Specifically from a literary perspective, the Harlem Renaissance, also known as the New Negro Movement, is often treated as one of the most localized and artistically prolific movements in Western literature, producing writers such as Gwendolyn Bennett, Nella Larsen, Esther Popel and Jean Toomer. No writer of the Harlem Renaissance has received as much recognition and adulation as Langston Hughes, a poet, novelist, playwright, and essayist who is now firmly entrenched in the Western literary canon. Although Hughes had a unique poetic style: he preferred short, lyrical poems with simple, concrete images that often featured deceptively optimistic rhyme schemes; his voice was unmistakably his own: the topics and themes he chose to write about were equally distinctive. Through his poetry, Hughes unflinchingly examined the African-American condition in the first half of the twentieth century: landlords mistreated tenants, dreams were crushed by the weight of institutional racism, Western history, which usually focused on "victories" and “achievements” of white men, was re-examined and questioned; most importantly, his poetry was infused with love and celebration of African-American culture. This last characteristic was shared by his contemporaries and successors. According to Joanne V. Gabbin, “African American poetry is the aesthetic chronicle of a race, as Gwendolyn Brooks expresses it, struggling to raise 'its shameless face' in an alien land” (Gabbin, “Furious Flower: African American Poetry , an overview”). These successors are distant and varied: as Hughes' legacy lives on, his influence has grown and expanded. Indeed, the principles of his poetry can be found in another predominantly African-American art form, known today as hip-hop. In the 2015 NWA biopic Straight Outta Compton, Ice Cube – the rap group's primary lyricist – responds with a Hughesian retort when a journalist denigrates the violent content of his music: “Our art is a reflection of our reality” (Gray , Straight Outside Compton). Like Hughes, many rappers write specifically and exclusively about the African-American experience; Hip-hop has often been seen as a highly memorial art form, where the personal becomes political. No rapper exemplifies this position better than Nasir Jones, widely known simply as “Nas,” a native of Queens, New York, who released his seminal 1994 debut album, Illmatic, when he was just twenty years old. Like Hughes, Nas has a keen observational eye, understanding the cruelties of the world but sometimes viewing life through a lens of hope and optimism. The two New Yorkers were born almost seventy-five years apart, yet their work traces similar themes. Ultimately, in the grand scheme of things, Hughes and Nas are writing about the same topics: the marginalization and mass disenfranchisement of the Black voice and body by white-dominated power structures. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Because of its status as a popular art form, hip-hop is often dismissed as vulgar or obscene, without any critical or academic merit. This is not true, especially since hip-hop follows directly in the footsteps of Harlem Renaissance writers and members of the Black Arts Movement, such as Amiri Baraka, Larry Neal, and Maya Angelou. That's why it's easy to make comparisons: according to Fran L. Lassiter, “During the Harlem Renaissance, writers attempted to perfect what Bernard W. Bell describes as 'a double responsibility: to their race and theirprofession' (2004: 98 )” (Lassiter, “From toast to rap”). This dual responsibility is evident in hip-hop, and it's present throughout Nas' speech: He calls himself "King Poetic" on "Halftime" and raps: "You know [I] got the mad fat fluid while [I] rhyme " ; similarly, on "It Ain't Hard to Tell", he raps, "The vocabulary spills, I'm sick" (Nas, "Halftime"; Nas, “It's Not Hard to Tell”). Throughout his work, Nas shows awareness of his abilities and deep respect for his art. As such, it is with authority and legitimacy when P. Khalil Saucier and Tryon P. Woods state that “hip-hop [is] no more or less compelling as a topic of study or pedagogy than any other cultural moment or product in black history." (Saucier & Woods, “Hip Hop Studies in Black). The omnivorous culture of hip-hop also places it squarely in the realm of postmodernism, that artistic movement that is difficult to define and often more difficult to understand. The word “postmodern” could be the most concise aspect of the movement: at least thematically, postmodernists built