This document examines the evolution of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) use in hip-hop music over time. It analyzes the lyrics of songs from different eras of hip-hop in terms of AAVE features like negation with "ain't", auxiliary deletion, and AAVE-specific vocabulary. The analysis found decreasing use of these linguistic features in more recent hip-hop songs. Originally, AAVE use in hip-hop provided artistic vernacular resistance, but this function has eroded as themes have changed and AAVE features have declined, reducing hip-hop's identity.

1. THE EVOLUTION OF
AFRICAN AMERICAN
VERNACULAR
ENGLISH (AAVE) USE
IN HIP-HOP
DANIEL EGGLESTON
YORK ST JOHN UNIVERSITY
1

2. WHAT IS HIP-HOP?
• Started as a subculture in South Bronx in 1970s
• 4 artistic forms of expression:
• Graffiti
• Break-dancing
• DJ-ing
• Rapping
• Rapping is the lexical form of expression
2

3. RAPPING IN HIP-HOP
• Rapping is speaking in rhyme to the rhythm of
the beat
• Differs from spoken word poetry – “the rhythm of
the lyrics must fit with the basic rhythm of the music”
(Edwards, 2009:63)
• Rapping is also referred to as MCing/Emceeing
• MC – Master of Ceremonies
3

4. BEGINNINGS OF RAP
Form of expression that is embedded in ancient
African culture with the Griot (Westmoreland Bouchard,
2009:50; Smitherman 1997:4)
The role of griot was as an “oral historian, musician,
and entertainer of the community” (Westmoreland Bouchard,
2009:50)
4

5. WHAT IS AAVE?
African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is
• dialect of American English
• a system with patterns of
• grammar
• vocabulary
• phonology
Those that speak AAVE don‟t fail in speaking
Standard English they succeed in speaking African
American English
5

6. WHAT I EXAMINED
Linguists have classed the following as important
aspects of AAVE:
• Use of “ain't” as a form of negation (Howe, 2005:174)
• Auxiliary Deletion (Labov, 1969; Rickford, 1998)
• AAVE specific vocabulary
6

7. CHRONOLOGY OF HIP-HOP
(EVOLUTION)
6 time periods
• Old School Hip-Hop (1978-1985) (AllMusic, 2014)
• Golden era (1986-1991) (AllMusic, 2014)
• Gangsta rap (1992-1996) (AllMusic, 2014)
• Millennium rap (1997-2003)
• 2000s rap (2004-2010)
• Current rap (2010-2014)
7

8. DIVERGENCE
The divergence hypothesis is that the unique
features of AAVE are a reflection on the social and
racial segregation.
Labov (2010:15) cites divergence is due to “residential
segregation, combined with increasing poverty”.
8

9. DIVERGENCE AS AN ACT
OF IDENTITY
Speech acts are a form of projection. The speaker is
projecting their inner universe and seeking to
reinforce their model of the world by hearing
similar speech acts from those they wish to identify
with. (Le Page and Tabouret-Keller, 1985:181)
Giles et al (1991) writes that the member of the
speech community will emphasise the linguistic
differences between themselves and someone who
is a member of a different speech community as a
way to identify their identity.
9

10. AAVE AS A FORM OF IDENTITY
“[AAVE is] available to most if not all African
Americans[…] there are grammatical and stylistic features
of this language which are constant over space”. (Lippi-
Green, 1997:178)
“no major grammatical differences have emerged from
the study of Vernacular Black English in Detroit, New York
City, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Atlanta, Wilmington,
Berkeley, and Los Angeles”. (Rickford, 1992:262)
10

11. AAVE & IDENTITIES IN HIP HOP
“in the case of Hip Hop artists, identities emerge through
the medium of their music” (Cramer & Hallett 2010: 259)
Androutsopoulus (2003:18) describes hip hop as “an
arena of symbolic resistance to an essentialist
understanding of social identity”.
Vernacular resistance is provided with AAVE
distorting the rules of the majority language. Hip
Hop is a method of promoting this resistance
11

12. QUESTIONS
Is there actually any evolution in use?
The Message Grand Master Flash and The Furious Five 1979
Starships Nicki Minaj 2012
Sub questions
1. Has there been a large amount of “ain‟t” used as a
form of negation?
2. Is there a high amount of auxiliary verb deletion?
3. Is there a change in the amount of AAVE specific
vocabulary used?
12

13. HOW WAS DATA CHOSEN?
The 50 Greatest Hip Hop Songs Of All Time (Rolling
Stone, 2012)
Due to it being more difficult to find the true
amount of sales for some of the earlier records
released (Daly, 2005:5).
For the newer eras of 2000s rap and the current
rap scene it was decided to choose the songs based
on sales.
Due to the ease of access of this music compared to
the previous eras
A total of 30 songs were analysed
13

14. DATA RETRIEVAL
As analysis is based on lexical aspects of AAVE I
focused on the lyrics
The lyrics were sourced using the website
RapGenius.com
14

