“So, when did you fall in love with Hip Hop?” is a question that Sidney (Sanaa Lathan), a Hip Hop journalist, poses at the very beginning of the 2002 film, Brown Sugar. And, consequently, everyone else who watched the movie and fell in love with it asked themselves the same thing. For most, falling in love with Hip Hop is synonymous with a memory: that first all-night skating rink, that first house party, that first crush, or that favorite older cousin or relative introducing you to your first cassette tape or fly Hip Hop artist rockin’ a Kangol, a thick chain, MCM pouch, and maybe even a gold tooth. Hip Hop was not just music; it was something more. It was that go-to when you needed a pick-me-up, when your confidence needed a boost, when you wanted to feel connected to something bigger. It was that feel-good vibe that you felt after watching Kid ‘N Play dance in House Party. It was the force that helped you decide what you would wear to the basketball game (high tops or low tops?), that picture of Salt-N-Pepa that you stared at before going to the hair salon to get that asymmetrical haircut and hairdo, and watching a video of LL Cool J, before deciding how big you wanted your chain to be when you went to purchase one from the swap meet. Hip-Hop had the fellas rockin’ high-top fades, and had the ladies showstoppin’ in oversized Nefertiti hoops and box braids.
Hip Hop was that beautiful disruptor that showcased the beauty and creativity of inner-city folks and shifted the world. But, along the way, Hip Hop, with its influence to elevate consciousness and empower marginalized communities, has become a commercial machine. An industry that now pushes out messaging that doesn’t necessarily align with the origins of Hip-Hop. In many instances, the perpetual use of the “n-word,” the degradation of women, the promotion of hypersexuality, and the subtle promotion of broken families and homes have crept in. But Hip Hop has always been bigger and better than that. And, yes, we still have musical pillars like Questlove, Erykah Badu, Outkast, Mos Def, J.Cole, Nas, Talib Kweli, LL Cool J, and many other discerning voices in Hip-Hop, to help recalibrate the musical atmosphere when things get too dark. But new artists have a responsibility to study and pick up the baton.
Ane Roseborough, M.A. American History, the founder of On-E Records and sits on the New Jersey Amistad Commission, shared with ESSENCE, “The history of hip hop and the NJ Amistad Curriculum are both about telling the whole story and empowerment. The Black experience in this country should always be included in narratives regarding American history. Songs on many occasions serve as the soundtrack to what is happening on both a local and national scale. “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five, [which has been added to the Library of Congress,] was literally telling the world the true story of how life was in the inner city. It was powerful storytelling, and this is just one example of a song that could be utilized in the classroom when discussing urban issues during the ’80s. Hip Hop is a great way to engage students and educators when sharing history[when the music is not diluted for material gain]. For example, Hamilton on Broadway has been extremely successful with this method of historical expression, and numerous educators incorporate hip hop into their pedagogical practices.”
She further shared, “I started my career at CBS Records in 1990, then had stints at Island Records, RCA Records, and Bad Boy Entertainment. When I founded On-E Records in 2021, I decided not to release music that could be perceived as degrading men, women, or children. I looked at the history of Black owned record labels from the past, and decided to follow that route.”
November is Hip Hop History Month, and below are several titles that examine the legacy of Hip Hop from the perspective of educators, historians, and cultural archivists who carry a deep respect for this art form.
Rapper’s Deluxe: How Hip-Hop Made The World by Todd Boyd
In Rapper’s Deluxe, Todd Boyd offers more than a chronicle of beats and rhymes; he presents Hip Hop as a form of cultural anthropology, with its own coded language that Black communities have carved out to express their survival, style, and resistance. The book takes a journey that begins with the Bronx block parties of the 1970s and how it has evolved into global fashion, movies, the sports world, the political arena, art, and beyond. Boyd shows how Hip Hop did not simply enter “the world,” but reinvented the world according to its own terms: remixed traditions of Black speech and style, rewrote the map of what is center vs. margin, and recast the tools of cultural production (turntables, fashion, vernacular) into sites of assertion and belonging. For readers who love to be visually stimulated, this book uses unique fonts, graphics, and photographs to really bring the text alive. Rapper’s Deluxe also highlights Sugar Hill Records, Run-D.M.C., Rakim, Slick Rick, Public Enemy, MC Hammer, KRS-One, and many others. Rapper’s Deluxe is a visual manifesto, weaving images and essays to argue that hip-hop is a major axis of modern Black identity: urban, diasporic, digital, global. It is a testimony to the fact that when Black people create sound, language, style, and community, they become the blueprint.
Afrocentric Style: A Celebration of Blackness and Identity in Pop Culture by Shirley Neal
AfroCentric Style is not a coffee-table fluff book; it’s a cultural archive and written testimony of how Blackness is the foundation of Hip Hop. It’s written in such a way that readers will further understand the aesthetics and politics of their everyday fashion expression, and how fashion, hairstyles, and even social-media trends are a part of a larger cultural lineage. This book includes photographs and captions that archive cultural identity, and to understand the world of pop culture, one must understand the role that authentic Black culture plays in cultivating it. In AfroCentric Style, Neal showcases Blackness as a poignant, cultural locus: where style, image, identity, history, and popular culture intersect. The book includes more than 100 color and archival black-and-white photographs, and the pages of the book delineate how Black expression permeates our everyday world. This book shares that how Black people dress is not just fashion, it’s an indication of our very essence. Afrocentric Style serves as a visual map in which the visual language of the streets, churches, salons, block parties, boardrooms, and Instagram feeds can be traced back to legacies of artistry, resistance, and reinvention. This book carries a strong theme of identity in motion and how heritage expresses itself through our innate use of style.
Street Scriptures: Between God and Hip-Hop by Alejandro Nava
In Street Scriptures, Alejandro Nava does more than trace the lineage of hip-hop; he digs deep into the soul of the music: the spiritual, the prophetic, the sacred, and the street-wise and shares how the rhythms and rhymes of Black urban life are in constant conversation with questions of power, divinity, resistance, and hope. Street Scriptures shares that in most marginalized spaces like block parties, cyphers, graffiti-tagged walls, church revivals, and gospel performances, these are theological spaces and can be considered “street theology”. Street Scriptures highlights themes and messaging that there’s a sacredness in everyday experience, understanding that performance is also a form of preaching, and that soundscapes can be sites for revelation.
Fresh Fly Fabulous: 50 Years of Hip Hop Style by Elizabeth Way and Elena Romero
In Fresh Fly Fabulous, Way and Romero…