Happy Birthday Hip-Hop!

50 years young

On August 11, 1973, Cindy Campbell, “the first hip-hop promoter,” and her brother, DJ Kool Herc, threw a party in the recreation room of their apartment building on 1520 Sedgwick Ave. in the Bronx. This is the night 50 years ago, when hip-hop was born.

Flyer for Cindy Campbell & DJ Kool Herc’s Back to School Jam / Photo by Getty Images via BBC

Of course, there is so much more context to the run up of hip-hop’s origin story, but we look at this flyer with its precise date, place, and time as its spark. In the next 50 years, hip-hop would engulf the world in its blaze, ever inspiring art, music, language, culture, dance, film, fashion, politics, and social movements.

Rather than retell the story, here’s Kool Herc in his own words, from the Hip-Hop Evolution docuseries on Netflix.

To commemorate and celebrate this day, I’m sharing a few content recs, from quick dips to a deeper dives. (Feel free to add to this list in the comments below!)

To read!

• Most recently from The New York Times: “How Do You Tell the Story of 50 Years in Hip-Hop?” paired with the fun, interactive “50 Rappers, 50 Stories” as told in first-person by a wide-range of influential MCs.

• Is it canon? It’s canon! Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation by Jeff Chang

• Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to a Tribe Called Quest by Hanif Abdurraqib—“a love letter to a group, a sound, an era.” (But also go ahead and read everything Hanif’s ever written, all of it!)

To listen!

• NPR’s 5-minute feature, “50-years of hip-hop: A genre born from a backyard party”

• “Questlove’s Top 50 Hip-Hop Tracks of All Time” via Rolling Stone. This list is from 2012, so we’re missing the last 11 years, but go for it anyway. (Somebody thankfully made it into this Spotify playlist.)

• Podcasts: NPR’s Louder Than A Riot and Dissect by Cole Cuchna

• Your favorite hip-hop album(s), in its entirety, today of all days!

To go!

• Rolling Stone compiled a list of events across the country happening today/this month: “Celebrate Hip-Hop’s 50th Birthday with These Concerts, Exhibits, and Events”

• If you’re in the New York area, visit the temporary space for the Universal Hip Hop Museum, at the Bronx Terminal Market. (The museum is slated to open officially in 2024.) Also, go find the subway stations selling limited edition MetroCards featuring Rakim, Pop Smoke, LL Cool J, and Cam’ron. (Grab one for me, please!)

  

  MetroCards featuring Rakim, Pop Smoke, LL Cool J, and Cam’ron. Photo by MTA via TimeOut

• Report to the dance floor, immediately. (Maybe the dance floor is in your kitchen, the shower, wherever, just turn up the volume.)

To watch!

• This week, Netflix released the docuseries Ladies First: A Story of Women in Hip- Hop. I just started watching and I’m enjoying it.

• My local indie movie theater is hosting a repertory series of films celebrating hip-hop’s 50th in August, and maybe your local indie movie theater is doing that too? One of the films they’re showing is The Forty-Year-Old Version, which I wrote about in a previous discussion thread, and I can’t recommend it enough. The Criterion Channel also announced a film series commemorating 50 years of hip-hop, which you can read more about here via Pitchfork. (7-day free trial binge-fest anyone?)

• Your favorite music video! Or check out Rolling Stone’s list of “The 150 Greatest Hip-Hop Videos of All Time.” (Or beep beep, just skip to #1.)

To do!

Enough suggestions, jeez! But I hope—if the spirit moves you—that you take a moment to revisit a favorite memory inspired by hip-hop that holds meaning for you—like the first time you listened to a now to a beloved, formative album, screaming at a concert when the song you played most on your headphones finally became a live experience in a crowd full of equally obsessed fans, when the DJ saved your life, etc.

So much of an art form’s history is in the personal, specific experiences we cultivate when we discover, engage, and find inspiration in it. A lot this lives in our heads, untold, but still contributes to its importance and meaning, the cultural influences that connect us, and our collective joy. Hip-hop emerged from neighborhood parties thrown by young people who wanted to bring their communities together. So in that spirit of celebration, togetherness, and creativity, happy birthday, hip-hop.

Thanks for reading.

(p.s. It’s been awhile since I last posted, I know! I’m taking a bit of a summer vacation from writing this newsletter, but will be back on it more this fall. Thanks for sticking with me.)