15. RAPGENIUS
Allows its users to submit their understanding of what
the lyrics are
Other users are allowed to then add the original lyrics
to help as well as adding an insight into what they
believe the lyrics to mean
Lyrics are then moderated by RapGenius editors to
help provide as close a transcription as possible
The website also provides its own guide to posting the
lyrics so this allowed the lyrics to be easily accessed
and analysed
15

16. EXAMPLE
16

17. ANALYSIS
Analysis was split into three categories to answer 3
sub questions.
• Use of Negation
• Auxiliary deletion
• AAVE Specific Lexis
17

18. NEGATION
18
0 5 10 15 20 25
Old School
Golden
Gangsta
Millennium
2000s
Current
Old School Golden Gangsta Millennium 2000s Current
Amount of times "aint" has
been used
4 9 9 8 20 6
Amount of times "aint" has been used

19. AUXILIARY DELETION
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35
Old school
Golden
Gangsta
Millenium
2000s
Current
Old school Golden Gangsta Millenium 2000s Current
Amount of aux. verb deletion 30 21 18 16 12 8
Amount of aux. verb deletion
19

20. AAVE SPECIFIC LEXIS
0 20 40 60 80 100 120
Old School
Golden
Gangsta
Millennium
2000s
Current
Old
School
Golden Gangsta
Millenniu
m
2000s Current
Amount of AAVE specific words
used
67 108 107 97 53 27
Amount of AAVE specific words used
20

21. THEMATIC DIFFERENCES
Dance (Old
School)
"boogie"
"funky“
"disco"
Violence
(Golden and
Gangsta)
"gat"
"G"
"rumble"
Sex
(Millennium
and 2000s)
"hoe"
"shawty"
"money
maker"
Wealth
(Current)
"stuntin'"
"ice"
"dough"
21

22. EXAMPLE OF CHANGE
Grand Master Flash and The Furious Five‟s “The
Message (1979):
“Broken glass everywhere/People pissin' on the
stairs, you know they just don't care/ I can't take the
smell, can't take the noise/Got no money to move out, I
guess I got no choice/”
Nicki Minaj‟s “Starships” (2011):
“Now everybody let me hear you say ray ray ray/Now
spend all your money cause today pay day/And if you're
a G, you a G-G-G/My name is Onika, you can call me
Nicki”
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23. CONCLUSION
The original meaning behind AAVE use in rap was
as an artistic form of vernacular resistance
Through the evolution of Hip Hop there has been an
erosion of this idea
The noticeable decrease in AAVE specific lexis has
aided the loss of Hip Hop‟s original identity
The change of themes has also reduced the
vernacular resistance as Hip Hop now aims to
appeal to the masses
23

24. THE EVOLUTION OF
AFRICAN AMERICAN
VERNACULAR
ENGLISH (AAVE) USE
IN HIP-HOP
DANIEL EGGLESTON
YORK ST JOHN UNIVERSITY
24

25. REFERENCES
• Androutsopoulus, J (2003): Introduction. In: Hip Hop: Global Culture –
Local practices. Bielefeld: Transcript, p. 9-24.
• Cramer, J. & J. Hallett. 2010. „From Chi-Town to the Dirty-Dirty:
Regional Identity Markers in US Hip Hop‟. In Languages of Global Hip
Hop. 2010. London: Continuum International p.259
• Daly, S. (2005). Hip Hop happens. Available:
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2005/11/hiphop200511
. Last accessed 05/01/2014
• Howe, D (2005). Yoko Iyeiri, ed. Aspects of English Negation. John
Benjamins Publishing Company. p.174
• Le Page, R.B & Tabouret-Keller, A (1985). Creole-based approaches to
language and ethnicity. Cambridge Universty Press. p.181
• Labov, W. (2010). Unendangered Dialect, Endangered People: The Case
of African American Vernacular English. Transforming Anthropology.
18 (1), p.15-26.
• Lippi-Green, R. (1997) English with an accent: Language, ideology, and
discrimination in the United States. New York: Routledge. p.178
25

26. REFERENCES
• Rap, Kool G and Edwards, P (2009). How to Rap: The Art and Science
of the Hip-Hop MC p.63
• Rickford, J R. (1992). “Grammatical Variation and Divergence in
Vernacular Black English”. Internal and External Factors in Syntactic
Change The Hague: Mouton de Gruyter. p.262
• Rickford, J R. (1998). The Creole Origins of African American
Vernacular English: Evidence from copula absence. Available:
http://www.stanford.edu/~rickford/papers/CreoleOriginsOfAAVE.htm
l. Last accessed 8/01/2014.
• Rolling Stone. (2012). The 50 Greatest Hip Hop Songs Of All Time.
Available: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/the-50-greatest-
hip-hop-songs-of-all-time-20121205. Last accessed 10/12/13.
• Smitherman, G. (1997) 'The chain remains the same: communicative
practices in the Hip Hop nation'. Journal of Black Studies, 28, 1, p.4
• Westmoreland Bouchard, J (2009) “Portrait of a Contemporary Griot:
Orality in the Films and Novels of Ousmane Sembene,” Journal of
African Literature and Culture, No. 6., p.50
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