The Esthetics of Hip-hop and Rap [Multimedia]

Is hip-hop dead?🎤

"Stay far from timid, only make moves when your heart's in it," Christopher Wallace, the Notorious B.I.G., once told us, "and live the phrase 'Sky's the Limit'." Hip-hop and rap music, discussed jointly in this article, have had a far greater and longer-lasting impact than its founders and early listeners could've guessed. Once thought to be a fad, hip-hop and rap have become controversial mainstays of music and have even integrated with other forms of art, from Broadway to galleries.

The genre’s ubiquity and influence warrant an analysis of its esthetic value as art. Aesthetic (or “esthetic”, the American spelling) value stems from art’s unique engagement of the cognitive faculties in ways everyday language cannot. Normally, the cognitive process involves accumulating and analyzing perceptions to develop a conceptual understanding (an abstraction). Art, however, offers a shortcut—it presents abstractions directly, conveying complex ideas and emotions in a single sensory or symbolic s…