Disintegration of Local Culture

Hip hop is international and -at the same time- incredibly local. In America there are no less than dozen different hip hop hubs each with their own flavors: Seattle, Bay Area, Houston, Atlanta, New Orleans, Miami, Myrtle Beach, Chicago, Minneapolis, Boston, Philadelphia, are just the ones that I can think of off the top of my head. And then for cities like LA and New York, you can break down hip hop into neighborhoods and city blocks...each style overlapping and competing with each other as there's a difference between Compton and Inglewood and South Central...just like Queens, Brooklyn, and Bronx have their own vibe. The local hip hop culture is driven by black youths and it's strange because you don't see the same movement with white people. It seems like they have surrendered their culture to social media. It's interesting dynamic that social media unified the world but destroys the local roots because there is an impetus to compete with the world rather than establish dominion over one's block, neighborhood, and city. I think hip hop culture has been resistant to this trend because hip hop depends upon sampling the past and so young artists already need an education in their local culture to have success. You can't really be a great rapper with sense of history or geography. Half of the sport of rapping is claiming turf and showing your roots.