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The use of hip hop slang in the American language is nowadays more prevalent than ever. Slang is a crucial part of every language. It is used by different groups to send a social signal, to indicate informality, irreverence or defiance, to add humor or to mark someone’s inclusion in, admiration for or identification with a social group which is often non-mainstream. A slang word cannot be identified by its pronunciation or construction due to the fact that a word is often just differently used to create a new meaning through metaphor, metonymy, irony etc. or parts of existing words are mixed together differently. Slang is mostly used by the youth, it is also an important part in the music scene especially in the genre of Hip Hop and Rap Music.

History (The history of hip hop)
The hip hop culture can be traced all the way back to the first civil rights movement, starting with a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955, which sparked a nationwide struggle to gain full citizenship rights for Blacks and to essentially end the practice of segregation. Another explanation to the beginning of the hip hop culture was the entrance of the United States into the Vietnam War in 1961, where men were drafted to serve in the military and sent overseas to fight in the controversial conflict. The young men who were often mistreated and abused by the law and the legal system were sent away to fight for the very laws and legal systems that abused them. The disparities created a serious decline in neighborhoods around the country. In the 1970’s an underground urban movement known as “hip hop” began to form in the Bronx, New York. It focused on emceeing over house parties and neighborhood block parties. Hip hop music has been a powerful medium for protesting the impact of legal institutions on minorities, particularly police and prisons. Historically hip hop rose out of the ruins of a post-industrial and ravaged south Bronx, as a form of expression of Urban Black and Latino Youth, whom the public and political discourse had written off as marginalized communities. Hip hop has evolved through the 1970, 80’s, 90’s and 00’s. It comes in various forms such as old school hip hop, drill, grime, Latin trap and so on. By 1979 hip hop music had become a mainstream genre. It spread across the word in the 1990s with controversial “gangsta” rap. Street gangs were prevalent in the poverty of the South Bronx, and much of the graffiti, rapping, and b-boying at these parties were all variations on the competition and one-upmanship of the street gangs. Sensing that gang members often violent urges could be turned creative ones.

The lyrical content of many early rap groups focused on social issues, most notably in the seminal track, "The Message" (1982) by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, which discussed the realities of life in the housing projects. "Young black Americans coming out of the civil rights movement have used hip hop culture in the 1980s and 1990s to show the limitations of the movement." Hip hop gave young African Americans a voice to let their issues be heard; "Like rock-and-roll, hip hop is vigorously opposed by conservatives because it romanticizes violence, law-breaking, and gangs".

What characterizes “American Hip-Hop slang” (Characterization of American hip hop slang)
American hip-hop slang has had its impact on the American language since the early 1970s, and this is seen in the way words are interpreted. “Bad” meaning good, abbreviations such as "hood" (short for neighborhood), new words replacing other ones such as "crib" (which translates as place of residence), and "whip" (meaning car). Phrases such as "what’s up" (hello), "peace out" (good-bye), and the extremely popular "chill out" (relax) are frequently used in television shows, movies, and even commercials. The language can be very specific depending on what artist it is, and it differs from East to West coast. The greatest impact of hip hop culture is perhaps its ability to bring people of all different beliefs, cultures, races, and ethnicities together as a medium for young (and now middle-aged) people to express themselves in a self-determined manner, both individually and collectively. This is a very vibrant characteristic of the American hip-hop language. it impacts people and their way of living. Different rappers from different decades have had their own way of impacting the American hip hop slang. An example of the personal impacts in the different use of slang, are that about 37% of N.W. A’s tracks use the word “police”, well above the genre’s average of 5%. The Group N.W.A also uses the word “Compton” in 35% of their tracks, where almost all other hip hop artists only use the word in 1% of their songs. Furthermore, this means that this kind of English can not be characterized such as Australian English, Singlish and so on, but the speaker who uses this language, have their own way of using hip hop slang. American English is a living organism, and with vibrant mechanisms such as hip hop culture and the rapid growth of technology, who’s to say what we will be saying or writing in the next 30 years. Whether the United States is a, "Hip Hop Nation," as declared on the cover of the February 5, 1999, issue of Time magazine, or not, it is clearly evident that English has been greatly influenced by hip-hop culture.

