Current Controversies: Rap and Hip Hop, and How it Helped to Shape my Paper

                After reading Current Controversies: Rap and Hip Hop, a few things were brought to my attention that I hadn't previously considered in-depth. This whole time I had been looking at rap mainly as poetry and hadn't really considered its potential to be used as other devices. Throughout the book, however, there is a focus on rap and hip hop being used as a political device as well. From revolutions in the Arab world and protests in African communities over illegitimate government figures, to the 2008 presidential election of Barack Obama, rap has influenced the worlds politics in a number of ways that I hadn't even realized before. When rap physically has the power to put in or remove someone from office, it's clearly so much more than just a call for social justice or a glimpse into the human struggle for a specific group of people. Rap has become one of the greatest tools for the world to utilize when trying to bring about change.
               While there was a lot of viewpoints that had previously gone unconsidered for me, Current Controversies: Rap and Hip Hop also validated a lot of things that I wanted to incorporate in my paper, sometimes giving words to certain aspects that I couldn't explain very well. For example, I couldn't exactly explain why Rap was the only music genre that could successfully express and r elate to the human struggle not just for inner city African American youth, but for both other groups of minorities both in the United States and globally, as well as your typical white suburban youth. The answer is subgenres. Rap's vast amount of subgenres allows for it to reflect the human experiences of a vast amount of peoples. By accommodating for a full range of human experiences, rap is adaptable to any race, gender, age, or location in the world. it captures a sense of urgency that is relatable to everyone.