Specifically from a literary perspective, the Harlem Renaissance, also known as the New Negro Movement, is often treated as one of the most prolific localized movements on the artistic level of Western literature, which produced writers such as Gwendolyn Bennett, Nella Larsen, Esther Popel and Jean Toomer. No writer of the Harlem Renaissance received as much recognition and adulation as Langston Hughes, a poet, novelist, playwright, and essayist now firmly established in the Western literary canon. Although Hughes had a unique poetic style, he preferred short lyric poems with simple, concrete images that often featured deceptively optimistic rhyme schemes; his voice was unmistakably his own – the subjects and themes he chose to write about were equally distinctive. Through his poetry, Hughes is unflinchingly interested in the African-American condition of the first half of the 20th century: landlords mistreat their tenants, dreams are crushed under the weight of institutional racism, Western history, usually centered on “victories” and “successes”. » white men, was re-interviewed; more importantly, his poetry was imbued with love and celebration of African American culture. This last characteristic was shared by his contemporaries and his successors. According to Joanne V. Gabbin, “African American poetry is the aesthetic chronicle of a race, as Gwendolyn Brooks puts it, struggling to raise “its face without shame” in a foreign land” (Gabbin, “Furious Flower: African American Poetry, an overview"). These successors are many and varied: as Hughes' legacy continues to endure, his influence has grown and expanded. In fact, the principles of his poetry can be found in another predominantly African-American art form, known today as hip-hop. In the 2015 NWA biopic Straight Outta Compton, Ice Cube – the rap group's primary lyricist – responds with a Hughesian retort when a journalist disparages the violent content of his music: "Our art is a reflection of our reality" (Gray , Straight Out of Compton). Like Hughes, many rappers write specifically and exclusively about the African-American experience; Hip-hop has often been seen as a heavily memorialized art form, where the personal becomes political. No rapper exemplifies this position better than Nasir Jones, widely known simply as "Nas," a native of Queens, New York, who released his seminal 1994 debut album, Illmatic, when he had only twenty years old. Like Hughes, Nas has a keen sense of observation, an eye that understands the cruelties of the world but, at times, sees life through a lens of hope and optimism. The two New Yorkers were born nearly seventy-five years apart, yet their works trace similar themes. Ultimately, overall, Hughes and Nas are writing about the same topics: the marginalization and mass disenfranchisement of black voices and bodies by white-dominated power structures. Say no to plagiarism. Get a Custom Essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an Original Essay Due to its status as a popular art form, hip-hop is often considered vulgar or obscene, without any critical merit or scientific. This is false, especially since hip-hop follows directly in the footsteps of Harlem Renaissance writers and members of the Black Arts Movement, such as Amiri Baraka, Larry Neal, and Maya Angelou. That's why it's easy to make comparisons: according to Fran L. Lassiter, "during the Harlem Renaissance, writers attempted to perfect thiswhich Bernard W. Bell describes as “a double responsibility: towards their race and their profession” (2004: 98). )” (Lassiter, “Toasts to Rap”). This dual responsibility is evident in hip-hop, and it's present throughout Nas' speech: he calls himself "King Poetic" on "Halftime" and raps, "You know, I got the crazy grease when I rhyme. » ; similarly, on "It Ain't Hard to Tell", he raps "Vocabulary is spreading, I'm sick" (Nas, "Halftime"; Nas, "It's not hard to say"). Throughout his work, Nas displays an awareness of his abilities and a deep respect for his craft. As such, it is with authority and legitimacy that P. Khalil Saucier and Tryon P. Woods assert that "hip-hop [is] neither more nor less compelling as a subject of study or pedagogy than any other moment or cultural product in black history.” » (Saucier & Woods, “Hip Hop Studies in Black). Hip-hop's cultural omnivorousness also places it squarely in the realm of postmodernism, that art movement that's difficult to define and often harder to understand. The word "postmodern" is perhaps the most succinct aspect of the movement: at least thematically, postmodernists built directly on modernism, which was primarily concerned with the alienation of the contemporary world. Unfortunately difficult to define, postmodernism is “associated with an awareness of societal and cultural transitions after World War II and the rise of consumerist and media popular culture in the 1960s and 1970s” (Irving, “Postmodernity vs. the Postmodern vs. Postmodernism). As a result, postmodernists often reuse their works and place them in new contexts, thereby creating an entirely new work of art themselves. In hip-hop, the most obvious example is sampling — or, as the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it, "the act of using a small portion of a recording (such as a song) as part of from another recording. On “It Ain’t Hard to Tell,” for example, Nas samples Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature,” Kool & the Gang’s “NT,” and Stanley Clarke’s “Slow Dance.” The postmodern elements of hip-hop extend beyond the simple construction of the music, however. Hip-hop is known for its unflinching depictions of violence: in "NY State of Mind," Nas raps, "Pick up the Mac, told the brothers, 'Back off,' Mac was spitting/Lead was hitting the niggas, the one of them ran... I made him do a backflip/I heard some girls screaming, my arm shook, I couldn't watch/I squeezed it again, I I heard it