What’s up to everybody in internet land.
This is the first official urban drop post! It’s the main blogger Dee. If you all have been reading, almost a year ago I had the wonderful opportunity to travel to Europe, namely Western Germany, Heidelberg, Mannheim and Paris, France. Since this is a hip hop focused blog, I’m going to speak on the impact of hip hop and what I saw of the hip hop scene there. First off, it was in my face at, soon as I touched down, my cousin who lives there picked me up. Switched straight to the hip hop station. Saw the impact on TV via MTV Germany, watching TRL and other shows(they were in german sorry don’t remember) Saw it as well in the streets as I walked down the Hauptstrasse(mainstreet/shopping area) in Heidelberg.
My experience was a little different as there is a large U.S. military presence there. I was able to hit up club which was frequently by a lot of American military personnel and minorites(Turkish, Africans) The club scene…hmmmm…coming from the D.C. metro area in my opinion nothing I would have went to back here at home. The dress was ‘whatever’ and the music was okay. Moving on…
Paris! Wow, maybe because it is such a huge city, I thought I saw hip hop when I got to Germany, nope! Paris showed me different, it was literally everywhere! I went into about five hip hop stores/ sneaker spots. Playing straight up hip hop. I saw the dress everywhere, unfortunately I didn’t get to party in Paris(I will though! lol) I’ve long known how big French hip hop is but I can say yeah I saw it, if only just a little insight, it definitely made me want to dig deeper.
The reason why I wrote this, is because a lot of people don’t truly know hip hop’s impact. Yeah people know stars travel overseas but honestly it doesn’t mean much. In many cases, London, Tokyo, Paris, Lagos, Sydney are just names. I’ve been into international R&B/hip hop for a while and it has always amazed me at the reach of the American soul/hip hop music scene. I think, we would not be excited to hear a French, South African, Japanese rapper. People from Canada have a hard time breaking through to the U.S. scene. When I was in Germany, I saw the ‘American cool factor’ Even with former President Bush, it was/is still cool to be American! The youth in other countries identify and want to identify with want we are doing here, yes putting their own stamp on it but make no mistake, it’s ‘Made in the U.S.A.’ When I was in the club in Germany, it was cool to speak English. All of the Germans chopped it up with their American hip hop brethen in the language of the U.S.
Many often talk about how traveling changes you. I’ll admit it has to me. I have deep affection for hip hop culture and being able to connect to someone based off our love for a particular culture is powerful. If people reading don’t know, what we do here in the U.S. it matters.
