Hip hop

Hip hop started as party music, an amalgamation of the livelest parts of funk 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 are creating it, and certainly not the life of those who are listening

to it, not in a place

like the gritty, hungry South Bronx where hip hop was born. And as 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 in 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. Um, drugs all over the place. Homeless people

heating themselves with, you know, fire bins and just no city lights. I mean, it's just, it's

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, but these were photo ops, right?

One job for my boat.

Reagan!

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