“…The time may have come when the issue of race could benefit from a period of ‘benign neglect.’” – Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan to President Richard Nixon in a 1970 memo
Many Hip Hop historians agree that—if a date had to be put on it—the genre was born on August 11, 1973 in the rec room at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the South Bronx. That night, 18-year-old Clive Campbell—aka DJ Kool Herc—stood over two turntables at the first “Back to School Jam,” spinning records while his friends breakdanced and rapped over the mic, effectively birthing a culture. Since that Bronx party, hip hop’s spread’s gone global, adapting to the various regions across the world in a way only pop culture can. But what’s often overlooked is the reason Herc threw that party: to raise money for his sister’s school clothes.
In other words, the first “Back to School Jam” was a hustle—a money-making venture that eventually grew into so much more. In an interview with Rebecca Laurence of BBC Culture, hip hop historian Jeff Chang says, “Hip hop did not start as a political movement. There was no manifesto. The kids who started it were simply trying to find ways to pass the time, they were trying to have fun. But they grew up under the politics of abandonment and because of this, their pastimes contained the seeds for a kind of mass cultural renewal.” [Laurence] At the core of rap’s identity is a philosophy of hustling that serves as the main thematic connection between the many subgenres the movement spawned.
The History of Hustlin’
Check out the disambiguation page for “hustler” on Wikipedia, and you’ll find links to related terms like “con man,” “drug dealer,” “male prostitute,” “pimp,” and “general businessman.” The connection point that makes it plausible to put a businessman in the same category as a male prostitute is each of these positions has the same goal of making money. The associations show that the notion of hustling exists in all sectors of society, with roots going back to before modern hip hop was even a thought.
After the Civil War and the abolishment of slavery, securing regular work was tough for Black Americans, and remained so straight through the Civil Rights Movement. In a society where money is king, getting paid by any means necessary became a personal slogan for those dissatisfied with the living standards minorities were expected to accept. This period coincided with an influx of illicit substances into the United States, opening new avenues for many otherwise impoverished individuals to make ends meet outside the confines of the legal system (as frequently described in ‘80s and ‘90s Gangsta Rap). In “A Short History of Hustlin’” for NPR, Todd Boyd—Professor of Critical Studies at University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts—says:
“The concept of hustling is simply an update on the American dream for a new generation. This is all just another twist on the concept of the hard working, pull yourself up by your own bootstraps mentality that has existed in America since its inception. It just so happens that this time the impetus for such a concept is rooted in the ‘hood and the purveyors of such thinking are former drug dealers turned rappers.” [NPR]
Take the South Bronx, for instance, where Herc’s Back to School Jam took place. During the fifties and sixties, New York’s “urban renewal” projects—like the Cross Bronx Expressway—forced many residents to relocate. Those relocation destinations were based on economic value and skin color, as historian Jeff Chang points out in his essay collection Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation: “[…] in the New York area’s construction explosion of the 1950s and’60s, middle-class whites got sprawling, prefab, white picket-fence, whites-only Levittown suburbs, while working-class strugglers and strivers got nine or more monotonous slabs of housing rising out of isolating, desolate, soon-to-be crime-ridden ‘parks.’”[Chang]
By the seventies, manufacturing jobs in the South Bronx were down over half a million, with youth unemployment at 60 percent. A New York Times headline from November 4, 1972, claimed “Bronx Rate of Poverty is Highest.” Add to this a growing divide between minorities and the white people who didn’t leave for greener pastures—and therefore still lived in the neighborhood—and we see the emotional sparks that would turn into physical flames and consume the Bronx throughout the seventies. As Chang continues: “When African-American, Afro-Caribbean and Latino families moved into formerly Jewish, Irish and Italian neighborhoods, white youth gangs preyed on the new arrivals in school beatdowns and running street battles. The black and brown youths formed gangs, first in self-defense then sometimes for power, sometimes for Kicks.” [Chang]
Hip Hop’s rise wasn’t limited to New York though,
