Analysis Of The Poem Hip Hop Planet By James Mcbride

American Writer James McBride, who wrote the essay Hip Hop Planet, spent most of his life disliking the culture of hip hop, but after some research and personal experience, he had a change of heart. The purpose of his essay is to shine a positive light on hip hop culture and move his audience-- people who think it is all bad-- to have a change of heart like him, and to achieve his purpose, he uses rhetorical strategies including appeals, specific diction, and meticulous sentence structure. McBride uses emotional, logical, and ethical appeals to drive his point. His use of emotional appeals are used to get attention and provoke thought from people who may have similar backgrounds to his, or those who may have a strong opinion towards hip hop culture. An example of this would be â€Å"hip hop remains an enigma, a clarion call, a cry of ‘I am’ from the youth of the world† (McBride 1). A clarion call is a strongly expressed demand or request for action- a plea, essentially. This pairs with the word â€Å"cry† to create a sense of despair in the youth of the world. By grabbing the reader’s heart as well as their attention, this moves the reader to consider the music as more than just defiance. In the essay, McBride’s logical appeals are used to help his purpose by using facts and examples to describe the rise of hip hop culture, and explain its significance based on more than just opinion. A particular instance of McBride making a logical appeal would be â€Å"In the mid-1970s, New York City