Hip-hop turned 50 in 2023, putting the arts movement firmly in middle age and presenting us all with an opportunity to reflect on its massive cultural impact, from South Central to South Korea, the South Bronx to South Africa.
When the UCLA Hip Hop Initiative recently hosted Public Enemy’s Chuck D as our inaugural artist-in-residence, “Professor Chuck” defined hip-hop as “the next iteration of Black creativity for survival.” He linked hip-hop to centuries of Black people creating music, language and culture in order to survive the most brutal contexts and circumstances. In this period of continued economic inequality, political chaos and social upheaval, hip-hop culture represents the next chapter of that struggle for collective liberation.
I have seen this first-hand. In my work on hip-hop culture, I’ve traveled across four continents and a dozen U.S. cities to document how artists are building worlds and offering visions for youth movements of freedom, sovereignty and self-determination.
In Cape Town, for centuries, Dutch colonizers and their descendants claimed to be a “pure white race” (Afrikaners) and to speak a “pure white language” (Afrikaans). But hip-hop artists like Emile YX?, Jitsvinger and Blaq Pearl use their music to reclaim Afrikaans as a Creole language long spoken by slaves and the local Khoi population, naming it Afrikaaps to highlight the language’s African origins and its rootedness in the Cape (Kaap). Part of an emerging Afrikaaps language movement, they present their art as “the theater of pre-colonial imagination,” as Jitsvinger rhymes, challenging old assumptions. These artists work tirelessly to raise awareness about life on the Cape Flats, racially and economically oppressed areas of the city where “Black” and “Coloured” communities were forcibly relocated under the apartheid regime.
In Palestine, the artists of DAM have been recognized internationally for pushing back against the Israeli occupation and ongoing war against the Palestinian people. Their music questions framing Palestinians as “terrorists” (“Meen Erhabi?” or “Who Is the Terrorist?”) and covers a range of issues from racism to women’s rights to everyday struggles with poverty.
DAM was influenced by U.S. rap legends like Tupac Shakur. Group member Mahmood Jreri explains Tupac’s influence on him: “I was affected by him and from his images, ’cause I only saw the images. I didn’t understand English back then, but I saw the neighborhood. I saw the poverty. I saw that he talked about political problems. I felt connected to that music because he talked to me.”
This hip-hop resistance is happening in nearly every major U.S. urban center as well. Artists and activists have joined a reinvigorated movement of racial justice working toward the abolition of prisons and policing, reparations for victims of police violence and finding creative, community-rooted solutions that invest in the futures of communities of color.
In Pittsburgh, Jasiri X and the 1Hood family speak up for what they call “the invisibles,” those Black lives vanished by persistent police killings in that city. Describing what he called the “glaring contradiction of being Black in America,” Jasiri X explained the impetus behind his song, “America’s Most Livable City”:
“When you come to Pittsburgh, if you ever come, when you get off in the airport it says, ‘“’America’s most livable city’ … (but the U.S. Census reports that we’re) poorer than Detroit, poorer than Cleveland, poorer than Chicago. The poorest inner-city Black people live in Pittsburgh. ‘Most livable’ for who?”
Beyond making music, Jasiri X works directly with youth, providing space for them to create their own music videos and teaching them to decipher mainstream media, to become aware of contemporary politics and to apply a critical eye to their city’s history.
In Chicago, Jacinda Bullie, Jaquanda Villegas and Lady Sol, founders of the community-rooted hip-hop organization Kuumba Lynx, joined other activists to make their city the first to offer compensation, and opportunities to collectively heal, to victims of police torture. The effort, which came to be known as the “Reparations Ordinance,” condemned violence committed by former Chicago Police Superintendent Jon Burge, convicted in 2008 of obstruction of justice and perjury relating to his torturing hundreds of innocent men — the majority of whom were Black — between 1972 and 1991. Chicago created a $5.5 million city fund and mandated a curriculum on police torture in its public schools to teach children about the police department’s racist legacy. As the Kuumba Lynx artists rhyme, communities need “protection from police who hinder respiratory airways.”
Los Angeles artists like Medusa, “the Godmother of West Coast Hip-Hop,” and Ill Camille work to provide opportunities for youth and women in technology, entertainment and entrepreneurship, collaborating with organizations that seek to level the playing field for Black and brown youth in Leimert Park — a historic hub for Black arts and culture — and beyond. Hip-hop culture is growing a queer, feminist, disability justice movement, too, thanks to artists like Megan Thee Stallion, Doechii and others. Krip-Hop Nation uplifts the Black disability movement, reinventing what hip-hop looks like through critiques of the genre’s ableism and the broader construct of “Black ableism.” Historically, the Krip-Hop movement has linked up with queer artists in the San Francisco Bay Area’s Homohop movement for conversations about creating spaces for marginalized voices within the culture.
This is hip-hop at its best, teaching us that freedom isn’t just a project for some people, it’s a project for the entire family.
As the 50th anniversary conversations have begun to die down, there are serious questions to consider. If hip-hop is “a multibillion-dollar industry,” how are Black communities benefitting? If hip-hop is global, what’s happening to the local communities on the ground that created this culture out of the rubble of post-industrial America? Are these symbolic celebrations just “illusions of oasis,” as Black Star rhymed 25 years ago? Are Black people and other people of color truly free, not just from shady record industry practices but in everyday life?
Artists create music that is shaped by sociopolitical context. So how can we think about hip-hop’s current context: the ecology of Black and Brown political power (or powerlessness, some would argue), the state of our communities’ civic and spiritual leadership, and importantly, our own roles and responsibilities in supporting the art form and the youth who create it?
I’m certain that hip-hop will rise to the occasion, as Black people in the U.S. have always done.
H. Samy Alim is an anthropologist at UCLA and faculty director of the UCLA Hip Hop Initiative. Recently, he co-edited the book “Freedom Moves: Hip Hop Knowledges, Pedagogies, and Futures” (with Jeff Chang and Casey Wong, 2023) and co-directed the film “In the Hour of Chaos: Hip Hop Art and Activism with Public Enemy’s Chuck D” (with Tabia Shawel and Samuel Lamontagne, 2024).