just as resistance to shifting demographics wasn’t limited to the South Bronx. A 1998 study by Florida International University confirmed that 1960s urban renewal projects—specifically I-95—uprooted what had been known as Miami’s Black culture center in Overtown. A 2010 NPR article by Greg Allen titled “Paying a Local Price For I-95’s Global Promise” revisited I-95’s effects, concluding that “twenty square blocks of Overtown were taken for one interchange alone, displacing some 10,000 people. When I-95 was completed in the early 1960s, a thriving community of 40,000 had been reduced to one quarter of its size.” [Allen] As a result of the construction, many Overtown residents without the means to move to other sections of Miami headed a couple miles north to Liberty City. This coincided with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which led to many of the middle class black residents currently living in Liberty City taking their money and moving to areas they could not previously live in. The withdrawal of middle class funds combined with overcrowding and lack of economic development to sink Liberty City’s value. An article titled “The History of Liberty Square” on The Official Website of Greater Miami & Miami Beach states:
“As a result [of I-95’s construction], much of [Overtown’s] low-income, elderly and welfare-dependent citizens migrated to Liberty City. Additionally, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 afforded blacks more freedom than ever before. The affluent and middle income African American families who established Liberty City were now leaving in droves to more desirable communities in North Miami, like Miami Lakes and Miami Gardens. This left Liberty City and Liberty Square in dire straits in the post-Civil Rights Act 1960s and ‘70s.”
Due to neglect, poverty, and other reasons including numerous allegations of police brutality, Central Miami’s Black community grew outraged over their living conditions. This outrage mirrored the South Bronx’s, leading to a series of riots in Miami throughout the fifties, sixties, and seventies that culminated in the 1980 Arthur McDuffie riot, one of the costliest in U.S. history.
The South Bronx and Miami are just two chapters in a much larger story though. A wave of construction projects throughout the country during this time created similar situations in almost every major U.S. city. An article for History.com titled “How Interstate Highways Gutted Communities—and Reinforced Segregation” states:
“According to estimates from the U.S. Department of Transportation, more than 475,000 households and more than a million people were displaced nationwide because of the federal roadway construction […] The neighborhoods destroyed and families uprooted by highway projects were Black and poor […] Hardly a major city with a significant minority population went unscathed by the legislation: New York, Miami, Chicago, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, Oakland, Nashville, Baltimore, Atlanta—and more.” [Evans]
Living under these circumstances, those with visions of a better life looked for opportunities in the margins. Malcolm X his 1965 autobiography says it plainly when he states that “almost everyone in Harlem needed some kind of hustle to survive…” Many of Miami’s Hip Hop pioneers—artists like Uncle Luke and Trick Daddy—were born and raised in Liberty City and started their careers independently. Like their New York counterparts, these artists found a hustle in Hip Hop, bypassing the status quo and the sense of abandonment their communities felt. The notion that everybody had a hustle meant whether an individual was good or not at their hustle was a matter of performance. Swagger became a commodity; the power to talk your way into a better economic situation became a genuine talent. The abilities of a good salesman can translate to many industries, from used cars to real estate to drug dealing to music.
Hip Hop’s Birthright
Even though Herc’s South Bronx party is credited as the birthplace of Hip Hop, the genre’s origins are obviously more complex. Funk, for example, is hip hop’s spiritual brother. In the seventies and eighties, artists like Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash used elements of the ‘70s funk boom to hone their style by combining record sampling with technological innovations. Similar connections exist between Hip Hop and blues. Blues songs often relate the narrator’s trials and tribulations, connecting the listener to the characters’ plights through a narrative structure. By the same token, hip hop is made up of voices relating their common experiences through narrative. In the Mixdown article “From Blues to Hip Hop: The Pursuit of Freedom Through Music,” Eddy Lim states:
“The blues originated from enslaved African-Americans in the 16th century, when the genre gave a voice to their common experiences in a period where the majority of society was indoctrinated to both deny and eliminate their self-expression […] hip hop was conceived similarly to blues, arriving during a period of turmoil and oppression when, despite a subjective upgrade in legal status, large proportions of African-Americans were still economically disconnected from the majority of Americans.”” [Lim]
Another lesser-discussed connection to hip hop is punk rock, a genre that also emerged in New York City. In the ‘70s, both hip hop and punk rock’s mainstream popularity growth led to overlap. Both genres were driven by youths and both embraced counterculture. As Zach Gay states in his Lemon Wire article “Historic Alliances Between Hip Hop and Punk”: “Punk and Hip-Hop are rooted in many of the same things. The same city (NYC), the same working-class conditions of poverty, the same do-it-yourself ethic…” In 1981, Blondie’s hit song “Rapture” released and featured Debbie Harry rapping, in the process shouting out hip hop legends Fab Five Freddy and Grandmaster Flash. As a reply, Grandmaster Flash sampled Debbie Harry’s shout out in his 1981 single “The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel.”
