Tim Coen Dietel-McLaughlin December 3, 2012 WR 13300 Visual Written Essay: The Hip-Hop Controversy My visual essay was

based heavily off of my research paper, with a slight variation in topic and argument. As I explained in my research paper, I am a huge fan of hip-hop/rap music, and 90 percent of the songs on my iPod are of the hiphop/rap genre. But as hip-hop listener, I too often hear harsh criticisms of hiphop/rap music; people make comments of how inappropriate the lyrics are, and how the artists promote negative activities like violence, crime, drug abuse, and recreational sex. With my visual essay, I wanted to defend hip-hop against the criticisms it has received, and show that hip-hop music is actually quite similar to most other musical genres when it comes to lyrical themes and messages. In the beginning stages of my thought process for this essay, I really had no idea what I wanted to write about; I couldnt think of a way to incorporate my research on hip-hop into a visual essay. The argument I proposed in my research paper didnt exactly carry over visually. But one random afternoon I had my headphones in while working on other homework, a thought came to mind. The song Never Forget You by Lupe Fiasco came on followed by the song Springsteen by Eric Church. As I listened, I noticed an obvious similarity in the lyrics of each song. While each artist was of a different genre (Fiasco hip-hop, Church country), both sang about a lost personal relationship, reminiscing about the memories they

made with someone. Then it occurred to me that similarity between the two songs could serve as a topic for my visual essay, and I began looking through my iPod for more lyrical connections between hip-hop and other genres. The two songs were eventually included in final essay. Then came the research part of my essay. I had most of the information I needed about hip-hop, but nothing about the other genres I wanted to include in my essay. I looked for articles that discussed common themes that were present in specifically rock, pop, and country music. I as found the desired information, the connection I discovered while listening to my iPod also surfaced in the research articles. While no direct comparison was made in any one article, the material discussing the musical content of each genre shared the same thoughts. Even though hip-hop was a completely different genre than rock, pop, and country, each genre discussed and portrayed parallel messages and stories. The visual creation of my essay was rather because music, specifically hiphop/ rap music, is a very visual topic. I chose to create a Prezi because it gave me the most options with visual representation. Next I took the Youtube music videos of the songs I wanted to use in my essay and downloaded them to my computer using the iLivid downloading software (recommended by Dr. E). With iLivid, I was able to import each music video into iMovie and edit them to length and segment I wanted. Yes, this may sound like a copyright violation, but my essay was purely for academic use with commercial compensation. I connected the music videos I compared using caption slide in iMovie, and once I shared my video to a media browser, I was able to embed my videos into my Prezi. With the simple frame creation and editing in Prezi,

I incorporated the music videos, research article material, and personal claims in a sequence of frames. Using the basis of research essay was a significant boost for visual essay. With the majority of my research already complete, I was able to proceed rather quickly through my essay. As an end result, the goal of my essay is to draw connections with hip-hop and other major musical genres, to convince the hip-hop skeptics that while the delivery of hip-hop music may be completely unique, the messages and themes within the lyrics are not unique to the hip-hop/rap genre.