Hood Mentality

Hip-hop cannot merely be reduced to a genre of music. It’s a reflection of its environment, itʼs stories of struggle and most importantly it remains a culture in its own right. Through lenses of mental health, community, epigenetics, and cultural lineage this dissertation explores the theory that hip-hop culture developed, partially, out of a need for a positive and constructive means of navigating generational and daily lived traumas. There are two major themes in this. The first is Hip-hop as a form of expressive therapy, a way of healing the traumas Afro-diasporic people have faced within a racialised Western society. The second is hip-hop as a means of cultural ownership and identity, formed from the ruins of a fractured post-colonial heritage.