Both tracks were successful.
From Dicky to Kendrick
The elements that created Hip Hop allow it to be flexible. As the genre exploded in popularity, it grew so big so fast that it eventually split under its own weight. The actual number of Hip Hop subgenres varies depending on who you ask. The Scene Noise article “Hip Hop Subgenres & How To Tell Them Apart” lists nine. A LiveAbout.com article “The Definitive Guide to Hip-Hop Subgenres” lists fifteen. An article for Landr Blog proposes “22 Rap Genres That Define the 50 Year Evolution of Rhyme and Beat.” Another for eMastered.com, “Types of Rap: Exploring the Genres of Rap Music,” lists twenty-seven subgenres. There’s old school, drill, jazz rap, cloud rap, gangsta rap, boom bap, crunk, chopped and screwed, emo rap, hyphy, conscious, r&b rap, trap music, g-funk, dirty south, lofi, rap rock…the list goes on. Hip hop subgenres have grown so much that it’s sometimes hard to see the similarities between them. Listen to a conscious hip hop song and follow it with some drill and you’re teleported from one part of the world to another, with little in common between the two locations. Connecting them under the umbrella of Hip Hop requires exploring thematic harmonies, such as hustling.
In the song “Professional Rapper,” actor/rapper Lil Dicky works with Snoop Dogg to craft a narrative in which Dicky meets Snoop to apply for the fictional office position of “Professional Rapper.” The song features Snoop’s typical bravado while highlighting Lil Dicky’s lyrical skills and unconventional background: Dicky is a white Jewish man from a stable home, characteristics at odds with the historical median demographic of hip hop artists. At one point, a back and forth between Snoop and Dicky about the latter’s background touches on what that background means for Dicky’s credibility as a hip hop artist:
“[Dicky:] I was born out of Philly grew up in a little silly old town called Cheltenham
It’s in the suburbs, upper-middle wealth around.
[Snoop:] So real shit you ain’t never had to struggle for much.
[Dicky:] I wouldn’t say it like that, we just had a different kind of trap.
[Snoop:] Elaborate.
[Dicky:] Well I ain’t never had a tool, but I had to be the man at school.
Like I was doing shit I had to do, so when I finished undergrad, I’m cool.
And I can get whatever job I wanted.
[Snoop:] But the job you wanted wasn’t all that bumping.
[Dicky:] Yeah, and I saw it quick all the flaws that be coming,
When you grow up like that.
Know you been racing them rats, you ain’t been making them raps.”
If you look at Burd—pale-skinned, shaggy-haired, kind of low-key—he doesn’t really fit the typical image of an old-school Hip Hop artist. Yet Lil Dicky has managed to make his mark on the genre with his talent and his focus on the hustle, showing that even if you didn’t grow up in the stereotypical environment of hip hop’s origins, you can still be part of the culture by—number one—having talent; number two: staying true to who you are; and number three—understanding and embracing hip hop’s hustling roots.
Connecting hip hop with hustling helps explain some of the genre’s conventions, but it also raises some questions. Considering Hip Hop is so closely tied to the everyday struggles of working-class folks, it’s logical to wonder if the struggle is essential to Hip Hop’s existence. If we were to somehow magically fix all of society’s problems, would Hip Hop and similar genres simply vanish? Or is struggle so much a part of human nature—certain death being the ultimate struggle—that The Hustle is here to stay?
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