Haleigh Hutcheson - Journal #9

I am not very familiar with the whole ‘hip hop’ genre; however, based on what I learned in class, it seems that Black Star’s album: Mos Def and Talib Kweli are Black Star portrays the whole hip hop expression very well. Black Star’s album takes several interesting views on the world and incorporates them in a hip-hop/rap/jazz combination. They work within the genre of hip hop very well, taking the emcees as the main focus that most hip hop people use, and then they bring out their own twist on the music by using some more jazz elements and instruments as well.

In this album, they portray a strong message in almost every song in the album, bringing up serious issues in each song. They talk about their lives and the difficulties of living in New York and rebelling against society. These days, hip hop is mostly about sex, drugs, and partying; however, this hip hop brings up actual issues instead. This makes it more compelling to listen to as an album, and brings hip hop back to how it was originally portrayed back when it first started.

This album came out in the late 1990s and gives a lot of information about hip hop as a genre socially as well as the historical context at the time. They talk about slain emcees Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G. in “Definition” and how hip hop ended up ending their lives, and they talk about how brown-skinned women should be treated well, and how they should be proud with their looks in “Brown-Skin Lady.” They also look at the economy at the time. They look at materialism issues in society, as well as the struggles for African Americans to live in that time period. They reflect about how economic issues were a problem, and people would have to steal things at young ages in order to survive. Overall, this album had a lot of insight into the culture and the world at the time the album was made. This Black Star album was a very interesting album and brings back a classic hip hop sound back.