By: Joseph VanBuren

Once upon a time, not long ago, the internet was a thing of mystery and secrecy, known only to a select group of people and used only for a small amount of purposes. This phenomenon gradually grew in popularity, becoming more available over time. Today, the internet is a common, household item and a large part of many people’s everyday lives. Much of the same can be said about hip hop. A distinct style of music that started in the New York underground has gone global, beyond mainstream, and can now be found everywhere in an assortment of shapes and sizes.

Hip hop is not only what you think it is, but it is also everything you think it is not. Like the internet, it showcases the best and worst that society has to offer. It borrows from the past to create something new for the present, then recycles and remixes itself for the future. Starting as a melting pot of the genres that inspired its pioneers, hip hop now influences every other type of popular music. From conscious to gangster, Christian to horrorcore, mainstream to underground - hip hop tells tales from every walk of life.

So, when a venue owner says, “We don’t do hip hop shows,” or a music fan says, “I don’t like hip hop,” they are probably lumping the entire spectrum of an art form into one package, wrapped in a negative stereotype created by a few bad examples and irresponsible media coverage. Which is a shame, because those same people often recognize the differences between sub-genres in rock or other genres and, in fact, don’t normally use such exclusive criteria to decide what sounds good to them.

Different strokes for different folks, of course. Everyone has his own taste and is entitled to his own opinion. From a hip hop artist’s point of view, however, it seems that the genre often gets judged unfairly by both those in the industry and those in the crowd. Perhaps that is hip hop’s place in the world, much like the pioneers that started it: to overcome the odds and be submerged in the spotlight while forever maintaining a bad rep. In this light, hip hop has a lot in common with rock and metal and, once again, content on the internet. Everybody knows about it, not everybody likes it, and not everybody who dislikes it is properly informed about it.

All that most artists want from listeners is a fair trial. No artist can reasonably expect to please everyone. If you dislike the music, however, at least dislike it for the right reasons, because hip hop is not only what you think it is.

* Editor's Note: The Sugarhill Gang, a trio that produced the first hip hop single recorded to become a top 40 hit ("Rapper's Delight"), is pictured above.