By Erica Dement
Staff Writer
Hip-hop includes more than just rap music and baggy pants. Born out of the ghettos of New York, this culture encompasses artistic expression in the forms of music, dancing and art.
And it’s in at Pepperdine.
Seaver’s student body encompasses rappers of African American, white and Hispanic backgrounds, hip-hop dancers and even a resident graffiti artist.
“I believe that there are a lot of talented people here at Pepperdine, but they don’t make themselves known,” said Pernell Marsh, a junior who has been b-boxing since he was young.
B-boxing or beatboxing is the use of the mouth to make vocal percussion sounds similar to the sounds of a drum. Marsh has been writing lyrics since he was 10.
“I’ve loved R&B my whole life,” Marsh said. “I’ve grown up with it. I’m like one voice and I can do my part by spreading the love of hip-hop.”
March put his music and b-boxing on a CD last summer with a friend from Colorado. “I think people appreciate my style,” Marsh said. “I’ve seen an increased interest in hip-hop.”
The exposure of hip-hop at Pepperdine is a reflection of the mainstreaming of rap and its hip-hop culture.
“We’ve come a long way,” said senior Russell Kirby, who has seen increased respect for hip-hop during his years at Pepperdine. “Pepperdine’s making good strides in my mind.”
Kirby got his inspiration to do hip-hop from watching the Mickey Mouse Club television show when he was 7 years old. Kirby currently performs spoken word pieces at the Comedy Store in Hollywood every first Monday of the month. His premieres his self-produced CD at a HAWC coffeehouse in April.
The strides that Pepperdine is taking include efforts by the new SGA Programming Board to include Christian hip-hop artists in their music selections. This semester the Black Student Union and Student Ministries joined efforts to hold a coffee house for students to come together and express themselves. Hip-hop was one part of this student expression.
“I would say that hip-hop comes in many different forms,” said Marcus Cooke, president of the Black Student Union. “Hip-hop is much more mainstream. You see DMX and 2Pac on MTV, not just BET.”
The roots of hip-hop culture are far from superficial and run much deeper than the mainstream media’s portrayal of the subculture. According to Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute, the roots of hip-hop culture developed as a result of the mass exodus of middle class families in the Bronx during the 1960s. A new expressway was built that cut through the middle of the Bronx. Poor African-American and Hispanic families replaced the middle class families.
Yale-New Haven found that as the Bronx deteriorated into a neighborhood with many vacant and unkempt buildings, poverty and crime accompanied the changing environment of the city. The number of gangs increased in the Bronx and embraced a lifestyle that used graffiti for self promotion and marking territorial boundaries.
“I call it aerosol art,” said junior Steve Mock, who has developed his own graffiti style. As an artist, Mock recognized the true talent behind graffiti that he saw in his home environment in south San Diego. Mock talked with experienced graffiti artists for advice on developing his own style and alphabets with different lettering styles. Style is the most important aspect of graffiti, according to Yale-New Haven Teacher Institute.
“If you are good enough you can get permission to tag on someone’s wall so it won’t be erased and maybe even be paid,” Mock said. “As far as content, most of it involves things in my own life —beliefs and friends.”
Most of Mock’s tagging is done in sketchbooks along with his other artistic work.
The content of the original hip-hop culture that emerged from the Bronx addressed issues of struggle and freedom from poverty and difficult circumstances.
Three aspects emerged to create hip-hop culture: graffiti, rap music and break-dancing. Rap music has become the most mainstream aspect of the culture although graffiti and break-dancing are still major components.
“True hip-hop is talking about real issues in today’s society,” Mock said.
Like much music from African-American communities, rap is reflective of political, social and economic conditions of its time. Part of hip-hop’s original appeal was the ability for people to freely express themselves. Rapping provided a freedom of expression with no rules and unlimited challenges. Rap skills could be practiced and honed.
“As a genre it talks about everything,” Kirby said. “It’s like rock. Hip-hop is every bit as fresh and influential as rock ever was.”
Kirby agrees that there is an increased interest in hip-hop music and that the culture is spreading its influence. Hip-hop has found an ability to provide something for everyone because of its versatility of style and addressing issues of struggle.
“Everyone has been through tough times,” Kirby said. “People shouldn’t write it off. It’s not monolithic.”
Rap was originally something that could be adjusted to each new circumstance in which it was involved. Modern rap music was born from the innovation of a Jamaican immigrant in the Bronx in New York during the early 1970s. DJ Kool Herc, known as the godfather of hip-hop, amused inner city youth with chanting over prolonged instrumental sections of popular songs. Herc used his knowledge of a Jamaican musical style called toasting, which involved DJs talking over the music that they played.
Herc was known for purchasing two copies of the same record in order to repeat the desired instrumental segment of a popular song using an audio mixer to create breaks of music.
The difficult and strenuous moves of early break dancing evolved into electric boogie moves such as the moonwalk, which Michael Jackson made famous.
Herc combined his knowledge of toasting and the breaks of music to create early forms of rap. Early raps consisted of the DJ acknowledging partygoers over the instrumental break. New Yorkers latched onto the musical style, which developed into longer rhymes tailored to each new party and circumstance.
This musical style and subculture spread from New York to other major urban centers with large numbers of African Americans. The repeated beats and rhyming words spurred a culture that has caused international interest.
The world has taken hip-hop music for more than lyrical amusement. Webster’s dictionary added a hip-hop entry in 1983, the Internet is littered with hip-hop Web sites in multiple languages and the hip-hop hall of fame opened Wednesday. However, skeptics of this subculture wonder how long the increased exposure and interest will last.
“If there was an increasing interest in true hip-hop, people would know more about groups like the Spooks, Common and Hieroglyphics,” Mock said. “These are the types of groups that rap about issues like time, wisdom, religious beliefs, societal issues. They don’t focus so much on external things but on internal things that matter in someone’s life.”
Despite the split interest in mainstream hip-hop and true hip-hop culture, it seems that hip-hop culture not a passing fad, but is at Pepperdine and in the music scene to stay.
“Long after mainstream hip-hop is gone, underground will stay,” Mock said.
March 14, 2002