One thing that Chuck D addressed while in Akron a couple of days ago is the absence of historical context when it comes to talking about hip-hop.  The monicker to describe what is now known as hip-hop was born in 1976 but the spirit that allowed all of its element to come together as an American art form (as American, if not more so, than jazz, the blues or Appalachian folk music) comes from the whole of the experience of Africans and African-Americans.  

     Rap music itself is simply people speaking rhytmically over music.  You can sing over music, you can talk over music.  Rap is in between. Hell, James Brown used to do all three. Hip-hop is the wider cultural perspective surrounding it.  It's form of dress, lexicon, MCing (which is a combination of rapping and showmanship -- MC means "master of ceremonies" after all), DJing, graffiti art and breakdancing.  It's the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a social group which makes it a......culture.

     While some elements within the culture have different emphases, one thing that it's not is monolithic.  Balance is necessary in portrayal of what hip-hop culture is.  But, America has never been good at giving black people balanced coverage.  Black people, especially men, are often characterized as unassailably good (a la Michael Jordan) or unspeakably bad (a la Mike Tyson).  In reality,  all of us are somewhere in the middle. We may be at a different spot in the continuum day-to-day.

     Which leads us to Dumn Anus (nee Don Imus)...Don Imus used language that predates hip-hop (people used ho, which is merely a short form of whore and nappy-headed way before hip-hop) to describe a group of women (primarily black women) in an extremely base and disrespectful way.  Just because some rappers use these same terms to disrespect women doesn't mean that there is a relationship between hip-hop and an old ignorant man insulting a group of classy student-athletes.

Source:http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/culture