Subject:
Figure 5.A The sources and diffusion of U.S. rap. This map portrays the centers of rap music in the United States today, showing how rap, which began in African American inner-city neighborhoods in New York City in the late 1970s, moved westward and then southward. In the 1990s, a hybrid form of rap metal emerged in the U. S. Midwest urban center of Detroit. Detroit and other Midwestern cities typically contain large numbers of both African Americans and working-class whites who lost their jobs in the restructuring of the automobile industry in the 1970s and early 1980s. What the rap-metal genre confirms is that although hip-hop culture has its roots in the African American experience, it derives much of its power from issues of poverty and class as well. Figure 5.B
