#HipHopForever Is More Than a Hashtag to Me
40 years in, Gen X grapples with how hip-hop has changed — and where it goes from here
“Hip-hop started out in the park.”
Amidst the distant harbor lights, a new narrative arose to explain an emerging culture in 1970s New York City. Cyphers on corners, beat-boxers at bus stops, and break-dancers on cardboard-covered sidewalks colored the city’s streets with neo-expressionist aesthetics. Throwing their hands in the air with little care, marginalized, forgotten Black and Latinx youth innovated an approach to surviving the concrete jungle without completely losing their heads. They rapped truth to power, danced unshackled to freedom’s rhythm, and painted powerful images of a utopian society free of racism, classism, and xenophobia. Though their revolutionary genius has since permeated every corner of the globe, it was in the alleyways, on the parks and basketball courts, and in the jam-packed community centers of New York City that these youth created one of the most important cultural phenomena that the world has ever known: hip-hop.
I was born in Queens, New York, in the spring of 1979, a few months before Sugar Hill Gang hit the Billboard Hot Soul Singles chart with their groundbreaking song “Rapper’s Delight”.* My parents were 20-somethings who liked to party…
