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"My Music is a product of who I am and where I came from. I'm made in America. I'm not from Mars or nowhere else," Ice Cube "What's a brother gotta do to get a message through to the Red, White, and Blue?" Ice-T Rap music has emerged as one of the most distinctive and controversial music genres of the past decade. A significant part of hip hop culture, [1] rap articulates the experiences and conditions of African-Americans living in a spectrum of marginalized situations ranging from racial stereotyping and stigmatizing to struggle for survival in violent ghetto conditions. In this cultural context, rap provides a voice to the voiceless, a form of protest to the oppressed, and a mode of alternative cultural style and identity to the marginalized. Rap is thus not only music to dance and party to, but a potent form of cultural identity. It has become a powerful vehicle for cultural political expression, serving as the "CNN of black people" (Chuck D), or upping the high-tech ante, as their "satellite communication system" (Heavy D). It is an informational medium to tune into, one that describes the rage of African-Americans facing growing oppression, declining opportunities for advancement, changing moods on the streets, and everyday life as a matter of sheer survival. In turn, it has become a cultural virus, circulating its images, sounds, and attitude throughout the culture and body politic. Rap artists like Grandmaster Flash, Run DMC, Public Enemy, Ice-T, N.W.A., Ice Cube, Salt 'n' Pepa, Queen Latifah, Wu Tang Clan, Snoop Doggy Dogg, Tupac Shakur, the Fugees, and countless others produced a new musical genre that uniquely articulated the rage of the urban underclass and its sense of intense oppression and defiant rebellion. Given the relatively low expenses in producing and distributing popular music, black artists and producers themselves have often controlled this mode of musical production and have been able to create a form of communication relatively free of censorship and control by the dominant class and social groups. Moreover, rap is part of a vibrant hip hop culture that itself has become a dominant style and ethos throughout the world today. The Moment of Hip Hop Just as ragtime, jazz, R&B, and other black musical idioms and forms entered mainstream culture earlier in the century, today it is hip hop culture and its distinctive sound of rap music that is becoming an important form of music and cultural style throughout the globe. Hip hop erupted from New York dance and party culture of the 1970s. Encompassing dance and performance, visual art, multiMedia, fashion and attitude, hip hop is the music and style for the new millennium. A highly protean and assimilative cultural ethos, it is here to stay, as it absorbs new influences, is appropriated throughout myriad cultural forms and forces across the globe, and has become a major mode of the global popular. Hip hop culture is intense body culture; it finds its expression in dance and gesture. Expressive, dynamic, and energetic, hip hop gave rise to new forms of dance like break-dancing, while gesture, movement, and bodily rhythm is a key aspect of its cultural style as well as musical performance. Hip hop is a highly vocal culture and rap music provides its voice and its sound. Drawing on the sonorities and inflections of the the rhythms of everyday vernacular discourse, as well as the sounds of traditional music, creative use of previous musical technology, and ap