Hip hop started as party music and amalgamation of the liveest parts of folk and soul breakbeats.

The sounds were upbeat, something to dance to, whether you were on the block, in the club

or in the crib. Hip hop was a celebration, an exercise in escapism and aspiration. It was

enthusiastic and electric, elevating the ordinary to extraordinary. But in those early days, the music

wasn't truly reflecting the wholeness of life as it was being lived by most of the people who

were creating it, and certainly not the life of those who were listening to it. Not in a place

like the gritty, hungry South Bronx where hip hop was born. And if the decade that birthed hip hop

came to a close, those contradictions between blissful burgeoning hip hop and blistering reality

were growing more stark. It was parts of the Bronx where literally it was four square blocks,

and if you didn't know better, if you didn't know what was going on, you would think that it was

a war zone. You would think that you and the Ukraine or something like somebody, it literally

looked like somebody dropped a bomb in certain areas in the Bronx. Gang activity all over the place,

drugs all over the place. Homeless people heating themselves with fire bins and just no city lights.

I mean, it's just astonishing what was allowed to happen. There was no real nurturing from outside

entities to kind of fix us every once in a while. Somebody came there to take a picture. You know,

I remember when Reagan came to the Bronx with these were photo ops, right?

By the time California's right wing governor, Ronald Reagan came to the South Bronx when a

presidential campaign stopped in 1980 using the backdrop of rubble as a dig at the incumbent

Democratic president, Jimmy Carter, the desperate pleas of the people there, rung loud and clear.

After decades of right flight, disinvestment, fires, and abject neglect, the South Bronx was at a

breaking point. Then in 1982, one song took the realities of life broken by the system and put it to

music. It started with a new sound. The beat is slowed down but still kind of funky, still electric,

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