Getting lit for hip-hop's 50th birthday

It's Been a Minute

NPR

News Commentary, Society & Culture, News, Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality

4.6 • 8.8K Ratings

🗓️ 11 August 2023

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On August 11, 1973, hip-hop was born at a house party in the Bronx. 50 years later the genre has been reshaped in the image of cities and regions around the world. Brittany Luse and NPR Music's Sheldon Pearce take a tour of those regions and look at where hip-hop might go in the next 50 years.

Plus, Brittany is joined by KQED's Pendarvis Harshaw to do a deep dive into a hip-hop scene from the Bay Area known as hyphy. It was loud. It was silly. But underneath all that partying, the hyphy movement also helped a community grieve.

To see more of Pendarvis Harshaw's coverage you can check out KQED's year-long exploration of Bay Area hip-hop history. To dig into NPR's series on the regional sounds of hip-hop, you can check out All Rap is Local.

You can email us at [email protected].

This episode has been updated to include a listener question and the credits.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Happy hip-hop, 50th.
0:02.0	Middle-aged for rap.
0:04.0	It didn't seem like we would get here for a while, but we made it, we made it.
0:09.0	The AARP card comes this year, you know.
0:16.0	Hey, hey, you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR. I'm Brittany Loose.
0:20.0	On August 11th, 1973, hip-hop was born at a house party in the Bronx.
0:26.0	Since then, it's been remade in the image of cities all around the world.
0:30.0	To celebrate, I'm taking us on a road trip through the regions that have shaped and transformed what hip-hop is today.
0:37.0	And no one knows the regionalism of hip-hop quite like Sheldon Pierce from NPR Music.
0:43.0	Each little community that has assimilated rap into its culture has then gone on to turn that thing inside out and give it its own personal flavor.
0:55.0	We'll come back to Sheldon later on, but for me, the first time I really understood regionalism was when I first stepped onto the campus of Howard University.
1:06.0	Hanging out on the yard, I couldn't get over just how different everyone styled themselves depending on where they were from.
1:13.0	There were the Cally girls and their silk presses despite the humidity.
1:18.0	The PG County girls and their poetic justice braids.
1:23.0	Kids from Atlanta and Detroit Gucci down to the socks.
1:27.0	Grab the camera, grab the camera!
1:29.0	And New York boys and Chris Denham fresh white teas and sneakers.
1:35.0	The gangsters in DC were wearing sweaters tied around their waist.
1:39.0	Like, you know what I'm saying?
1:41.0	And I was like, dang, I wish I could do that in the town because it gets cold when the fog comes in.
1:45.0	But the gangsters don't do that in the Bay Area.
1:49.0	That's Pandarvist Harsha.
	...

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