Hip-hop is an important tool to understand race

Hip-hop has turned into a global phenomenon during its 50-plus year existence. Its evolution from a disco-adjacent subgenre of dance music — see “Rapper’s Delight” by The Sugarhill Gang — to the boisterous, arena-packing juggernaut it is now has certainly been remarkable. Throughout its gradual rise to the top of popular music, hip-hop has stayed the course despite facing its fair share of attempts to delegitimize the genre on the basis of race. Before I get further into this, I want to make abundantly clear that I am no expert. I am a white man who comes from a middle-class family, and I grew up in one of the whitest cities in this country. I do, however, have decades of experience listening to and consuming this genre of music to help me understand where so much of hip-hop comes from. As a person who is regularly learning about racial issues through hip-hop, I believe I have gained enough knowledge through this avenue to advocate for the importance of using hip-hop as a tool to further one’s understanding of race. An obviously important aspect of hip-hop’s racial impact is its lyrical content. Dating back to some of the earliest hip-hop tracks,...