Myisha Roy
Nishi Shah-Williams
English 100
05 February 2009
Create The Music
The genre called Rap originated in the Bronx, New York, in the mid 1970’ (Howard). Of the many legends of how Rap came to be the most popular has to do with the humble DJ’s and MC’s of the underground clubs. While the DJ spun the track, the MC would entertain the crowd with simple rhymes (EZ Track). Over the years, Rap Music has become the theme songs of most young African American men in the United States. However the genre has broke boundaries and entered almost every culture outside of the states. Nonetheless a Rapper, along with Rap Music, is stereotyped to be associated with the thug life. Most individuals think that a Rap song is no more than a guy spitting rhymes about how much money he has, how many women he has slept with, or how low a girl can get. Yet they neglect to mention the Rappers such as Tupac Shakur, Nas, or Ice Cube who didn’t flaunt, but instead made poetry. Tupac was one of those artists that took his gift to alter the entire Rap game (Howard).
Tupac Shakur was born June 16, 1971 in the East Harlem section of Manhattan in New York City (Wikipedia). From an early age he was surrounded by incarceration. His godfather, his step father, and his sister all had spent time in jail by the time he was twelve. He used his surroundings and experiences to create a poetic style of rap that vocalized the problem facing the ghetto. Some of his music was controversial because of his descriptive, most of the time violent, lyrics. The majority of music critics didn’t agree with his honesty. Contradictory to what the critics thought, people from the ghettos of New York or California understood what Shakur was singing. “Lord knows I… tried, been a witness to homicide. Seen drive-bys, takin’ lives, little kids die” is a quote from his song So Many Tears. Tupac was simply shedding some light on what individuals refused to...