Rhythm, rap, revolution: Celebrating 50 years of hip-hop

On a hot night in August 1973, teenagers in the Bronx, New York, gathered at the Sedgwick Avenue building for a back-to-school party. These were dark years for the predominantly black and Hispanic residents of the South Bronx, left behind by white exodus to the suburbs and largely abandoned by city officials in the midst of a swelling financial crisis. Unemployment has reached 30%, drug use is soaring, and crime is rampant. Across the borough lies the rubble of burnt-down buildings. Richard Nixon’s war on drugs is in full swing with echoes of a racial crusade, and the South Bronx is his one of the bloodiest battlefields.

Amidst the plague, these children flocked to parties. The host’s brother, the Jamaican-born New Yorker, better known as DJ Kool Herc, spins records behind decks and pumps reggae, funk and soul out of his vast array of speakers. He has perfected a new technique in his last year and this is his chance to show it off in front of an audience. He knew audiences who loved dancing to drum breaks on funk and soul records, and he figured out how to separate and repeat them. This is the breakbeat, the basic element of hip-hop and rap music. And this party will be remembered as the birthplace of the Cultural Revolution known as hip-hop.

Half a century later, hip-hop has become a cornerstone of global pop culture, dominating the charts from Jamaica to Jalandhar. Its breakbeats, fashion, competitive verbal poetry, or rap traditions can be seen and heard in Dubai’s glitzy superclubs, Johannesburg’s back alleys and protest venues from New Delhi to Paris. A mean little counterculture reigns supreme. And while there are many factors that have helped its rise (American cultural supremacy, globalization, the Internet), much of its achievement lies in the movement’s enduring central narrative: in the midst of despair. attributed to the radical hopes of

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In 1973, Herc’s turntable heroics and the sound of “Cheers” to his friend Coke La Rock’s Jamaican-inspired record heralded the early days of rap and sent the crowd into a frenzy. These new innovations spread like wildfire through the South Bronx block parties. Other crews, led by DJs such as Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash, showed up and competed against each other for volume, party attendance and turntablist spectacle.

These early block parties were a way for disenfranchised Latino and black youth in the Bronx to find distraction, but the urban disregard of the era was the seed of a sociocultural and political renaissance. was meant to be

The very existence of the parties was an act of treason. I didn’t even care about the DJ because it was hard to get permission. They didn’t have generators, so they broke into lampposts and spliced ​​wires to steal electricity. Police had largely abandoned the Bronx, but gang members acted as security if there was a problem. . When lightning struck the entire city in 1977, causing riots and vandalism that cut out power for more than a day, the future hip-hop DJ was barging into electronics stores to grab whatever mixers and turntables he could get. rice field.

By the time the Sugarhill Gang’s Rapper’s Delight hit the Billboard charts in 1979 and hip-hop entered the commercial mainstream, early rebellion and petty criminal activity had already given way to a new socio-political consciousness. was evolving. A former gang member such as Bambaataa, DJ organized youngsters into hip-hop crews such as He Universal Zulu Nation, offering creative alternatives to his gang life. Dreams of community organizing for Black Panther militants, brutally crushed by police, also permeated the movement.

As rappers moved to the forefront and shared the limelight with DJs, they began incorporating these new socio-political ideas into narrative form.

In 1982, Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five released Message, the original text of socially conscious hip-hop music.

…all the kids are smoking freezers, they think it’s cheaper

If you just got a job, you learned to be a street sweeper

Or dance to the beat and shuffle your feet

Put on your shirt and tie and run with the creeps

It’s all about money and it’s no fun

Gotta cheat in this country of milk and honey

The song’s lyrics chronicle the insults and brutality of life in America’s decrepit inner city, ending with the protagonist’s preordained execution. A witness and chronicler of racism and poverty in America, the song inspired his intellectuals on the streets of rebels like KRS-One and Public Enemy, blending rap music with revolutionary rhetoric. I was. You can also draw a straight line from the fatalistic nihilism of stories destined to end with certain deaths to the violent social realism of Gangsta his rap.

By the early 1990s, these two interrelated hip-hop strains had achieved massive commercial success, turning street revolutionaries and lumpen poets into global stars. The genre has spread its wings across the Americas, spawning rap scenes on both coasts and in the Deep South. Artists like Tupac Shakur, Notorious BIG, Big L, De La Soul, Common, Wu-Tang Clan and many others have spotlighted the darkest corners of the country and made themselves rich with it.

