If hip hop is dead, then how's rap alive?

Somebody asked me today, how do you tell the difference between Hip Hop and Rap. For a moment the mind wanders, and everything slows down as you picture all influence these two words have had on your life. Then you jump back into real time and realize, rap can be Hip Hop, but rap is not always Hip Hop. Some one out there is blowing a gasket or 10; please, for a second, just bare witness to some truth. Hip Hop, by Wikipedia, "is an artistic sub-culture that originated in the 1970s in the inner city African American community of New York City; DJ Afrika Bambaataa outlined the four pillars of Hip-Hop Culture: MCing, DJing, B-boying/B-girling, and graffiti writing". Sounds pretty straight forward. So then a rap song is a hip hop song, cause rapping is MCing, right? Simply put, no!

When someone says its as hip hop song, they mean it encompasses the essence of hip hop, usually meaning it someone reflects from the Old School. Its something for the people that carries with it, meaning and substance. Its inspiring and moving. Somehow, it also the artist to touch the soul of perfect strangers, grab hold, and never let go; even when you can't hear it, u still feel it. Not just anyone can be Hip Hop. But any person who's read a Dr. Seuss hard back can rap, given a beat to ride, or for some southern rappers, walk on. To say a bunch of nonsense is not Hip Hop, its nonsense. People don't seem to realize the influence that hip hop has had on a two generations. We're talking about something that started in the 70's and still generates payola around the world in 2010, 40 years of life unobstructed! Ill-driven or a little deterred, maybe, but lifeless, never. Hip Hop can work in any music genre. As a matter of fact, it has already laid with just about every popular genre, leaving a bastard child because its definitely a rolling stone.

Rap is just a genre of music, like R&b, or Soul, or Rock (but then again rock is a sub-culture).

So is Hip hop dead? Have you turned on your television in the last 40 years? Did you not witness Obama brushing the dirt of his shoulder? Do you realize the amount of over seas tours the occur a year; some artist never return. Black people have a tendency to place an invisible chain on Hip Hop so we have something of our own. The problem with that is hip hop breaks all barriers and is accepted with open arms and allowed to flourish, infinitely contagious. There is no cure, but many have tried to develop one. See Bill O'Reily. These people don't know Hip Hop. For them its all talk, no experience. Their listening is handicapped by their disdain for the culture and just plain old hate. Besides the haters, their are the lazy and disrespectful. Who have turned rap into nothing but a street hustle. They put down the drugs and gunz (actually they kept both) and exchanged them for a microphone and youtube. See, Hip Hop is a movement, a people, a lifestyle, but rap is just a hustle for 80% of the people in it. But that 20% is still enough. Enough to influence other countries. Now Hip Hop is revived in things like Anime. Its a beautiful thing to know that Hip Hop never died, and to know rap could never kill it.