Who Stole the Soul? - The Weaponization of Hip Hop - A Historical & Sociological Perspective

Book excerpt. . ". .The weaponization of Hip Hop was America's answer to a Hip-Hop culture that was fortifying and cultivating the minds of young Black people.  In the beginning, Hip Hop was a tool Black kids utilized to edify one another. It was eventually co-opted, controlled, and commercialized to be used as a weapon to debase those it initially helped to empower. What was thought to be a fad at first by record companies became a major platform used ingeniously by those who gave birth to it. Those who control the reigns to American society recognized Hip Hop's power and sought ways to not only douse its positive social potential, they also sought ways to profit from what those clever Black youth had created. The paradigm began to shift. Hip Hop gradually went from a meal that featured a main course of conscious songs and culturally grounded artists, to offerings that mostly promoted the glamorization of everything negative. Positive and conscious artists were relegated to an underg