directly on modernism, which was primarily concerned with alienation from the contemporary world. Notoriously difficult to define, postmodernism is “associated with awareness of social and cultural transitions after World War II and the rise of mass-mediated consumerist popular culture in the 1960s and 1970s” (Irving, “Postmodernity vs. the Postmodern vs. Postmodernism) , postmodernists often repurpose works and place them in new contexts, thereby creating an entirely new work of art themselves. In hip-hop, the most obvious example of this is sampling or, as defined from the Merriam-Webster dictionary, "the act of using a small part of a recording (such as a song) as part of another recording." On "It Ain't Hard to Tell," for example, Nas samples Michael Jackson's "Human Nature," Kool & the Gang's "NT," and Stanley Clarke's "Slow Dance." However, the postmodern elements of hip-hop go beyond the simple construction of the music. Hip-hop is known for its unflinching depiction of violence: In "NY State of Mind," Nas raps, "Take the Mac, told the brothers, 'Back up,' Mac spit/Lead was hitting niggas, one ran—I made him do a backflip/I heard some girls screaming, my arm was shaking, I couldn't look/I squeezed one more time, I heard it click, 'Yo, my shit is blocked'” (Nas, “NY State of Mind”). Philosopher Jean-François Lyotard's definition of postmodernism makes it clear that Nas's realistic and violent lyrics qualify him as a postmodernist poet. Lyotard writes: “The postmodern would be that which, in the modern, proposes the unpresentable in the presentation of the self; that which denies itself the comfort of good forms, the consensus of a taste that would allow us to collectively share the nostalgia of the unattainable; presentations, not to enjoy them but to impart a stronger sense of the unpresentable” (Lyotard 81) Violence, in this case, is the “unpresentable.” Certainly Hughes, who is more easily classified as a modernist, did not express this extreme sense of violence, and it does not permeate his work as it does Nas's. Finally, postmodernists are concerned with reinterpreting history and questioning the accepted historical canon. In this regard, Nas mirrors Hughes: both invoke African history to remind people of forgotten legacies, the former doing so in “I Can,” while the latter does so in “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.” When examined through the lens of postmodernism, it is easy to see how Nas's work draws influence, directly or indirectly, from, and, more importantly, builds on the work of Hughes. Lassiter further connects hip-hopand the Harlem Renaissance: “members of the Harlem Renaissance, similar to today's hip-hop generation, rejected the poetic traditions and structures of the 'old Negro' who embraced white bourgeois values ​​and morality” (Lassiter, “From Toasts to Rap”). Like Hughes, Nas never panders to a white audience; instead, it is unapologetically black. In fact, when Nas was first recording Illmatic, he didn't even think it would have a white audience. In an interview with Grantland, his brother, Jabari Jones, also known by his stage name, Jungle, said: “I thought [the album] would be something cool that only people from Queensbridge would appreciate. […] I thought it would be the little Queensbridge crew on TV real quick and then we'd be in Queensbridge for the rest of our lives" (Golianopoulos, "Q&A: Nas's Brother, Jungle, on Life in Queensbridge and the New Doc' Time Is Illmatic '”). In short, like that of Hughes, Nas's career has remained entirely authentic, and has never been diluted to appeal to a wider audience; his audience needs to address him on his own terms. This is best evidenced by his use of African American Vernacular English in his songs (Lister, “Linguistic Variation in Hip Hop: Variable Use of African American Vernacular English by New York Rappers Jay-Z and Nas”). In his 1979 essay “If Black English Is Not a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is It?”, writes James Baldwin, “language is also a political tool, a means, and a test of power. It is the most vivid and crucial key to identification: it reveals the private identity and connects, or separates, from the broader public or community identity” (Baldwin). This attitude runs through the work of Nas and Hughes: by refusing to give up the African-American English vernacular, they refuse to give up and change their identities. Hughes and Nas ground their work in local color: although they are both from New York City, they come from different