click, 'Yo, my shit's stuck'" (Nas, "NY State of Mind"). The definition of postmodernism given by the philosopher Jean-François Lyotard clearly shows that Nas' realistic and violent lyrics qualify him as a postmodernist poet. Lyotard writes: “The postmodern would be that which, in the modern, highlights the unpresentable in the presentation of the self; the one who refuses the comfort of good forms, the consensus of a taste which would allow us to collectively share the nostalgia of the inaccessible; one who seeks new presentations, not to profit from them but to convey a stronger feeling of the unpresentable” (Lyotard 81). Violence, in this case, is “the unpresentable.” Certainly, Hughes, who can more easily be described as a modernist, did not express this extreme feeling of violence, and it does not permeate his work as it does in that of Nas. Finally, postmodernists wish to reinterpret history and challenge the accepted historical canon. In this regard, Nas echoes Hughes: they both invoke African history to remind people of forgotten legacies, the former doing so in "I Can", while the latterdone in “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.” When viewed through the lens of postmodernism, it is easy to see how Nas' work draws influence, directly or indirectly, from and, more importantly, builds on the work of Hughes. Lassiter further connects hip-hop and the Harlem Renaissance: "members of the Harlem Renaissance, like today's hip-hop generation, rejected the traditions and poetic structures of the 'old Negro' "which embraced the values ​​and morality of the white bourgeoisie" (Lassiter, "From Toasts to Rap"). Like Hughes, Nas never panders to a white audience; instead, it is decidedly black. In fact, when Nas first recorded Illmatic, he didn't even think he would have a white audience. In an interview with Grantland, his brother, Jabari Jones, also known by his stage name Jungle, said: "I thought [the album] would be something cool that only people from Queensbridge would like. […] I thought it would be the little Queensbridge team on television very quickly and then we would stay in Queensbridge for the rest of our lives” (Golianopoulos, “Q&A: Nas's Brother, Jungle, on Life in Queensbridge and the New Doc 'Time Is Illmatic'"). In short, like that of Hughes, Nas' career has remained entirely authentic, and he has never diluted himself to appeal to a wider audience; his audience must address to him on his terms This is the best evidence of his use of African American Vernacular English in his songs (Lister, “Linguistic Variation in Hip Hop: Variable Use of African American Vernacular English by New York Rappers Jay-Z. and Nas"). In his 1979 essay “If Black English is not a language, then tell me, what is it,” wrote James Baldwin, “the language is also one? political instrument, a means and a proof of power It is the most living and crucial key to identify: it reveals private identity and connects or separates the individual from the broader, public or community identity. (Baldwin). This attitude shines through in the work of Nas and Hughes: by refusing to abandon African American vernacular English, they refuse to abandon and mutate their identities. Hughes and Nas base their work on local color: although they are both from New York. , they come from different neighborhoods; the first was from Harlem, while the second is from Queens. They both show affection for their neighborhood while acknowledging their disadvantages, usually attributed to the effects of institutionalized racism. Hughes described this mixture of love and frustration with a typically acute and dense observation of concrete nouns: “Melting pot Harlem? Harlem of honey and chocolate and caramel and rum and vinegar and lemon and lime and gall” (Cruse 314). This evocative list serves a dual purpose: Hughes' culinary metaphor implies that his contemporary Harlem featured great cultural diversity; it also evokes contrasting tastes and flavors in the mind – the sweetness of "chocolate and caramel" clashes with the sourness of "vinegar and lemon", an apt analogue for a neighborhood that both inspires and suffocates (Cruse 314). Nas has the same contradictory view of his birthplace. Although many of his songs, notably those on Illmatic, are filled with pleasant and nostalgic memories of his childhood, he also addresses the pervasiveness of violence in the neighborhood. Jabari Jones noted, "Coming out of Queensbridge, you had all these guys who wanted to be down [to fight], or who wanted to extort you or take your chain" (Golianopoulos, "Q&A: Nas's Brother, Jungle, on Life in Queensbridge and the new doc “Time Is Illmatic”). The aspectsnegatives of their neighborhoods – the poor housing conditions that Hughes mocked in “The Ballad of the Landlord” and “Madame and the Man for Hire”; the violence that Nas speaks of in “A Queens Story” – can be attributed to “the social isolation of blacks” (Shihadeh & Flynn 1329). According to Shihadeh and Flynn, "because of the perpetuation of institutional arrangements and individual actions, blacks face considerable difficulty accessing non-minority neighborhoods [and] the resulting limited contact between blacks and whites can isolate many black people from the rest of society and significantly limit their freedom. chances of social mobility” (Shihadeh & Flynn 1329). They go further and detail the consequences of the social isolation of blacks: it “combines the weight of poverty, unemployment, dependence on welfare, teenage pregnancies and other indicators of social malaise and the geographically concentrated in black neighborhoods” (Shihadeh & Flynn 1329). Black social isolation is one of the root causes of the violence and gang-related crime that Nas so often centers his music on. In Hughes' “Madam and The Rent Man,” the social isolation of black people is also one of the reasons why “The sink is broken,/The water isn't