My extensive research on hip-hop, its past, and subsequent commercialization, harbored unique findings and enlightened me on various aspects of the music genre that I did not know prior. To start off, this narrative piqued my interest greatly and I enjoyed finding out the various details of a music genre I so avidly enjoy to this very day. A lot of the history I uncovered was news to me. I did know that this music genre had origins in New York City but I never knew the exact borough it originated from, the South Bronx. I also did not know the fact that one man, Robert Moses, and his idea of constructing the Cross-Bronx Expressway led to somewhat of a butterfly effect, which influenced the future of a largely African-American culture. This Cross-Bronx Expressway cut right through the borough and caused the displacement of over 60,000 Bronx residents. Further research led me to the understanding that Robert Moses was a white man and only focused on the wealth of Manhattan. He only cared about how business interests could benefit, and not how these displaced black people were impacted, largely characteristic of how minorities were treated at this point in our history. These displaced individuals were forced into poor living conditions and poverty with the rise of low wages and mass unemployment. This turned many people to a life of criminal activity amid the rise of gangs, as there was really no other way for people to support their families. It was intriguing to find out that the youngest generations of these relocated families were actually searching for creative outlets of expression that would allow them to release their built-up anger and aggression. Out of these ashes is where hip-hop was born, and this past is something I did not know before my investigation and groundwork.  As my curiosity progressed and I was further involved in the work, certain fascinating discoveries were unveiled to me. For a long time, I had known that hip-hop had changed throughout the years, in content and lyrics, but I did not know the reasons underlying these very changes. Coming to find out that predatory record labels bought out smaller, black-owned ones because they saw the money-making potential sparked a turning point in my understanding, as I truly began to grasp the reasons for the change seen in the content of hip-hop music, such as the increased homogenization of it to represent more hyper-masculine and hyper-violent themes. I even related this fact to modern-day as the perpetuation of these hyper-masculine/hyper-violent motifs along with the modern influence of materialism and consumer culture can be seen in Future, Gunna, and Young Thug’s 2022 song, pushin P. Overall, it was interesting to find out that the commercialization of hip-hop has had both positive and negative effects on the culture, and while many artists have reaped success from it, the original message of the music genre was lost in the crossfire. It is going to take both consumers and artists to fight back against some aspects of modernization and maintain glimpses of the great power that hip-hop once was.