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Abstract
Hip-Hop culture and rap music are hotly contested spaces in and outside of the Academy. Like most art forms, there is a therapeutic element to the craft, and we suggest that Hip-Hop is no different than other creative outlets. The music serves as a form of therapy for both the artist and the audience rather than just a celebration of sex, crime, and substance abuse. Embedded within the music lies a calculated effort to negotiate the psychological and physiological stresses of racism. In this article, we discuss Hip-Hop 's documentation of black suffering in the music, and we offer that the music is what allows people to cope with a variety of racial and environmental stressors.
Introduction
Like other cultures, Black suffering is documented through artistic expression. Such anguish emanates through Black art, literature, and music, namely HipHop. Hip-Hop originated in the South Bronx and is comprised of five elements: breakin', graffiti art, deejaying', MCin' and knowledge. Together these five elements create a rich culture that combines visual and performing arts with the pursuit of knowledge. The most popular outgrowth from Hip-Hop culture are the DJ and MC. Historically, people came to listen to the Deejay mix beats and move the crowd; however, as the genre grew the MC became more prominent. An MC is someone who performs with lyrical fluidity. Geneva Smitherman (1997) explained that "he or she" must "testify" or "speak the truth" while representing HipHop aesthetics (p. 4). Knowledge and or consciousness, the final element of Hip-Hop, is what many people consider the truth-telling experience which allowed people to see themselves and their struggles represented in the music. Because Black artists situated 'conscious knowledge ' within their music, they were able to discuss several social issues permeating their communities. Commonly, lyrics demand resolutions from listeners before people "lose their minds." Yet, in a milieu of hopelessness, the lyrics reinforce the lived experiences. The implication of mental instability insinuates a loss of control - somewhat reminiscent of the traumatic history of chattel slavery and segregation; similarly, components of chattel slavery-family break up, illiteracy, and government dependence [paternalism], as well as segregation still exist in many of our inner cities. In this paper, we posit that mental illness, a historically taboo topic...