flowing,/And you didn't do anything/ You promised you did. » in the president's house (Hughes). Although it manifests itself in different ways, Hughes and Nas are writing about the same subject: the effect of black social isolation on an urban community. They also bring their respective urban communities to the forefront, in all their glory and disappointment. Nas frequently connects the positive and negative aspects of his neighborhood in a single, fluid, deft verse. On “A Queens Story,” he peppers his rhymes with specific, localized references, tracing his path through the disenfranchised areas of his youth to the safer, predominantly white areas – rapping: Rastas selling weed chocolate inside a weed house. Colosseum down, gold teeth. mouthThe warriors of Astoria, eight streets, the twin buildings, Vernon, can't even count Livingston's children. Justice in Ravenswood, nice neighborhood - Caught sleeping there, be a wrap though. Bridge niggas be in Petey's ten racks, yo. (Nas, “A Queens Story”). Hughes, on the other hand, takes a more metaphorical approach to his writing about his neighborhood. Philip M. Royster analyzes "Dimout in Harlem" in his essay "The Poetic Theory and Practice of Langston Hughes" with these words: "A young black man walking down a Harlem street in the silent shadows of evening becomes a collective individual representing and demonstrating the relationships between many urban black youth and their natural and unnatural environments” (8). Hughes is less concerned with pointing out specific locations, thus grounding the reader in a literal geographic sense, than with recreating the collective atmosphere and mood of Harlem. In “Harlem,” arguably his most famous poem, he never mentions the neighborhood, or any place, for that matter. Instead, he lets the title guide the reader and implies that the neighborhood is full of, and perhaps the cause of, "dreams deferred" (Hughes, "Harlem"). These deferred dreams are a common subject in Hughes's poetry. As Henry Rhodes writes: “The American Dream holds that if a man is hardworking, self-reliant, and talented, he can achieve almost anything his heart desires. The Dream posed a dilemma for the black writer. If he chose to believe that the American dream included black people, then he would have to believe that the end of discrimination was in the future” (Rhodes, “The Social Contributions of the Harlem Renaissance”). Hughes wanted to believe in the American dreamin "Let America Be America Again", where the speaker longs for the utopian promises of American society to become reality, while knowing in full awareness that the country has always been discriminatory and racist, but he was well aware of the omnipresence of institutional racism. Nas expresses the same disillusionment in “America,” rapping: “It's like waking up from a bad dream/(America)/Just to realize you weren't dreaming in the first place” (Nas, “America” ). In the song, Nas goes on to point out the hypocrisy calling the United States of America a place where "all men are created equal" (Jefferson, "The Declaration of Independence"). Nas is not necessarily a pessimist, however, and he expresses hope more often than Hughes. According to Raphael Travis, Jr., "the use of hip-hop includes goals of empowering individuals and communities, moving from an emphasis on the 'me' to a simultaneous emphasis on the collective 'we'" (Travis , Jr., "Rap Music and the Empowerment of Today's Youth: Evidence from Daily Music Listening, Music Therapy, and Commercial Rap Music"). This feeling of encouragement was particularly prevalent in the second half of his career. The whole concept behind "I Can" was designed to motivate children, with a chorus that goes: "I know I can/Be what I want to be/If I work hard at it/I'll ​​be where I want to be” sung by a group of children (Nas, “I Can”). Nas opens his first verse with a series of inspirational lines: Be, B-Boys and girls, listen: You can be anything in the world, in God we trust. An architect, a doctor, maybe an actress, But nothing is easy. takes a lot of practice (Nas, "I Can"). The same feelings can be found in Hughes' work, but in a more opaque and abstract way, after all, if there was no hope of write “Let America Be America Again”? Ultimately, both artists ask their readers to strive for excellence, to change the system as a driven individual. Gabbin states that "from the earliest attempts of 18th-century African-American poets to express in words their adaptation to existence in a society that debated their humanity to their intense exploration of their voice in the latter years of 'a racist 20th century, they have built an aesthetic tradition which affirms them' (Gabbin, 'Furious Flower: African-American Poetry, An Overview'). One aspect of African American culture that unites this aesthetic tradition is religion – Christianity in particular. The church served several purposes: it is “a place to create personal identity, a place of self-discovery, and a sanctuary from racial oppression” (Lambert 303). Many of Nas' songs and Hughes' poems reflect this; Some, however, express doubts, allowing the desolation of racist America to seep into the normally comfortable confines of the Church. The second half of Nas' career presented a more positive view of Christianity. He notably had "God's Son" tattooed on his stomach at the turn of the 21st century, but on "Live at the Barbecue", one of the first songs. he never recorded, he raps: "When I was twelve, I went to hell for taking Jesus" (Nas, "Live at the Barbecue). On “Represent,” he doesn’t use hyperbole, but is more direct: “I won’t even talk about Gods/I don’t believe in any of that bullshit, your facts are backwards” (Nas, “Represent "). While these songs demonstrate an outright rejection of Christian hope, Hughes' "Song for a Dark Girl" expresses more despair and disappointment. In the second stanza, the speaker questions. ».