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Perfected in the late '70s by blacks and Latinos in the South Bronx, hip-hop's musical roots are found in jazz, black gospel, reggae, and rhythm and blues. Its genesis incorporated four major elements: deejaying (sampling and creating music and rhythm using multiple turntables), emceeing (performing poetry and lyrics in spoken-word style), b-boying (breakdancing and rhythmic movement), and tagging (creating graffiti art, usually on public edifices).

Hip-hop is not easy to pigeonhole. It's not just about a style of music but a lifestyle. In addition to rap and other urban sounds, it encompasses fashion, language, art, and attitude. It's not a homogeneous subculture but a diverse supraculture transcending ethnic, geographical, and artistic boundaries. Indeed, it ain't just a "black thang."

According to The Source, a leading hip-hop magazine, 70 percent of rap and hip-hop music is purchased by white consumers, and it has recently outsold both rock and country to become the nation's top-selling format of popular music. Internationally hip-hop is a rising force as well. It can be heard and observed just as easily in Paris, Belgrade, and Tokyo as in New York, Los Angeles, and Atlanta.

The past few years have been a watershed period for hip-hop. By the late '90s, an entire generation had been raised in a world where hip-hop has always been around. In 1999 Time devoted a cover story to it, and Lauryn Hill became the first hip-hop artist to be awarded a Grammy for album of the year. Last year, ABC's Nightline broadcast a three-part series on the pervasiveness of hip-hop culture. Most youth today, both Christian and non-Christian, are regularly exposed to hip-hop's influence. Mainstream corporations have recognized its value to reach young consumers worldwide. Advertisers, TV shows, and movies targeting youth regularly exploit its sights and sounds to lucrative effect.

At a recent church conference in Spearfish, South Dakota, Kevin Turpin, an African-American pastor from Chesapeake, Virginia, was surprised to see how hip-hop culture had influenced the youth worship service in a region where very few ethnic minorities live. "It's [hip-hop] even in South Dakota," he said.

Eugene Rivers, the Boston-based pastor and public intellectual, says hip-hop has become the cultural voice of a generation of youth.

"Hip-hop's got more of a lock on youth culture than ever before," said Jesse Washington, editor of Blaze magazine, in a Los Angeles Times interview. "Urban kids set the trends, then suburban kids follow en masse." Kevin Powell, a writer and cultural critic, is the guest curator of the Brooklyn Museum of Art's groundbreaking exhibit "Hip-Hop Nation: Roots, Rhymes & Rage." In an interview with Time.com, he was not reticent in his appraisal of hip-hop's influence: hip-hop, he said, "is the most important youth culture on the planet."

A bad rap
Though hip-hop has achieved a secure place in popular culture, its colorful styles and poetic whimsy also come with a dark, disturbing element. For many parents and youth leaders, much of today's most popular rap/hip-hop music sets off moral alarms.

Sisqo, a popular singer, hit it big last year with "The Thong Song," a sexually explicit tune about women dancing "all night long" clothed in—you know what. Eminem, the white rapper whose CDs have broken sales records, has become the latest poster boy for pop-music infamy. His songs, laced with hateful profanity, find the young man fantasizing about killing his wife and raping his mother.

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January 8 2001, Vol. 45, No. 1