neighborhoods; the former was originally from Harlem, while the latter came from Queens. Both show affection for their neighborhoods and at the same time recognize their disadvantages, usually attributed to the effects of institutionalized racism. Hughes described this mixture of love and frustration with a typically insightful observation, full of concrete nouns: “Melting pot Harlem? Harlem of honey, chocolate, caramel, rum, vinegar, lemon, lime and gall” (Cruse 314). This evocative list works in two ways: Hughes's food metaphor implies that his contemporary Harlem featured a great deal of cultural diversity; it also conjures contrasting tastes and flavors in the mind: the sweetness of “chocolate and caramel” clashes with the sourness of “vinegar and lemon,” an apt analogue for a neighborhood that inspires and suffocates at the same time (Cruse 314). Nas has the same conflicting view of his birthplace. While many of his songs, especially those on Illmatic, are filled with pleasant, nostalgic memories of his childhood, he also addresses the pervasiveness of violence in the neighborhood. Jabari Jones observed, “Coming out of Queensbridge, there were all these guys who wanted to be down [to fight], or wanted to extort you or take your chain” (Golianopoulos, “Q&A: Nas's Brother, Jungle, on Life in Queensbridge and the new documentary 'Time Is Illmatic'”). “A Queens Story” – can be attributed to the “social isolation of blacks” (Shihadeh & Flynn 1329), According to Shihadeh and Flynn, “Due to the perpetuation of institutional arrangements and individual actions, blacks face significant challenges in access.” to non-minority neighborhoods [and]the resulting limited contact between blacks and whites may isolate many blacks from the rest of society and severely limit their opportunity for social mobility” (Shihadeh & Flynn 1329). They go further and detail the consequences of black social isolation: It “combines the burdens of poverty, unemployment, welfare dependency, teenage childbearing, and other indicators of social malaise and concentrates them geographically in black neighborhoods.” (Shihadeh & Flynn 1329). The social isolation of black people is a major cause of the gang-related violence and crime that Nas so often centers his music on. In Hughes' “Madam and The Rent Man,” the social isolation of blacks is also one of the reasons why “The sink is broken,/The water doesn't run,/And you didn't do anything/You promised you would” . ” in the speaker's house (Hughes). Although it manifests itself in different ways, Hughes and Nas write about the same topic: the effect of black social isolation on an urban community. They also put their respective urban communities front and center, in all their glory and disappointment. Nas often ties together the positives and negatives of his neighborhood in one smooth, artful verse. On “A Queens Story,” he peppers his rhymes with specific, localized references, tracing his path through the disenfranchised areas of his youth to the safer, predominantly white areas — rapping: Rastas selling chocolate weed inside of a grass house Coliseum downstairs, gold teeth mouthWarriors of Astoria, eight streets, twin buildings, Vernon, can't even count the kids of Livingston. Justice in Ravenswood, nice neighborhood - Caught sleeping out there, make a conclusion though. Bridge niggas are in Petey's ten racks, yo. (Nas, “A Queens Story”). Hughes, meanwhile, takes a more metaphorical approach when writing about his neighborhood. Philip M. Royster analyzes “Dimout in Harlem” in his essay “The Poetic Theory and Practice of Langston Hughes”, with these words: “A young black man walking along a Harlem street in the silent shadows of the evening becomes a collective individual who represents and demonstrates the relationships between many urban black youth and their natural and unnatural environments” (8). Hughes is less interested in pointing out specific places, thus grounding the reader in a literal geographical sense, than in recreating the atmosphere and collective mood of Harlem. In “Harlem,” arguably his most famous poem, he never mentions the neighborhood, or any place, for that matter. Instead, he lets the title guide the reader and implies that the neighborhood is full of, and perhaps the cause of, “dreams deferred” (Hughes, “Harlem”). Those deferred dreams are a common topic in Hughes' poetry. As Henry Rhodes writes, “The American Dream holds that if a man is industrious, self-sufficient, and talented, he can achieve almost anything his heart