Self-Assessment Essay
I wrote two essays for this class this semester, on top of producing a meme and a rhetorical analysis of that meme. There is one thing that connects all of these pieces of work to each other and that is the idea of race, whether it’s the n-word, gentrification, or hip-hop, race had something to do with all of these pieces of work. Middle school is where I would see the effects of all three of these topics, it is also where I would begin my fascination with Malcolm X the man whose boulevard I grew up on. Would see how many of my friend’s personalities would be defined by the music they listened to, this was at an age where we were all far more impressionable than we are now, so music had a much larger influence on us than it possibly could now that our brains are becoming less and less impressionable. I was into artists like Big L, MF Doom, Capital Steez and Kendrick Lamar. I would tell one of my friends about Big L and Capital Steez and he who was an Eminem fan would become infatuated with these artists, and this style of hip-hop known as boom bap. He eventually would become a rap artist himself and the other day he took a flight to california to perform at Shade 45. The music he listened to changed the way he dressed, spoke and expressed himself overall. My other friends would listen to artists like Lil Yachty, Playboi Carti, G Herbo, Chief Keef, and 69(which we all listened to heavily at the time). This could’ve been part of the reason many from my school would try things like smoking weed, taking benadryl or making fake cough syrup to imitate lean that rappers commonly drank in fact Playboi Carti would famously rap “Sippin wok make my heart stop”(Playboi Carti, (unreleased track), around 2016) wok is another word for lean. Two of the artists I mentioned were drill rappers, and the ones who listened to those rappers were more likely to join gangs, get arrested and commit crimes like robbery. Music shaped the way all of us viewed the world and the ways in which we all acted, so it’s safe to say that the more negative music our youth are exposed to, the more negative their actions will become. The most violent music that we were listening to back then was coming from 69, a person who has lost respect in the eyes of the youth, so his influence has been to a degree cut off. The drill music that we were exposed to back then however is much different from the drill music we are exposed to now, back then it was about struggle and having a good time, with occasional mentions of enemies. The only notable New York drill artist other than 69 was Bobby Shmurda, and he would get locked up before we would get to middle school but the point is that there weren’t many New York drill rappers. Today there are thousands upon thousands of New York drill rappers, multiple of them went to the same school as me, and they are all younger than me. My grade was more influenced by the struggle rap and the lit rap, but this generation being younger were more impacted by the likes of people like 69, so while there is not a single drill rapper from my school in my grade, there are about four from the grade below me. My grade was more laid back and the ones who were involved in street activities never took it to music, but the grade below me had people who were pure athletes when I met them gravitate towards a different path in life. Now that we have seen the difference between one grade, imagine what the younger generations will look like. New york drill rap is now the most popular form in the world, so the youth from New York will be most affected. During this same time in middle school my family had an incident where the white lady who lived above me came down to knock on our door and tell my mother that we were being to loud, I can’t remember her exact words but she decided to insult my whole family as if she was the one who had been living here since the building was built. I would also see the effects of race when a group of kids who grew up two blocks away from me, decided to rob a white girl from columbia university at night, one of them panicked and stabbed the girl in her torso leaving her dead. This case got international coverage, from BBC to CNN, however multiple other people had been killed in Harlem that same day. The park where this happened would be closed off for weeks and we would see a rise in police activity, as well as undercover cops. This is the significance of the three pieces of work I produced and how they connect.
In my phase 1 essay entitled “Neega Heega” I would write “I was later told that Bogdan’s father was concerned about bringing him to the middle school he and I attended because of it being majority black and hispanic”. I think that this perfectly relays the core of the issue being discussed in this essay and that issue is race and cultural background. He was raised by a father who had certain biased towards people of color so that would have rubbed off on his son in some type of way, I was raised by a mother who took my to East Harlem to pay respects to Martin Luther King every year on Martin Luther King day, as well as West Indian Carnivals in Brooklyn and African Day parades in the same borough. These are two drastically separate backgrounds, however we got along very well, until the issue of race was brought up. This shows that despite our differences, many of us can get along perfectly fine, and have normal conversation because we are all human, however it also shows that the issue of race can drastically affect the way we interact with each other. I think the best way I conveyed my emotions in this essay is when I stated “Before the exam started I had the urge to use the bathroom so I left the room and walked down the main hall to the bathroom. The bathroom reeked of piss and since this school was a very old facility so was the restroom, it was much smaller than the girls bathroom so there was often a line outside of it. When I got there Bogdan was in the stall so I went to the smelly urinal”(Philip Bannerman, Neega Heega, 2022). This takes the reader through, smell, the environment the main event happened in, my urge while in the testing room and context to how the whole building looked. I feel I did a good job with the essay overall, however I could have made it more universal.
In my phase two meme, I used a simile to compare the relationship between “an unfaithful boyfriend and his love interests, and a landlord and his potential renters”(Philip Bannerman, Phase 2 Cover Letter, 2022). As explained in my first paragraph and my cover letter, gentrification is an issue that affects many inner city residents. I feel that the meme I used was appropriate because in many cases I can assume that the original renter feels betrayed when their landlord decides to raise the price to an unrealistic point that only a person coming from another neighborhood can afford.
In my phase 3 essay I used many pieces of evidence to connect 4 different times in hip hop. I defined these eras in my cover letter by saying “80s were all conscious to a degree, the groups from the 90s were gritty, the groups from the 2000’s were fashion forward and the groups from the 2010s were more violent”(Philip Bannerman, Kill Culture, 2022). I focused on particular rap collectives and individuals to make my point. I also sourced songs, interviews, books and articles to add to my overall point.
I think I managed to check off most of the boxes on the list of skills I was supposed to develop this semester. I edited, drafted and revised during this class. I identified rhetorical strategies with the correct terminology, I used digital technology, located many sources and put them in MLA format. I feel I gained from this class and I intend to apply these skills to my next class.
