Hip-Hop includes music, graffitist, tattoo and attire. Hip-Hop music includes House, Rap and DJ. House contains many different changes, and its rhythm is quick and vigor. Rap is a traditional entertainment involving talking and singing. DJ (Disc Jockey) is to control phonograph record and to mix sound to make all kinds of unexpected effects. Today tattoo is mostly equivalent to colored drawing on skin. Certainly, there are quite number of people choose real swords and spears tattoo. They inscribe the most essence things in their souls on their skin. Outside the station subway and fire compartments, there can be seen some grotesque characters. These are graffitist. These wild and extemporaneously designs represent the painters’ view to the society. Hip-Hop style attire is like following: Spacious T-Shirts with Logos, jeans, basketball shoes, baseball hats, package kerchiefs with national patterns. And corresponding matches are: Nose link(鼻环), Matrix sunglasses, and so on. 

Hip - Hop culture’s is for poors. Why has to put on big clothes? This kind of large size clothes can be wearing for several years; why can have graffitist? Early in the street blocks, each faction groups used it to divide their spheres of influence, afterwards it’s been developed into a kind of folk arts; why can have street dances? Blacks do not have money to go to the ballroom, at that time moreover the racial discrimination still existed; Why Hip – hop languages consist of vocabularies such as “FU”? Because those groups of street blacks had no future, they hated much more things then they loved.

In 1986, Def Jam record company‘s tour initiated a global Hip - Hop upsurge. In the 90's, many Hip - Hopers such as Puff Daddy as well as Missy Elliott appeared. They turned this kind of folk music to an important constituent in the mainstream music market. In the late 90’s, Eminem‘s appearance has thoroughly broken the Hip - Hop race question. It’s like that the Hillbilly Cat Elvis Aron Presley(猫王) proved that R&R does not merely belong to blacks. Eminem proved that Hip - Hop culture already moved towards the world.

Many people think that Chinese does not suit for Hip - Hop, because its pronunciation is totally different from English. I must say that this is not right. Hip - Hop fundamentally does not lie in its rhythm. Its true essence lies in its content and creators’ manner. In this point, American-Taiwanese Singer Wang Lee Hom did very well.

Hip - Hop has some counter- cultural tendency(反文化倾向). Its destructiveness and folk(破坏性和民间性) is opposite to traditional significance pop culture. But it has been rapidly developed into an important constituent in mainstream culture. One kind of reasonable explanation is: In this more and more materialized era(形而下的时代), our life needs not merely noble and serious, but also humors and shameless.

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This Blog Entry in French  http://cindyliux.spaces.live.com/?lc=2052  《Article Hip-Hop》 (2007/8/4)