Reintroducing public health to hip-hop culture: Music, risk and life-course health

Hip-Hop culture was born amidst economic instability, gang conflict, and social alienation, an environment filled with health risks, yet teeming with innovation and possibility. Pioneers of Hip-Hop culture were empowered by creatively expressing themselves visually (graffiti), physically (bboying), orally (emceeing), and by instrumentation (deejaying). These cultural innovators gained strength through their identification with and connection to others in similar circumstances. The same connections persist today. At their strongest, the voices of rap music are individually empowering, but they can also be collectively empowering, and even instigate collective action to address issues that put individuals at risk. Therapeutic uses of rap music seek to harness this strength to improve individual and community well-being. Thus, the desirable and measured outcomes of these therapeutic efforts should be similarly strengths-based and reflect the quality of the relationships between individuals and their environment. To move research and practice forward, efforts to use Hip-Hop music and culture within prevention and health promotion strategies must include clearly measured concepts and therapeutic models. Concepts and models must more precisely capture variability in strengths and the nature of person – environment relationships over time. This paper uses the individual and community empowerment framework as a structure to illustrate important planning and evaluation themes using Hip-Hop culture. Self-esteem, resilience, youth development, civic engagement, community health and risk behaviors are described within the context of existing research, contemporary Hip-Hop culture, and community-based interventions. Specific measurement opportunities for health outcomes are described for practice.