In this essay i will discuss how hip hop still has a positive message.Many people think that hip hop is a bad influence to young people this days but they don’t know about emcees who still rap positively. One way hip hop does this is by criticising the REEL. The REEL is a concept made by Mk. acanty to explain why rappers rap hyper-violent hyper-masculine lyrics. To understand this we have to look in to how hip hop started. Hip hop started in New York in the 1970s when the sugar hill gang released the first hip hop song “rappers delight”. At this point hip hop was about police brutality, the government, the media, as well as discrimination against blacks. This started to get more and more popular and started to get catch the eyes of major record companies, who started to buy this small interdependent labels because they thought it was a money making opportunity. To get more buyers the lyrics began to change into hyper-violent hyper-masculine which, many white suburban consumers admit they enjoyed. At this point hip hop became genetic and rappers became afraid to rap about  social issues because record companies wouldn’t give them the deal.The REEL  is this box rappers feel they have to be in in order to be accepted by listeners. stuff like sealing drugs, killing people and having lots of girls. Rappers put into the minds of young listeners that doing all those stuff means your hard or living the good life. This is what the REEL really is.

Mos Def is one of the few emcees we have studied this year. After listening to one  of his songs ‘mathematics’ you can clearly hear that he is a very social conscience rapper. He raps ‘like i got 16 to 32 bars to rock it, but only 15% profit ever see my pockets’. What he means that he raps all of  his bars but record companies take advantage of his talents and only gives him a small portion of what he earns. This shows that record companies are stealing money from the emcees. He also uses words like ‘profits’ and ‘pockets’ emphasising the s sound. Here he uses semblance, which is used to make the s sound stand out. The s sound also sounds like the start to the word ‘snake’. Snakes are sly and so are the record companies by only giving 15% profit. This is a social conscience issue which is completely the opposite to the REEL. Doing this he indirectly criticises the REEL.

Jayson Mick Jenkins (born April 16, 1991), better known as Mick Jenkins, is an American hip hop recording artist signed to Cinematic Music Group. On December  23, 2013 Mick released a new song called Martyrs. After listening to this song the hook really stands out to the rest of his song. The hook is about getting lots of money and having sex with lots of girls. The last few lines of the hook says “I’m just with my n****s just hanging” What Mick Jenkins is trying to say is that all these stereotypes in hip hop influences young black teens that getting girls, killing and getting money makes you  hard or means your living the good life but it will just get you killed. That is what he means by hanging, which could also mean to be lynched (to be hanged from a tree). He portrays this  in the music video when him and his friends are hanging around with a rope around there neck. Here he is saying what he does in the first part of the hook it is as if he is mocking other rappers who saying this things. The irony here is that he criticises rappers for what they rap but then raps about it. By doing this he is mocking the other rappers. But he treys to use satire instead. Satire is when you use irony to make a point about something socially conscience. Being a socially conscience rapper as we know this is the opposite to the REEL which indirectly criticises the REEL.

Another emcee we have studied is Kendrick Lamar. Kendrick is an American rapper from Compton, California. Lamar embarked on his musical career as a teenager under the moniker K-Dot, releasing a mix-tape that garnered local attention and led to his signing with Carson-based indie record label Top Dawg Entertainment. We studied one of his songs called ‘the blacker the berry’. In his song he indirectly criticises the REEL by rapping about social issues rather then killing other black people. He does this by repenting the pre-hook here he says ‘the blacker the berry the sweeter the juicy’. Here he is making black feel better about them self’s. The pre-hook states that the blacker the person the better the person they are. Kendrick Lamar also relist this song at a significant time. He relisted the song after the death of a young black person, who was shoot by a white police officer. This was a time in america were it was dangerous to be black so by repeating that line a couple of times reassures black people to feel good about them self’s. This is why he uses repetition. This shows that Kendrick Lamar is a very social conscience rapper as he raps about police brutality. this is how Kendrick  Lamar indirectly criticises he REEL.

Overall I think that hip hop still has a positive message. All the rappers have one think in conman. They are all  socially conscience rappers that all criticise the REEL. They all have the same thought about something in this case how they feel about the REEL. This shows that they still want hip hop to carry on as it used to were rappers could rap about social issues and still get there deal from the record companies. This is because they are all social conscience rappers.