desires. The dream posed a dilemma for the black writer. If he chose to believe that the American Dream included Negroes, then he should believe that the end of discrimination was in the future” (Rhodes, “The Social Contributions of the Harlem Renaissance”). Hughes wanted to believe in the American dream in “Let America Be America Again,” in which the speaker longs for the utopian promises of American society to come true, despite knowing in full conscience that the country has always been discriminatory and racist, but he does not era. well aware of the pervasiveness of institutional racism. Nas expresses the same disillusionment on “America,” rapping, “It's like waking up from a bad dream/(America)/Only to realize you weren't dreaming in the first place” (Nas, “America”). In the song, Nas goes on to point out the hypocrisy that labels the United States of America as a place where “all menare created equal” (Jefferson, “The Declaration of Independence”). Nas isn't necessarily a pessimist, though, and expresses hope more often than Hughes. According to Raphael Travis, Jr., "the use of Hip-Hop includes goals of empowerment for individuals and communities, moving from an emphasis on 'me' to a simultaneous emphasis on the collective 'we'" (Travis, Jr. , ""Rap Music and the Empowerment of Today's Youth: Evidence in Daily Music Listening, Music Therapy, and Commercial Rap Music"). This sense of encouragement was especially prevalent in the second half of his career. The entire concept behind "I Can" was designed to motivate children, with a chorus that goes: "I know I can/be what I want to be/if I work hard at it/I'll ​​be where I want to be" sung by a group of guys (Nas, “I Can”). Nas opens his first verse with a series of thought-provoking lines: Be, B-Boys and girls, listen: You can be anything in the world, in God we trust. An architect, a doctor, maybe an actress, But nothing is easy. takes a lot of practice (Nas, “I Can”). These same sentiments can be found in Hughes' work, but in a more opaque and abstract way, after all, what if there was no hope of writing “Let America Be America Again”? Ultimately, both artists ask their readers to strive for excellence, to change the system as self-motivated individuals. Gabbin states that, “From African American poets' early attempts in the eighteenth century to lyrically express their adaptation to existence in a society they have questioned their humanity through the intense exploration of their voice in the final years of a charged twentieth century of racism, they have built an aesthetic tradition that affirms them” (Gabbin, “Furious Flower: African-American Poetry, An Overview”). One aspect of African-American culture that holds this aesthetic tradition together is religion, particularly Christianity. The church served many purposes: it is “a place to create a personal identity, a place of self-discovery, and a sanctuary from racial oppression” (Lambert 303). Many of Nas' songs and Hughes' poems reflect this; some, however, express doubt, allowing the bleakness of racist America to seep into the normally comfortable confines of the church. The second half of Nas' career was characterized by a more positive view of Christianity, he famously got "God's Son" tattooed on his stomach in the late twenty-first century, but in "Live at the Barbecue", one of the first songs he's ever recorded, he raps: "When I was twelve, I went to Hell for killing Jesus" (Nas, "Live at the Barbecue"). On “Represent,” he doesn't use hyperbole, but is more blunt: “I won't even fuck with the Gods/I don't believe in none of that bullshit, your facts are backwards” (Nas, “Represent”). While these songs demonstrate a stark rejection of Christian hope, Hughes' “Song for a Dark Girl” expresses more desperation and disappointment. In the second stanza, the speaker questions the efficacy of prayer in a religion that has been as whitewashed as his discriminatory country, saying, “I asked the white Lord Jesus/What was the use of prayer” (Hughes, “ Song for a Dark Girl”). In different ways, both artists show how the Christian church can be both a beacon of hope for the African-American community – a hub that unites people – and another reminder of America's harsh realities. Please note: this is just an example. Get a custom paper now from our expert writers. Get a Custom Essay Overall, Nas's work can be seen as a postmodernist expansion of Hughes's modernist poetry: the former builds on the pervasive theme of alienation in the latter's writing by presenting the.".