Hip hop culture transcends national and ethnic boundaries to unite people, award-winning journalist Dalton Higgins told Humber College students in his speech ‘It’s a Hip Hop World: Globalization and Youth Culture’ on Thursday.

“Irrespective of your race or culture, your religion, that’s all out the window when it comes to hip hop,” Higgins, author of the 2009 book Hip Hop World, told TheDailyPlanet.com, following his address at the North campus as part of the Robert Gordon Lecture Series.

Melanie Chaparian, Humber humanities co-ordinator, is on the Lecture Series committee that sought Higgins. 

In Canada, Dalton Higgins is regarded as an expert on hip hop and currently works as a music programmer at the Harbourfront Centre in Toronto. (Courtesy: Dalton Higgins)

“He gives a very smart, historical, yet accessible, account of rap music which the vast majority of Humber College students, I’ve learned over the years, really do like and participate in.”

She also said that his lecture gave her a better understanding of the music genre.

Higgins told TheDailyPlanet.com that he first became interested in the music scene while spending time in a Toronto record shop when he was a child.

He said hip hop is a culture that encompasses various music and cultural forms such as rap, beatboxing (in which artists make vocal percussion noises), break dancing, turntablism (working with turntables), and graffiti culture.

It is also complex and an inherently global phenomenon that transcends language barriers and is found in indigenous forms on all continents.  In the lecture, Higgins told a story about a time when he was at a German hotel and he and an employee communicated through beatboxing since neither spoke the other’s language very well.

“This is how young people communicate across continents. They communicate using hip hop slanguage, hip hop elements like beatbox culture and this is staring me right in the face.”

The experience, he said, encouraged him to write his book because it made him realize just how big hip hop culture had become.

Higgins' lecture also addressed how even rap, as a music form, is very diverse including forms such as gay and lesbian homo rap, a gangster and dangerous faction, as well as a type of rap about science called nerdcore.  However, he said the culture of hip hop is a form of protest music, which is why it appeals to a specific generation.

“Youth rebel and that’s why young people are into hip hop culture, because it’s a movement about protesting.”

Jermaine Brown, a student in Humber's human behaviour certificate program, told TheDailyPlanet.com he hopes the overwhelming messages coming from some of the commercial hip hop artists are adjusted.

“It’s more discriminative to women, different races, homosexuality…it’s more an informative vehicle, so instead of using it for just all negativity, you could use it for positive things. Just kind of be a role model instead of a bad influence.”

Higgins addressed this in his lecture saying it’s the sex, drugs, and fast cars that generally sell in rap music, whereas topics like reducing people’s carbon footprint don’t have the same selling power.

Through all its diversity, Higgins told his audience hip hop unites numerous groups.

“It’s a hip hop world and we’re all just living in it.”