“Hip hop just died this morning, and she’s dead. She’s dead.” – Nas
You remember when hip hop was born, right? Back in the early ’80s when dudes were breakdancing on the street corners, and the ladies would cheer them on. Or maybe it was when Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince started mixing it up in clubs around Philly, or when Grandmaster Flash threw out the rule book and changed up funk. I know. I know. It was even earlier than that, ’round about the time Marvin Gaye was wondering what was going on. I mean, soul has been around forever, so what did it mean when suddenly it got transformed into rhythm & blues, and then into hip hop and rap? It meant that now we have to try and understand a concept that hasn’t been around forever but has already left an indelible footprint on the musical landscape. Where would music be without artists like will.i.am, Wyclef Jean, Justin Timberlake, or A Tribe Called Quest? So, maybe you don’t remember the birth of hip hop, but I’m sure you recall when Nas said, quite prophetically, in 2006, that hip hop was dead. But was he right?
I’m going to start at the beginning, for me anyway, because I think that’s the only way we can measure beginnings when it comes to hip hop. On my block it was all about playing games in the street, and when you played games you listened to the radio. You know, the boombox was our best friend back in those days (and we were stuck buying tons of D batteries that proved it), blasting a wall of sound on the block. Kids from our block and the next one over would hang in the street blasting jams so loud it would vibrate car side windows (and even once it set off a car alarm — Mr. Jenkins wasn’t to happy about that one). No one could get too close to it because it would rattle your teeth, but it would have been almost sacrilegious to even consider turning it down. That thing only had one level, and that level was majorly loud. You just had to deal with it. We played hopscotch, dice, jump rope, and dozens. And, you see, the dozens went quite well with hip hop, so it became our street-time soundtrack.
If you don’t know what the dozens is, it’s a way of breaking another person down. Usually it involves pretty corny insults, like “Yo momma so fat that when she sits around the house she sits AROUND the house,” and “You so dumb you thought welfare was the answer to how you doin’.” Then it was like a bracket, with wise crackin’ going around to the beats coming out of the speakers. It was some kind of rhythmic slammin’ we had goin’ on, and we didn’t even realize it at the time. We were too busy being current, and enjoying ourselves, to understand that we were part of a cultural revolution. Hip hop was to the ’80s and to our lives growing up like rock and roll was to the ’50s and ’60s, putting a new spin on something that has no end.
But then the ’90s showed up, and we got older. Hip hop grew with us, spewing out artists by the dozens (pun intended), and it reached a saturation point, so that by the time 2000 showed up it was all but watered down and washed out by pop newbies, techno, emo, boy bands, girl groups, and the return of metal. Rap was still very much relevant, but by then it had been separated effectively from the rest of hip hop. Until the revival, and I’ll say it happened with artists like Kanye, John Legend, Cee Lo, Q-Tip, and Akon. These hip hop artists knew that to keep hip hop alive we had to embrace those other genres. They incorporated dance, rap, jazz, pop, and soul into the very essence of hip hop and instead of killing it, they helped it to breathe again.
So, to Nas, I say no, hip hop is not dead. Sure, we tried to kill it, like we try to kill any true form of music, but it rose from its own ashes and came alive again. It will always come alive again. And to all those fools who played the dozens on Broomall Street with me, you better check yoselves before you wreck yoselves. Nuff said.
Sam
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