In “The Making of Hip Hop Globe” the author raised the question if hip hop could “create a fellowship of marginalized black youth around the globe” (Fernandes, 3). In The Get Down, we definitely see how groups of young black men and women use hip hop to find meaning and purpose in the midst of the chaos they go through. It can be described as Fernandes said that it “allowed young people to negotiate a political voice for themselves in their societies”(Fernandes, 4). In the beginning of episode 4, the rapper is commenting on the crisis that the Bronx is going through while there is campaign for mayor. He critiques this system because the mayor candidacy did not address the major issues that were happening in the Bronx at the time. It was remarkable to me how this author was able to draw so many connections between Sydney in the 80’s and the Bronx in the 80’s and 90’s. The situations were similar in which there were abandoned buildings, problems of drug addiction, crime and violence and so on. This quote from “(Re)building the Cypher” really stood out to me: “Attacking hip hop as a source of, rather than a response to, poverty and violence ignores the structural racism and classism that maintain the urban ghetto, and, even more absurdly, ames the perennial cultural issues of sexism, violence, and homophobia as if they emerged whole cloth in the 1970s.” (Kuttner, White-Hammond, 44). I read this and I was like PREACH! As mentioned before, hip hop was an escape but many times it was perceived as harmful to society and was used as evidence for the “defects of black youth culture.” This is shown when Koch blames part of the chaos in the Bronx on graffiti artists when in reality a lot of the graffiti had underlying meaning. For example, Dizzie’s character Rumi represents the struggles of a black man being accepted in society, not just any alien.

Mylene and Zeke are in similar predicaments. Mylene is stuck between trying to please her parents and her church and then creating secular music which is rebelling against her family. Zeke is also trying to pick whether or not he should continue his dreams of being an MC or getting out of the hood through new opportunities like his internship offer from Papa Fuerte. As said “connecting youth to their purpose is about challenging young artists to think beyond themselves and those to them–to assess their responsibility and role in society as cultural workers” (Kuttner, White-Hammond,53).