The Hip Hop institution/genre research

 In this blog post I am going to look at the hip hop institution and its conventions in detail. I am going to explore the origin of hip hop and its influences.Some of the information below is taken from the internet for example wikipedia. I felt taht this information was important for my research.


Hip hop music, sometimes also called  rap music,  is a music genre consisting of a stylised rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is sung or chanted. It has developed as part of hip hop culture throughout long periods of time. Hip Hop originated from an African American community during the 1970s in New York City,

The inception of hip hop began in the 1970s,soon after it it became popular and is still very popular today. here is a diversity of hip hop tracks and artists  such as Eminem, Kanye West and Tinie Tempah.

The hip hop genre of music has a large variety of sounds that the music generates and uses. the tempo of hip hop is usually quite fast, and the dynamics are usually loud as well, however there are some exceptions.  Hip hop music can be  slow calm songs, to loud, aggressive, upbeat ones, it varies with the artist.

For example most hip hop soundtracks or lyrics haves concept and themes that talk about relationships, struggles in daily life, prejudice, women.

Throughout the hip hop industry , there is a collection of fashion iconography, a typical costume would be trainers usually Nike, a white t-shirt or black overalls that were sometimes accompanied with sunglasses. A popular convention in the 1970s to 1980s were big gold chains that hung from the artists neck, but that fashion accessory isn't as popular as it was. Hats are seen as a hip hop trait, to be specific snapback hats. follow and carry out the conventions of hip hop artist costume every day, and are seen doing this through out there music videos, interviews, concerts and media texts. Costume is a big part of hip hop culture as it is a big part of reputation which artists must maintain. A significant aspect of hip hop artists that applies to a lot of them- tattoos.

Hip hop music`s iconography conveyed power and money as its theme.

The conventional themes of costume within the world of hip hop artists are expensive designer clothes which reflect the artist’s success and power; other themes are symbols of signature looks and symbols of wealth such as, fast expensive cars, luxurious houses and other luxury vehicles like a yacht. You will find that all successful hip hop artists have these luxuries and show them off throughout the media and their music videos.