The legacy of Black Power Visual Culture in 1990s Hip Hop

I chose this article as I was intrigued by the posts we did last week, and I wanted to learn more about how African Americans influenced music, about black power and how this affects the representation of African Americans today. 

This article focuses on hip-hop music from the 1990s, highlighting the treatment of African Americans at the time. It goes into detail how 1990s African American hip-hop artists went into detail about political issues such as police brutality, racism, and many other difficulties African Americans had to face. I found this to be interesting as music is a great way to get a message across, especially if a song gets popular, it is heard by the masses and so is an interesting way of getting political issues across, which is what many of the 1990s hip-hop artist have done. An example used in the article was N.W.A's 'fuck the police', showing quite how obvious they were being about the political happening of African Americans. Of course, hip-hop is seen as violent and explicit due to it's harsh words and style, which just adds to the awful stereotype against African Americans. 

The article then goes onto the use of black power used in this style of music music. it shows different covers to albums or songs that show black power and black panther symbolism from the 1960s. There's is an example of Boogie Down Productions (BDP) cover for their second album being influenced by a Malcom X political poster, 'by any means necessary'. This shows how far American American went to promoting black power, and bringing back the black panther power from the 1960s through the use of 1990s hip hop. Many hip hop artists of the 1990s promote the use of self defence, and the use of BDP's album cover shows this. The article then goes on to talk about Public Enemy, who in videos used the berets, gloves and jackets similar to that the black panthers used to wear, bringing the idea of black power to the forefront, and updating the image of black panthers and black power and that they can be heard.

article:j
http://www.baas.ac.uk/usso/the-legacy-of-black-power-visual-culture-in-1990s-hip-hop/