New hip hop this week1/23/2024 ![]() ![]() On one hand, there’s elaborate displays of wealth and desire, but there’s also a focus on abject poverty and class struggle. There’s a duality present across the genre about what types of homes are depicted. “When you pass Exit 9, I want to let you know that’s where Killer Mike grew up, that’s where our mayor grew up,” he said. On his album “Michael,” released this summer, “EXIT 9” refers to the turn off the interstate to Atlanta’s Martin Luther King Jr. Handwritten text from Killer Mike.Īnd the idea of holding onto home is still just as present in his music. Photograph by Wulf Bradley for The New York Times. And that yard was where I pretended thousands of people were watching me.” “Standing on that porch - that was my first stage. ![]() “That’s the house where I fell in love with gospel and soul and funk,” Mike said. Killer Mike, who is almost synonymous with Atlanta through his music and advocacy, grew up in his grandmother’s house - a 1,000 square foot home she bought at the age of 20, in the predominantly Black neighborhood of Collier Heights. Dre and Grandmaster Flash, they’ll talk about their mom’s, dad's, uncle’s, aunt’s record collections, that they sometimes were forbidden to touch, but they did anyway,” said Murray Forman, a media and screen studies professor at Northeastern University and the author of “The ‘Hood Comes First: Race, Space and Place in Rap and Hip-Hop.” “The familial record collection is a super important aspect of the formation of hip-hop DJs.” Many artists’ early notions surrounding the art form were informed by the records in their family members’ collections. “I’d always noticed that the Bay Area never gets its shine. “I was responsible for putting our city on the map - no ifs, ands or buts,” said E-40, who is 56. ![]() The cartography continued west through songs like “Tell Me When to Go” and “Yay Area,” in which E-40 helped give the Bay Area its cool in the 2000s. and Tupac serving as the ill-fated faces of the beef. Perhaps no rivalry was more intense than the East Coast versus the West Coast in the 1990s, with Notorious B.I.G. The battle “started this tradition of shouting out where you’re from,” said Bakari Kitwana, the founder of the lecture series “Rap Sessions” and the author of “The Hip-Hop Generation.” “As hip-hop starts to expand beyond New York City, then it becomes almost a competition to be the first one from your city to put your city on the hip-hop map.” “I found myself representing the Bronx,” KRS-One said in the documentary. The song was recorded in just two hours - studio time was $25 an hour, which was at the time a “lot of money,” KRS-One, a member of the group, said in the 2003 documentary “Beef.” Seemingly as quickly as it was made, “South Bronx” became a hit. In direct response, Boogie Down Productions released their anthem, “South Bronx,” which went, “So you think that hip-hop had its start out in Queensbridge? / If you pop that junk up in the Bronx you might not live / ‘cause you’re in,” going into the chorus, “South Bronx, the South-South Bronx.” On the surface, there’s the flash - fancy cars, designer watches - but it always goes back home.Ī number of influential rappers - including Nas and Roxanne Shante - came out of the Queensbridge housing projects in Queens, New York. Since its start in a Bronx apartment building 50 years ago, hip-hop has transformed the music industry, fashion, politics, the English language and more. “And you want to do it with the braggadocio and pride that you think it deserves.” “There’s an importance to home for hip-hop artists because you want your point of view, you want your neighborhood, your community, your city represented,” said Killer Mike, the rapper and Atlanta-based activist, in an interview. “I met this girl when I was 3 years old / And what I loved most she had so much soul,” Kanye West says of his hometown, Chicago, in “Homecoming.” With “Hello Brooklyn 2.0,” Jay-Z pays tribute to his borough: “Like a mama you birthed me / Brooklyn you nursed me.” Dre boasts in his 1999 hit “Still D.R.E.”, featuring Snoop Dogg.Ī city becomes a living being, a guardian. “7-1-3, 2-8-1, 8-3-2,” Megan Thee Stallion shouts out in the chorus of “Last Week in H Tx.” “Still got love for the streets, reppin’ 2-1-3,” Dr. From the beginning, the lyrics and culture of hip-hop have been entangled with home, in every sense of the word - the physical, emotional, visceral, aspirational and existential.Īn area code becomes an identity.
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