Hip-Hop is a culture; a culture built up on 4 things:
The later two make up what is known as Rap Music.
Hip Hop is a life style and a way one carries him/herself. Hip-Hop is a way of life with its roots in the Bronx of the 1970s. It is not a form of music, it is NOT “Happy Rap” it is not MTV commercialized urban black music, it is not MC Hammer or Vanilla Ice.
Rap is not evil, Rap is not always hardcore or hood music straight out of the ghetto talking about being “strapped with muh gat” drinking “forties” or gang banging. Jurassic Five & De La Soul are examples of good rap groups who celebrate life and self-knowledge and call themselves Rap.
The music that celebrates the oppression and glorifies ‘being a nigga’ is Gangsta Rap, which is a genre of rap, and unfortunately the one, which has become the symbol of all rap in America to both black and white people around the country and around the world.
Rap is a part of Hip-Hop. Hip-Hop was built up on rap.
They are not interchangeable; they are by-products of each other.