The Best of Colombian Hip Hop

The Best of Colombian Hip Hop

     

HipHop and rap in Colombia started to appear in the early 1990s as a social expression and a means of protest against facts like the violence in the suburbs, the unemployment, the lack of education, health and culture. Since then, rap has been performed out of the slums, as the interpreters are very poor and they use vocal sounds in order to substitute for the instruments they cannot buy because of the lack of money. They grew up in the corners of the peripheral, poor and suburban areas of the big cities. Many of these interpreters died in gang warfares, in executions of the guerilla militia, in social cleaning operations of paramilitary groups, or in reckonings between mafia cartels. In the beginning of the 21st century, more than 500 hiphop and rap bands had emerged in the country, and the governments on duty began to give them some space in their cultural programmes. The violence in the poor suburbs almost created independent mini-states dominated by groups at the limits of the law, and to support rap was considered a means to keep those youngsters away from weapons.