Gorilla Zoe: “Hip Hop Is Pop”

Atlanta, Georgia rapper Gorilla Zoe recently caught up with VladTV to breakdown how he believes Hip Hop influences, and in some ways controls, pop music and culture.

During the conversation, the 2007 XXL Freshman outlined the impact Hip Hop currently has on popular culture, most notably its influence when it comes to fashion and lingo.

“The truth is, urban Rap is pop music,” Gorilla Zoe says. “It’s a young culture but the culture is so explosive. It’s past pop. The culture of Hip Hop is pop. It controls almost [how] the whole world of a certain age dresses, period. It changes the way people talk in their dialect and their language, especially now with social media. If somebody come with a new word or a new phrase, it splashes from the ghetto, from the hood, from the streets and the next day somebody living in Beverly Hills is saying the same word. Back in the day it would take ten years for that word to spread or that dance or that movement. But now, you can actually see the impact of our culture and it’s pop. They’re like, ‘It’s not pop, it’s urban.’ Like, ‘Nah, Rap is pop. Hip Hop is pop.’ It’s popular, that’s what pop is. I don’t care where you at in the music business or in entertainment, Hip Hop is influencing it like 80 [to] 90 percent.”