E-Tech: Multicultural Youth, A Hip Hop Culture

Youth Marketing Definitions:

Generation X: Born between 1963 – 1973.
Brought up on television, Atari 2600s and personal computers

MTV Generation: Born between 1974 – 1985.
MTV is an American Cable Television network based in NYC launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to show music videos. Today MTV broadcasts a variety of music, pop culture, youth culture, and reality television aimed at adolescents and young adults.

Generation Y: Born between 1970s – 1990s
Gen Y is the most ethnically diverse generation to date.
One out of every three Gen Y members is not Caucasian.
75%-90% have a computer at home.
50% have Internet access at home.
One out of nine of these high schoolers have a credit card co-signed by a parent.

Millennial Generation:
Multiculturalism- Kids grew up in the 90s and 00s with more daily interaction with other ethnicities and cultures than ever before.

Internet Generation:Born Between 1994 and 2001
Nearly 90% of 12-17 years olds in the US use the internet. For this generation the internet has replaced newspapers and TV weather reports. The internet is their preference for paying bills, registering for classes, booking airline and train tickets. The internet has shaped the way they work, relax, and even date.

New Silent Generation (Sometimes referred to as Gen Z):
Born 2000 to the Present.
The events of 9/11 will shape their lives
They are the generation of You Tube, My Space and FaceBook

The History of Hip Hop

Busy Bee Starski, DJ Hollywood, and DJ Afrika Bambaataa(founder of Zulu Nation in New York) are the three New York artists who have been credited for coining the term “hip hop”. This Genre began in the 70s with funky beats resonating at house parties, at basement parties, and the streets of New York.

One can trace the commercial history of rap back to 1979 when the Sugar Hill Gang produced the enormously successful song entitled “Rapper’s Delight”.

The raw beginnings of contemporary rap music can be traced to the Bronx in the mid 1970s. Rap Music was a way that urban black youth expressed themselves in a rhythmic form. Rap music along with graffiti and break dancing was the poetry of the street.

The Language
Street language is transmitted to the hip hop culture through rap music. One can hear a Chinese, Filipino, and Hispanic hip hopper using the same slang as the African American hip hopper. Street language has become a pidgin language of sorts. Even if hip hoppers have different first languages, they still can understand the slang of hip hop. Hence this culture is bound linguistically.

Cross-Over Appeal
The hip hop culture has permeated popular culture in an unprecedented fashion. Because of its enormous cross-over appeal, the hip hop culture is a potentially great unifier of diverse populations. Although created by black youth on the street, hip hop’s influence has become worldwide. Approximately 75% of the rap and hip hop audience is nonblack. More than 21.5 million, or 36 percent of all 10 to 24 year olds, belong to a non-White ethnic group making multicultural efforts an indispensable part of your youth marketing plan. It has gone from the fringes, to the suburbs, and into the corporate boardrooms. Indeed, McDonalds’s, Coca Cola, Sprite, Nike, and other corporate giants have capitalized on this phenomenon.

Hip Hop Notables
Russell Simmons, Hip Hop’s first millionaire entrepreneur who is chairman and CEO of Rush communications and Phat Farm clothing line.
Jay-Z, Former CEO of Def Jam Recordings and one of three founders of Roc-A-Fella Records and part owner of New Jersey Nets NBA. Recently teamed up with GM to create a sports utility vehicle named after him, the color Jay-Z- Blue. Has increased the urban profile for a variety of products Nike, Motorola, Belvedere, Versace, Chole, Range Rover, Rolex, and Mercedes- Benz.
P. Diddy, Presides over media empire that includes the record label Bad Boy Records and the clothing line Sean Jean.
Snoop Dogg, Nelly, 50 Cent, Kanye West, Eminem, and Pharrell Williams all have clothing lines.

Sources:
Wikipedia/Encyclopedia, Nas Insights A Demand Chain Proprietary Tool “Generation Y: The Millennials Ready or Not, Here They Come.”, Articles:Managing Millennials by Claire Raines 2002, RR Reese-Far West and Popular Culture Conference

For more information please contact Laura Stein, Senior Sales, Marketing Consultant at 866-333-8324 EXT: 110 or Laura@ethnictechnologies.com

About Ethnic Technologies, LLC:
Ethnic Technologies, LLC is the Global leader in Multicultural Marketing, Research, Data Enhancements and Analysis. The EthniCenter® from Ethnic Technologies is the result of over 40 years of continuous Multicultural, religious and language preference research. E-TECH’s Multicultural and Language Preference selects outperform the competition in accuracy and response rates time after time. Whether using the data for mailing, telemarketing, email campaigns or modeling the same excellent results have been achieved.

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