50 years of hip-hop

and thoughts on the music of malaise

This summer marked the 50^th anniversary of hip-hop. It’s telling that the three musical genres entwined with Generation X— hip-hop, punk/new wave, and grunge—all tell stories of people who are disaffected from the mainstream. This isn’t unusual in the world of pop music, of course, but I think there’s some specific angst that affected the first generation that probably won’t be as well off as its parents.

When I was in high school, the new wave was still very new, and the local rock radio station in Youngstown, Ohio played very little of it despite Stiv Bators being local and Devo being from nearby Akron. We found a radio station in Cleveland, WDMT, that was trying to carve out a space for itself against the WMMS behemoth by playing what the programmers called Rhythmic Contemporary: a mix of new wave and rap. Somehow we got the idea that Grandmaster Flash was from Cleveland, which makes no sense unless you listen to the lyrics of The Message. Northeast Ohio was deep in industrial ruins, and I think we all wondered how we would keep from going under.

At my brother’s funeral, I heard countless stories of him quoting Ol’ Dirty Bastard saying that Wu-Tang was for the children, interrupting Shawn Colvin at the Grammys long before Kanye interrupted Taylor Swift at the MTV Music Video Awards. (I love Taylor Swift, but her songs are personal, not about feeling cut off from the world at large.) ODB wanted the children to learn about what their world was really like.

Right now, the Number One song on the Billboard Hot 100 is “Rich Men North of Richmond”, which is an angry song about the state of the US economy. People work hard and don’t get ahead. We all know that. The singer, Oliver Anthony, has made it clear that this song is not about Democrats or Republicans; it’s about a system that has failed too many people, and I think it’s a worthy successor to The Message. Too bad music doesn’t change the world.