Similarities between Blues and Hip-Hop Music

Abstract

Within this paper I attend to argue Blues and Hip-Hop music share a similar history, culture, and tradition and have been able to cross-racial and cultural lines, influencing American society and the world at large. Each genre expressed complex storytelling and emotions, challenged traditional women’s roles, recorded history and was used as a form of social protest. The Blues became an emotional outlet for African Americans, giving them the ability to express pain and share triumphs during the Jim Crow Era. Blues artists often depicted the raw emotion and social conditions of African American life while simultaneously using it as a way to spread new ideas and personal thoughts and chronicle successes and failures within the African American community. Created in the Bronx in the late 1970's, the beginning of Hip Hop music like Blues was born out of the social conditions African Americans found themselves in during the late 1970's and early 1980's. Hip-Hop has risen to become the number one selling musical art from in the United States. A worldwide phenomenon, Hip Hop has become a financial global success and influenced every avenue of American life such as language, fashion and social norms. Hip-Hop music has forever changed how Americans view race, cultural and class. The similarities of these two musical art forms are extremely important and worthy of scholarly research.