To start off part two of the history of Black Americans and Music, we take a look at the three main genres that currently dominate the early 21st Century: Pop, R&B, and Hip-Hop. Theses genres were pioneered by African-Americans and did so to convey an untold narrative of experiences of the pain, of lost love, and injustice.

 

Black American citizens have created their own styles of music since the beginning, and most of this later evolved into many of the popular genres we may know and love today. Pop, R&B and hip-hop, African-Americans have always found a way to use music to lift everyone's spirits in a country that didn't always want to return the favor.

 

 

 

 

 

Music created by African-Americans through the experience of the pain of lost love and injustice. America is the birthplace to some of the most influential music the world.

Since almost all of the United States was segregated until the 1970s, black men and women had to create their own entertainment. Artists such as Prince and Michael Jackson began to crossover into the mainstream, white-dominated, culture in the entertainment industry with chart-topping songs like Beat It and Purple Rain.

 

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R&B music emerged from the soul and gospel in the late 20th century. Black vocalists used their vocals to convey the sounds of love songs, not all being raunchy or personal, towards their significant others, their children, and even God. With a number of singers ranging from Whitney Houston, Aaliyah, Janet Jackson, and Christon Gray, Americans who love hearing the soothing sounds of love have found their ears touched by black R&B vocalists.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Created on August 11, 1973 by DJ Kool Herc in South Bronx, rap is the most influential and most listened to genre on the planet. Originally created to shed light on the injustices and wrongs being done to black Americans, the implanting of drugs in low income communities and the death of leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Medgar Evers, young black men and women around the country had began to lose hope.


 

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However, many years later, hip-hop and rap are starting to go back to what it originally was: uplifting and positive. Hip-Hop artists now are blending genres like jazz, pop, R&B, and ever rock n roll into the production of their music, and turning back to God and Jesus when realizing that man isn't the only way to bring change. Music bring us together, and hip-hop musicians are beginning to allow that to happen.