced by people of Native American heritage; in colloquial terms, this also includes Canadian First Nation hip hop artists. As such it is not a specific form of hip-hop but varies in style along the lines of hip-hop in general. Native Americans have been present in hip-hop since its inception as breakdancers, DJs, rappers, and graffiti artists. The Native American contribution to hip-hop can occasionally be veiled by the ethnic umbrella term of Hispanic or Latino, terms that do not specifically refer to race. The U.S. Office of Management and Budget currently defines "Hispanic or Latino" as "a person of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin, regardless of race". Hip-hop is most often described as originating in the 1970s in the inner city African American and Latino American communities of New York City.
Hip-hop has, in more recent times, grown in popularity not only in urban settings but also on reservations since it has become ubiquitous on television and radio. Political activism and its expression in art has also been of great influence due to the many social issues present in indigenous communities. Activists such as John Trudell with his spoken word poetry and Russell Means with what he calls his rap-ajo music have been of some influence with their artistic endeavors.
Read more about Native American Hip Hop: Notable Artists, Early Internet Pioneering
Famous quotes containing the words native, american, hip and/or hop:
“And so we ask for peace for the gods of our fathers, for the gods of our native land. It is reasonable that whatever each of us worships is really to be considered one and the same. We gaze up at the same stars, the sky covers us all, the same universe compasses us. What does it matter what practical systems we adopt in our search for the truth. Not by one avenue only can we arrive at so tremendous a secret.”
—Quintus Aurelius Symmachus (A.D. c. 340–402)
“The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn’t need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder—in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“I stir my martinis with the screw,
four-inch and stainless steel,
and think of my hip where it lay
for four years like a darkness.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“I have tried being surreal, but my frogs hop right back into their realistic ponds.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)