Popularity of Rap Music and hip-hop

Date: 14 Apr 2003 02:12:56 -0700
Newsgroups: alt.flame.niggers
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About the Current Popularity of Rap Music The popularity of rap music has definitely grown since its debut
in the 80's. The genre's audience has grown from being just urban minorities to now where
a host of different ethnicities from different regions of the world can enjoy its sound.
Because rap music has such diverse audience, an emergence of different ethnic rappers are
now beginning to appear. Personally, I think that this is good because fans have more of a
variety to the style of rap music. Overall, rap music has earned it's credibility of being an
artform rather than a fad.
http://www.gasou.edu/~epowell2/bindex2.html
Although hip-hop is the musical outgrowth of urban
African-American culture, its popularity is not bound by
geography or culture. According to Soundscan, the
company that charts record sales, three-quarters of all
hard-core rap albums were sold to white consumers in
1994.
Furthermore, more and more suburban teens, taking their
cue from their urban counterparts, have adopted the style
and the trends of hip-hop's artists and its adherents.
This suburban emulation of urban style not only confirms
the cross-cultural popularity of hip-hop, but it also
recognizes the importance of the "street" in determining
fashion trends. In the world of hip-hop, "street credibility"
means acceptance. And for the fashion industry, attaining
"street credibility" can mean big profits.
It took almost 20 years for the mainstream fashion industry
to experiment with hip-hop fashions. Critics claim that the
fashion industry's sudden interest in hip-hop stems more
from the enormous profit potential of this untapped market
of brand conscious consumers than from any creative
interest. But whatever its reasons may be, big and small
players in the mainstream fashion industry are looking
toward the hip-hop community for inspiration.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/infocus/fashion/hiphop.html