Hip-Hop Is 50 and It’s Having a Midlife Crisis

Into It: A Vulture Podcast with Sam Sanders

Vulture & New York Magazine

Entertainment News, Tv & Film, News, Society & Culture

4.7 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 26 September 2023

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

So much of the coverage of hip-hop’s 50th birthday has been fawning. Congratulatory. Devoid of meaningful critique. All that despite the fact that the art form has been soaked through with misogyny and homophobia from day one. So how do you celebrate hip-hop’s accomplishments while asking it to do better? Sam talks to journalist Kiana Fitzgerald, author of Ode to Hip-Hop, on how the women of hip-hop are leading the way today… but at what cost? And he catches up with hip-hop scholar Jason England, assistant professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University, who argues hip-hop’s midlife crisis has left an empty shell of what the genre once was. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Support for the show comes from Into the Mix, a Ben and Jerry's podcast about joy and
0:06.0	justice produced with Vox Creative.
0:09.7	Thousands of Afghans were forced to flee their homes and fear for their lives when the Taliban
0:14.4	took control of Afghanistan in 2021.
0:17.9	The UK government pled to take in 20,000 of them as refugees, but in the first year, only
0:24.0	22 Afghans have been approved for asylum in the UK.
0:28.5	So what happened?
0:29.5	And what does this mean for the tens of thousands of people left behind?
0:33.5	Hear that story on the latest episode of Into the Mix.
0:39.1	Hey, you're listening to Into it from Vulture in New York magazine.
0:45.1	I'm your host Sam Sanders, and this episode, Hip Hop, at 50.
0:50.7	So I am sure you know by now that Hip Hop is officially 50 years old this year.
0:57.0	And it seems everyone is celebrating.
0:59.3	There was a big Hip Hop tribute at the VMAs earlier this month.
1:09.6	The New York Times did this massive interactive package this year, where they interviewed 50
1:15.5	iconic rappers, Run DMC and Nas and Snoop Dogg.
1:19.6	They had a Hip Hop anniversary concert at Yankee Stadium.
1:23.3	And all of this celebration and coverage, it has been mostly incredibly positive,
1:37.4	fawning, rose-colored glasses, which has made me wonder, are they seen what I'm seeing?
1:44.7	Because to me, right now, Hip Hop is in a bad place.
1:49.2	I've talked about this on the show before.
1:52.3	Hip Hop's not well.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Vulture & New York Magazine, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Vulture & New York Magazine and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.