Just to explain a little more in depth about how we are going to attack the Hip-hop underground area in our research. Our group has found that the underground society within hip-hop acts as a “baseline” to the hip-hop culture. Normally the underground remains close to hip-hop’s origins while other areas of hip-hop tend to branch out away from its roots. While remaining true to its original purpose, the underground incorporates many of the characteristics of the old culture. Artists and participators alike enjoy the subcultures of graffiti, breakdancing, and emceeing in the same fashion as the hip-hop culture in the 70’s and 80’s. The underground also has a major focus on its lyrical content, as did the older hip-hop music, along with emphasis on community, rejuvenation, and rebuilding. Partying, togetherness, self-respect, dedication to self-exposure, and innovation are only a few of the characteristics found in the underground hip-hop sub community.

We will use wordpress as our blogging tool and create an analytical argument to support the underground as that baseline to the hip-hop community. To give the research a lighter approach we will also be incorporating a fun how-to section within the blog to educate the reader on some of the underground styles and features. This will be followed by analytical arguments to support our main claim (stated above). We will be concentrating on graffiti, breakdancing, and music and how they used in underground hip-hop, how they are similar to the old skool hip-hop, and compared the mainstream hip-hop normally seen today.

Upon completion of these comparisons between the underground, old skool hip-hop, and mainstream hip-hop the reader will be able to reach the same conclusions we’ve met in the research; the underground acts congruent with the ways of the original hip-hop culture.

-Ray