Who are the speakers?(The speakers of hip hop)
The demographic of hip hop speakers have changed radically during time. When hip hop was first invented in the Bronx the users were primarily African Americans, Latino Americans and Caribbean Americans. As time progressed more and more people listened to this new type of music and speaking and by the millennial change, the hip hop genre had reached extreme popularity. This indicated that the listeners were no longer only African-, Latino- or Caribbean Americans but also other ethnicities. According to National Geographic the hip hop society and music genre has turned into a Juggernaut. When looking at the age composition of hip hop listeners it is clear to see that the listeners are primarily between the ages 16-44. 48% are between 16-19, 54% are between 20-24, 42% are between 25-34, 33% are between 35-44 years of age. This shines some light on the age of the listener but not the ethnicity. The hip hop music genre is, as mentioned previously, popular amongst a very large number of people across many different ethnicities. this is primarily because of the inclusion found in the songs. many believe that the target audience of any hip hop artist is anyone who wants to feel included (hip hop literature blog post). When targeting an audience through race and geography, which is often done so in hip hop, it is not done only to attract the ones in this specific group, but also those who want to hang with this group or be a part of it altogether. Therefore, it can be concluded that hip hop offers communion through the music, to anyone who wants in, but they do so in a very politically incorrect and informal way.

East Coast-West Coast Rivalry
Rappers such as 2Pac and The Notorious B.I.G. are two of the most influential rappers to this day. The two rappers represent a well-known “hip hop war”, the East Coast-West Coast rivalry, which have been going on for decades, and which had its greatness in the 90’s where American gangsta rap made its biggest impact on the American language as it is known today. This shaped the American hip hop slang, and how and by whom it was used. Brooklyn based rappers and fans used the east coast slang, which The Notorious B.I.G, Puff Daddy (whom is also known as P-Diddy) and the others rappers signed to Bad Boys records used in their songs and albums. The other way around West coast fans was influenced by 2Pac and Death row records. The use of slang is impacted by which area the rappers come from, and certainly the ones listing to it and adapting it. As an example, take the The Notorious B.I.G, the top ten words he uses the most, are very different from 2Pac and Death row records. B.I.G uses words as, Clicks (money), Stuy (Bedford-Stuyvesant, a neighborhood in central Brooklyn, New York, USA) Juggel (Trying to date multiple people at the same time, to have multiple sexual partners during the same period in one's life), Dons (Top man, Mafia boss ect.), Poppa (an alter ego), Skins (rolling a cigarette, mostly used about marijuana), Brooklyn (an area in New York, where Bad boys records have their origins), Downfall and lounging (relaxing/hang out). In contrast to the East Coast rappers, 2Pac uses words as outlaw (a person who has broken the law, especially one who remains at large or is a fugitive), Shakur (his birth name), Makaveli (2Pacs other artist name), Soulja (anyone who has gone through hard times and fought against adversity), Trading (Sleeping with prostitutes or providing monetary compensation for the services of prostitutes), Scandalous, Untouchable, Watcha (Look out, or a greeting), Immortal and Figga (Figure).

The implications, challenges, dilemmas and paradoxes
The people who play and/or produce hip hop are typically people who originate from the Black society, speaking in a particular way with an accent. Rappers are viewed as the voice of poor, urban African-American youth, whose lives are generally dismissed or misrepresented by the mainstream media. They are the keepers of contemporary African-American working-class history and concerns. There has been a lot cases of racism, both from the White society as well as the Black - neither party accepting one another, this all originated from a severe case of prejudice. The Blacks believed that the White was trash, and as so the other way around. It seems that political and media groups often place the blame of youth violence on the rap music for the violent lyrics. If rap music appears to be excessively violent when compared to country-western or popular rock, it is because rap stems from a culture that has been seeped in the fight against political, social, and economic oppression. Violence in rap is not an effective agent that threatens to harm America's youth, in stead it is the outcry of an already-existing problem from youth whose worldviews have been shaped by experiencing deep economic inequalities divided largely along racial lines. Some rappers defend the presence of violence in their lyrics as the manifestation of American history and culture - furthermore these rappers claim that it is not only African-Americans who are, ‘gangsters’, but rather the American history that has been characterized by conquest and rebellion. Violence in rap, and in other forms of self-expression, is the manifestation of a feeling of hopelessness and discontent in America's working class, especially working-class minority communities. By pointing to rap as the cause of violence, politicians attempt to erase from the consciousness of their constituents the history of oppression that has given birth to hip-hop culture. The result of this was devastating to the society, creating a greater social distance between the two cultures and it was harder than ever to integrate the different cultures in society. Characters: 11.235