OK, hear me out. Does anybody else find it strange that suddenly Hip-Hop (let alone any mention of rap) has a singular birthday we're all supposed to celebrate now?
Music is evolutionary, not a singular creation event. Which is why we have no such dates for jazz, blues, raggae, rock, etc.
Look, all props to DK Kool Herc and his two-turntable party and all. And all props to the Bronx. But the minute you do that, you erase King Stitt deejaying in the late 1960s. You erase the Chicago Soul Train Dancers of 1970. You erase Cornbread, who was doing modern graffiti in Philadelphia in the 1960s - years before the Bronx even knew about it.
So why now? Why all of a sudden does an entire musical genre have to have a singular birthday?
At first I thought this was more a PR campaign for people wanting to take credit for it... as if Elvis' estate claimed he invented rock & roll with Little Richard and Chuck Berry conveniently being dead.
Then I understood the real motivation is a reflection of the state of our world: this is just another perverse manifestation of humans unable to cope with imprecision, uncertainty, and needing the illusion of control in a very chaotic world.
It's the same factors that made them claim during Covid that no one will ever go back to the office ever again, or even eat publicly in restaurants again -- forcing a comfort of certainty where none existed nor belonged. It's the same motivations behind slow motion replays and VARs in sports, as if to bring them closer to some universal, God-like truth that doesn't really exist.
We live in anxious times. And in anxious times, people clutch to certainties. This whole 50 Years since the birth of Hip-Hop thing is a complete social anxiety grab. Some people just can't handle multiple influences at different times, places, and dates influencing each other. They can't sleep at night without a definitive answer they can put to bed and forget.
Music is evolutionary, not a singular creation event. Which is why we have no such dates for jazz, blues, raggae, rock, etc.
Look, all props to DK Kool Herc and his two-turntable party and all. And all props to the Bronx. But the minute you do that, you erase King Stitt deejaying in the late 1960s. You erase the Chicago Soul Train Dancers of 1970. You erase Cornbread, who was doing modern graffiti in Philadelphia in the 1960s - years before the Bronx even knew about it.
So why now? Why all of a sudden does an entire musical genre have to have a singular birthday?
At first I thought this was more a PR campaign for people wanting to take credit for it... as if Elvis' estate claimed he invented rock & roll with Little Richard and Chuck Berry conveniently being dead.
Then I understood the real motivation is a reflection of the state of our world: this is just another perverse manifestation of humans unable to cope with imprecision, uncertainty, and needing the illusion of control in a very chaotic world.
It's the same factors that made them claim during Covid that no one will ever go back to the office ever again, or even eat publicly in restaurants again -- forcing a comfort of certainty where none existed nor belonged. It's the same motivations behind slow motion replays and VARs in sports, as if to bring them closer to some universal, God-like truth that doesn't really exist.
We live in anxious times. And in anxious times, people clutch to certainties. This whole 50 Years since the birth of Hip-Hop thing is a complete social anxiety grab. Some people just can't handle multiple influences at different times, places, and dates influencing each other. They can't sleep at night without a definitive answer they can put to bed and forget.
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