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For my quote collection I chose to use quotes that shed a more positive light on hip-hop by maintaining a theme of how it is used as a tool, especially for marginalized and oppressed communities. Individuals among these communities created and utilize hip-hop as a platform to express themselves, connect with others, acknowledge their painful history, as well as discuss contemporary struggles, and more. These quotes resonated with me because they represent some important ideas I took away from this class, they show what hip-hop truly is under the surface despite its typically negative reputation in the academic world and reveal some of the cultural and social behind it. I also enjoyed these quotes because I think they also display the potential that hip-hop possesses, what hip-hop could be with the support it currently lacks. One quote by Kuttner and White-Hammond stated, “Artists and organizers have also used hip hop as part of mechanisms to develop alternative institutions to support social and economic justice, as well as encourage political participation.” The media typically does a poor job of disclosing how important hip-hop can be to many oppressed communities because it is accomplished in an atypical manner, however, it has accomplished impressive things for marginalized communities in terms of social and economic justice, and has the capability of accomplishing so much more. Its encouragement of political participation directly counters the governments goals of keeping people of color out of political matters, so this notion alone is radical but necessary. I also wanted to include a statement addressing hip-hop’s contradicting characteristics/themes, “…hip-hop feminists insist on living with contradictions, because failure to do so relegates feminism to an academic project that is not politically sustainable beyond the ivory tower.” (Durham, Cooper, Morris, 2013) I thought this one was helpful in addressing how feminism’s attempts to be perfect are not lasting solutions, and that these contradictions are actually crucial in pushing for more progressive feminist results in hip-hop. From these quotes I hope the viewer can take away that there is so much more to hip-hop than meets the eye. Of course it is not perfect, but it is also too harshly critiqued considering the negative aspects (misogyny, toxic masculinity, homophobia, etc…) are all issues that pervade our society as a whole, hip-hop is not to be blamed. It is true that we cannot ignore that these issues can be reinforced through hip-hop, but no worse than other genre’s of music or modes of entertainment, so why is hip-hop singled out? In addition, the positive aspects that hip-hop brings to the table are buried under the sand. During my experience of this course, I was able to put words to the argument in the defense of hip-hop that I always wanted to make, but did not have the tools to do so. I also learned to always dig more deeply into materials that I am analyzing, rather than form conclusions based off of how something appears to function from the surface. Subjects like these are immensely more complex than they appear and deserve the time and dedication necessary to draw more informed conclusions.