Rap and hip-hop culture emerged out of the street-gang culture of poor black youths in the Bronx, New York, in the 1970s. Hip-hop culture and its signature music, rap, have grown in less than thirty years to be a major part of popular culture around the world. This youth culture has been criticized and condemned by concerned adults from parents to law enforcement officials. Supporters, however, think that hip-hop gives a voice and a sense of power to poor youth around the world who otherwise often feel powerless and unheard.

Hip-hop describes a distinctive style of dress (extremely baggy clothes, backwards baseball caps), a slang that is almost impossible for those outside the culture to understand, and an attitude of cool toughness and rebellion. Hip-hop culture includes a love of break dancing (athletic street dancing), flamboyant—and illegal—graffiti, rap music (fast rhymes spoken...