So we live like caged beasts

Waiting for the day to unleash my anger

Still me until they kill me

I love it when they’re afraid of me…

Loud when you hear

It’s Tupac from Holler If Ya Hear Me (1992).

While the record sold quickly, conservative lawmakers created a moral panic over the lyrics. Police departments even formed special hip-hop teams to deal with the “rap threat.” The so-called Rap Unit of the New York Police Department, which only came into existence in 2004, monitors rappers, nightclubs and organizers, sending agents to concerts on surveillance missions and drafting dossier about artists.

Some of this is motivated by racial disdain for black and brown voices in rap, while others are these artists and where they come from, tumbling out of closets, singing and dancing about the crimes they visit. Some were motivated by the fact that they represented the skeleton of American capitalism. they.

Commercial success eventually dulls the edges of mainstream rap music, sharpening its rough, radical edges and replacing them with ideas of excess and ambitious consumption (though Kendrick Lamar, Nas, Moore Artists like Mother and Little Sims continue to raise the conscious rap flag). today). By the time the Recording Academy released his Grammy Award for Best Rap Album in 1996, it had become an established part of the mainstream, with early winners Jay-Z, Puff Daddy and Eminem embracing a more materialistic and accessible A simpler version of Gangsta completed his rap. Preferred by music industry gatekeepers.

But as globalization spread America’s cultural influence to every corner of the world, rap jumped on board, and countries around the world began to associate hip-hop with their own social, cultural, and political revolutions.

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If Chuck D of Public Enemy proclaimed in 1989 that “Rap music is the CNN of the ghetto,” in 2023 it will be the Twitter feed of the world’s ghettoized youth. From street protests in Delhi to election rallies in Nigeria to refugee camps in Syria, rap has become the soundtrack to protest, activism and revolution.

There are many theories as to why rap and hip-hop have become so widely accepted around the world. Originating from one of the most diverse places in the world, hip-hop took liberally from the musical traditions of immigrants, particularly the African and Latino diasporas, and found resonance with audiences in those regions.

Sampling made it easy to replace some or all of these elements with local flavors, allowing the music to remain identifiable as hip-hop. I didn’t need a band or expensive instruments. I just needed a way to use a microphone and words.

But when you talk to the young boys and girls of hip-hop cyphers in Dharavi and Kurla, Mumbai, they all come back to the origin story of the genre: its self-branding as a ‘silent voice’. They may have been drawn to Eminem’s shocking badmouthing or Jay-Z’s billionaire swag, but they stay because of its underlying principles. Further evidence is in communities where rap and hip-hop first took root in other countries. The immigrant banlieu of Paris, the slums of Rio de Janeiro and the sprawling slums of Dharavi.

As the artists adopted their sound and style, they also adopted an anti-authority stance, focusing on community and self-organization. I stayed in and spread my knowledge.

Since late August, hip-hop artists have been arrested for their role in the Arab Spring. In Tunis, Egypt, Libya, Syria and Yemen, rappers have taken part in protests, performed in the streets and helped mobilize crowds.

In Palestine and Kashmir, rappers like MC Gaza, MC Kash and Ahmer rap about life in military zones. Sri Lankan-British, her MIA sings about the civil war, and her rap name is reminiscent of her cousin who went missing in her country of origin. Moroccan Gnawi and Ugandan rapper and politician Bobi Wein talk about corruption. In Iran, Toomaj Salehi faces the death penalty for singing against religious authoritarianism. Phyo Zeya Thaw, a Myanmar rapper-turned-politician, was executed by the military junta for supporting democratization. Her Arivu from Chennai went viral with her anti-caste song.

Today’s hip-hop contains many elements, each with its own significant history, story, and future. But for me, and for millions of fans around the world, it’s this belligerent band that holds most of hip-hop’s unrealized potential and promise, and one of the most relatable. I’m here.

From extravaganzas at this year’s Grammy Awards to blockbuster films and documentary series from studios and streaming platforms, we’ll see many events celebrating hip-hop’s golden anniversary throughout the year. The most touching tribute to me came from an unexpected source. It’s a news clip about rebels seeking democracy in Myanmar.

In an unidentified rebel camp, hundreds of young men are being trained to fight the junta. During interviews and footage of the atrocities, a small segment showed them taking a short break to relax. I spit out the lyrics. I think Herc and his teens on Sedgwick Avenue will recognize the equally reluctant freedom fighters as the new beacon of radical hope in the midst of despair. . And above all, it’s hip-hop’s enduring legacy.