Critics point out the apparent hypocrisy of a pro-Black rapper like Kendrick Lamar headlining the Super Bowl half time show, since the NFL isn’t exactly an institution that’s known for its support of Black lives. So on this episode, we’re digging into the history of hip hop and how it’s been co-opted.
The legend goes that on a sweaty August night in 1973, there was a block party in the South Bronx where DJs had to hack a streetlight to power their equipment. Someone picked up a mic and spontaneously started rhyming over the the breakbeat, and that’s how hip-hop was born. In the five decades since that eureka — or, rather, that “yoooo” — moment, hip-hop music and culture has morphed into a multi-billion dollar industry, with billionaire artists, and global fandom. And as hip-hop evolves, its many contradictions become more obvious.
We dig into those contradictions – how hip-hop is “fight the power” but also advertises for the power; how rappers rhyme about injustice and inequality while also toting their grind and how they’ve come up or will come up; and how the conditions that created hip-hop are ones of American deprivation, but American institutions have helped the genre and culture thrive all over the world.
This episode was produced by Courtney Stein and Xavier Lopez, it was edited by Dalia Mortada and engineered by Maggie Luthar.
