Hip-Hop Influences Everything

Posted August 8, 2023

Is it a tight rhyme over a sick beat? Is it breakdancers in the Bronx with gravity-defying dance moves? Or is it, rather, the revolutionary technique developed by block-party DJs for extending the rhythmic underpinnings — or "break"— of a song? The truth is that hip-hop is all of these things — and then some. 

“Hip-hop is a design remix where an aesthetic of ‘cool’ intersects with creative self-expression for several purposes,” explains Joycelyn Wilson(link is external), assistant professor of Black media studies in Georgia Tech’s School of Literature, Media, and Communication(link is external).

Wilson is an educational anthropologist with a background in mathematics. Her research interests include hip-hop studies and digital media, with an emphasis on hip-hop’s impact on the American South. She is particularly interested in interrogating, complicating, and contextualizing hip-hop’s commonly received origin story.

Read the full story on the Georgia Tech News website.(link is external)

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