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Every time ex-kids who reinvented rap get a little older, the new kids behind them turn it into something else.
Ten years ago, I wrote a piece on hip-hop nostalgia.
I was against it. Mainly I was mad that the global indie hip-hop underground—of which I had counted myself a die-hard member, to which I had given my ‘tween, teen and especially my early adult years to—was beginning to turn on itself. By 1999, it was hardly cutting-edge to be underground anymore, not when the best music was coming out of New Orleans and Virginia and, maybe even more insulting to hard-core heads, was selling by the trailer loads. Lauryn Hill was making the cover of Time, hip-hop was peaking in market value, and the true believers were losing their religion. Post-Pac and Biggie, everyone was listening to Wu-Tang Clan's "Can It All Be So Simple" a little too hard.
The '90s were over, and so this is what the younger me wrote, "As the indie hip-hop underground has become more ideological–that is, better able to declare what it dislikes, who's in and who's out–it has become less vital. It is understandable; the tension between underground props and massive success is healthy. But this generation, so deeply inspired by Q-Tip's rule No. 4080 (‘record company people are shady’), is dangerously close to its limits.” Was I a bad-ass, truth-telling critic? I was only months away from my own brief, doomed personal immersion in the millennial hip-hop bull-market (fortunes were not quite made). And then after the Towers fell and the market did, too, I went and wrote a hip-hop generation history.
Way to have it both ways, Chang!
Has hip-hop grown up? Duh. It always has because we always do. Every time the ex-kids who feel like they reinvented it get a little older, the new kids behind them start turning it into something else. How do the older ones react? They holler about "Hip-hop is dead"—the first time someone said hip-hop was dead was in 1979, the year "Rapper's Delight" came out. Meanwhile, the shorties have new clothes, new slang, new dances, new styles, new art, new music. Hip-hop still ages gracefully—we see you Erykah, Ghostface—and remains indecipherable to 30+somethings—whose knees never jerk the way they're supposed to. The rest is just a small, if hot, argument across a mini-generation gap.
Maybe age has softened your intrepid reporter, but I like that I can share the world with both Joe Conzo and the Bronx pioneers, and Nick Conway and his Yale students.
‘Cause all this, too, as a friend of mine likes to say, will pass.
Here's to the new day when we all, old and young, wake up and see some kids of color from somewhere we least expected doing something like it was the first time all over again, and we can only muster up the exasperated and intrigued reply, "What the hell was that?"
Jeff Chang is a 2008 Ford Fellow in Literature.
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Hip hop continues to stir controversy, provide insight, entertain us, move us, and disappoint us all at the same time. Just like any connoisseur, we break everything down to its very last compound, leaving it forever tainted or raising it up to a standard that makes it impossible to live up to. Hip hop will live on in the hearts and minds of all hip hop heads who continually promote this form of art and music, and reinvent it with any given chance. Gratitude to those who planted the seed. Hip hop has grown into a tree that has many branches, and weathers the seasons, with its leaves falling off from time to time. But eventually the leaves grow back, fuller than ever, providing us with shade to stay cool, food for thought, and resources to build upon. LONG LIVE HIP HOP, and may it age as gracefully as an ancient redwood tree. Word up!
KRS-One once said (before he went off the deep end) that hip-hop as a culture will eventually die but elements (such as rapping and beats) will continue in mainstream culture. I believe we reached that point a few years ago.
I find it funny as a grown man discussing hip-hop with those a few years younger explaining how Hip-Hop was like a religion at one point. Kids today don't get into heated debates over who can "spit" the most complex rhymes because it just isn't that serious. Maybe that's for the best. Kids shouldn't try to find the meaning of life from rappers anyway. The last mini-generation sure tried and failed.
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working in communications at the time makes you an expert correct? You really should stop thinking you know more than others. Yes hip hop is a culture, just as there is a blues culture, a rock culture, you may have a skill set in your job but as far as knowledge I beg to differ.
lol yeah ok. Mr. viacom.
Also, like I said before, rap didn't start with hip hop. Know what you're talking about before posting. I certainly do.
I don't need to check hip hop history. I was a fully grown woman in 1979, not a child or teen, working in communications. Y'all always come with that hip hop culture crap. what makes hip hop a culture? What was the Black culture before that? We had, R & B, Soul, Rock, Jazz, etc. Was there a soul culture? r& b culture? NO. some of the things you all claim in hip hop isn't new. the clothes are recycled and much of the music certainly is recycled from music of the 70s. Young people think it's new becasue they never heard it before.
Just like a few months ago, a young lady in her 20s tired to argue with me about the dance "Stanky leg" which is nothing but recyled version of the Funky Chicken. How can she argue with me about something she knew nothing about? she wasn't even born when we did the Funky Chicken.
If hip hop was a culture in the mid-70s (how old were you then?) give me some examples of hip hop culture and music in the mid-70s. No rhetoric. concrete examples.
Rap and hip hop are not genres. Hip hop is a lifestyle, a culture. Rap is one of the music styles that came from the culture. The hip hop movement began in the mid 70's so the music was there, it just was not getting airplay on a national scale. Hip hop in 1979? Yes.
It is you that may need to check Hip hop history. Make sure you know what you are talking about before you make comments please.
I don't know how old the author of this article is, but to my recollection (I was in my late 20s in 1979) there was no hip hop in 1979. So how was someone talking about Hip Hop was dead? We were still dancing to disco and DC GoGo music in 1979. He must mean 1989. Rap and Hip Hop are two different genres. I am a professional communicator by trade. Hip Hop certainly wasn't being played on the radio in 1979. "Modern" Rap had just hit the airwaves that year with Rapper's Delight. Actually, rapping began in the late 60s with people like Gil Scott Heron and the Last Poets. Later around 1970 Isaac Hayes began rapping on his albums ("By the Time I Get to Phoenix") and Barry White followed. Hip Hop in 1979? Not! Get your music history and time line straight young folks!