Comic books and hip hop is something that is very intertwined with each others. African American Comics books fits together really nicely and many important things can be learned from it. Hip hop can be inspirational just like comic books which is why on numerous occasions African american comic books and African American hip artist come together or to increase there audiences and spread there message. This can be seen from things like the interview from Ice Cube in “Call and Response” when he say’s , ” “Who don’t hold up the flag? Are they down to get our people, right? Or are they using them as a stepping stone for themselves?”. His music has some political themes to it in order to spread his message. This spreading of a message or conveying ideals can be applied to lots of hip hop music. The reason for collaboration between African american comics and hip hop is because you are able to see a visual and connect the songs ideas to it to help you better visualize it.
One of the important things in mind when talking about hip hop and comics is Break The Chain. In 1994, Marvel Music released Break The Chain by KRS-One. The comic came packaged with a cassette to follow as the comic was read. This is really cool and is a great reason as to why the two crosses paths. Yes you can just read the comic but with music you get a better sense of the atmosphere, the characters, and the meaning behind the lyrics as well. You can even leave many things of culture in there to show black culture and the message. Its is a big thing and that why many of the people do it. One of the videos covered in class is great example of why they would join up with comics as well. According to ” History of hip hop culture summed up in 10 minutes ” it says, ” Hip hop as it was now known had grown from being a neighborhood past time into a fully fledged culture and a way of life”.These songs benefit comics as they where popular and up and coming an could get the reach of comics out to many.
Comics also led to albums z being produced or vice versa. De La Soul used a comic strip to tell their origin story in the liner notes of 3 Feet High And Rising (1989).
2013’s Twelve Reasons To Die was directed by Adrian Younge, and was Ghostface Killah’s tenth album. This story was centered around centered around a sixties crime family. There are numerous comic book and hip hop influence sprinkled all about. One of the more interesting ones had to do with
Axel Alonso, he was the guy who heavily invested in a project around in Marvel for a hip hop covers project. In this albums where supposed have old marvel heroes with it. This actually got a little bit of backlash as people felt like a white company was appropriated black culture. This reminds me of a another quote from “The Slave Community excerpt” saying ” Such stereotypes are intimately related to the planter projections, desires, and biases that they tell us little about slave behavior and even less about the slaves inner life, his thoughts, actions,self concepts,or personality”(BlassinGame, pg xi). This quote kinda relates to how people see big studios or little amounts of African American people in companies adding hip hop and comics together. It’s kinda hard to do that and you won’t be able to appease everyone. You could also to ” Pedagogy of the Oppressed ” by Paulo Freire when it says, ” The oppressors do not perceive their monopoly on having more as a privilege which dehumanizes others and themselves “(Friere,pg 11). That is because at the begging where black comics had discrimination in them this could have been seen as oppressive.
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