Coming into this course as someone who doesn’t listen to hip hop, I was unaware of how society and individuals have created hip hop into the most popular music genre today. The Forman reading although, difficult to read was the most impactful. After learning about space and place I was able to understand the roots of Hip Hop. “… all our lives and disconnected space from place and individuals from communities, opening up all our lives to constant spectacle or scrutiny”, in this quote Dimitriadis explains how we are all on display and society is the audience (Dimitriadis pp.12). In both readings I saw how popular culture benefitted urban inner-cities.

After reading the assignments I was surprised by how much talent and dedication that plays into becoming a DJ, beat boxer, graffiti artist. Based on social media it seems like a luxury life to live, all society sees is the money being shown off in pictures. The ‘OG’ generations have paved a way for artists now to get the big bucks. In the reading of Black Noise, Salt N Peppa were paid $20 a piece per show… compared to what some rappers get now is amazing and truthfully deserving! The contracts back then stripped the rights of creativity from OG artists. On the first day of class watching Missy Elliot and her song #ThrowItBack, she paid a point that she was an OG and paved the way for female artists to get a voice. In popular culture it shines the light on the current trending artists it is easy to forget the original artists who in a sense made it easier for them than they had it in their times.

What I would want to learn from this course is how did hip hop become a patriarchal system and can it change for good? Also, do hispanic rappers get treated differently than American rappers?