News Analysis India

Tag: Bronx

  • Hip-hop and justice: Culture carries the spirit of protest, 50 years and counting

    By Associated Press

    NEW YORK: In the early days of hip-hop, plugging turntables into a light post and converting an outdoor basketball court into a discotheque may have seemed like a simple invitation to party.

    A closer look scene revealed the truth: Hip-hop was a response to social and economic injustice in disregarded neighborhoods, a showcase of joy, ingenuity and innovation despite a lack of wealth and resources.

    The music emanating from the DJ’s equipment might tell partiers to “move your feet,” and in the very next set, tell them to “fight the power.”

    Hip-hop has been an integral part of social and racial justice movements. It’s also been scrutinized by law enforcement and political groups because of their belief that hip-hop and its artists’ encourage violent criminality.

    Whether a warning, a demand or an affirmation, hip-hop culture and, especially, rap music have been mediums for holding the powerful accountable, for delivering lyrical indictments against systemic injustice. Hip-hop can champion the underserved and reclaim space, like tagged walls or impromptu breakdancing battles on a transit platform.

    Because it can threaten the concentration of power, certain forces have demonized the culture, said Willie “Prophet” Stiggers, co-founder and chair of the Black Music Action Coalition, a group of artists, lawyers, managers and producers unified against systemic racism in the music industry and in society.

    “Of course they want to weaponize it,” Stigger said. “The narrative can’t be that this genius cultural expression, that is the greatest cultural force that we have globally, grew out of a disenfranchised people.”

    Many trace hip-hop’s birth to a back-to-school party at a Bronx apartment building 50 years ago this month. And since its birth, emceeing, beatboxing, deejaying, and graffiti have done much more than entertain legions of fans around the world and generate billions of dollars in commerce – hip-hop’s four elements carry the spirit of resistance and free expression as a comfort to the afflicted and affliction to those who are too comfortable.

    __“Got to give us what we want/Gotta give us what we need/Our freedom of speech is freedom or death/We got to fight the powers that be!” – Public Enemy, “Fight the Power,” 1990

    __Social and religious conservatives of all stripes have long seen hip-hop as a threat to so-called traditional values, peace and order – but their attempts at stifling the culture have only propelled it to worldwide acclaim and grown its influence over public debates and democracy.

    However, racial justice activists and free speech advocates see the ongoing persecution of rappers as a proxy war primarily waged against Black and Latino men who are the early pioneers of the culture. And for hip-hop artists who live under repressive regimes throughout the world, “dropping bars” to air one’s grievances against the government can mean time behind bars or worse.

    “Black history is under attack, Black culture is under attack, rap music is under attack,” said US Rep. Hank Johnson, a Democratic sponsor of federal legislation that would protect artists from having their lyrics and creative expression used against them in court.

    The Georgia congressman spoke in support of the legislation to the thousands who attended a Rolling Loud hip-hop music festival in Miami late last month. Johnson and fellow Democrat Rep. Jamaal Bowman of New York sponsored the Restoring Artistic Protection Act, or RAP Act, to ensure that lyrics aren’t the only evidence supporting a criminal case. Similar legislation in a handful of states would require prosecutors to prove a defendant’s lyrics aren’t figurative, exaggeration or out-right fictional.

    A study by University of Georgia law professor Andrea Dennis, who co-authored the 2019 book “Rap on Trial: Race, Lyrics and Guilt in America,” found roughly 500 criminal trial cases dating to the late 1980s in which rap lyrics were successfully used as evidence. Dennis and other advocates believe the cases, brought against mostly Black defendants, have led to unjust incarceration.

    Some have pointed to the criminal street gang conspiracy case, brought under Georgia’s criminal racketeering law, against Atlanta rapper Young Thug and over two dozen purported affiliates of the rapper’s Young Stoner Life record label. In 2022, Fulton County prosecutors included lyrics from the rapper, referencing drugs and violence, as evidence of an “overt act in furtherance of a (gang) conspiracy.”

    Young Thug, whose legal name is Jeffrey Williams, co-wrote the Childish Gambino hit “This is America,” which is a commentary on violence and systemic racism in the US The song made history in 2019 as the first hip-hop track to win the song of the year Grammy – and it was parodied by global artists to speak to corruption and injustice in Nigeria, Malaysia and Australia.

    __“Cops give a damn about a negro/Pull the trigger, kill a n——-, he’s a hero.” – Tupac, “Changes,” 1992

    __As hip-hop and rap music grew into a force in American culture, its pioneers used it as a medium to speak to their personal realities. In 1982, in the song “The Message,” Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five decried stark poverty and disinvestment that seemed especially concentrated in Black communities. A decade later, Tupac Shakur railed against police brutality in the song “Changes.”

    In 2016, following the fatal police shootings of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, rap music and protest were almost inextricably linked. It was rare then to attend a demonstration and not hear Kendrick Lamar’s 2015 song “Alright,” a celebration of triumph over adversity in the face of systemic oppression and injustice.

    “All Black creative expression is political because Black life is political,” said Timothy Welbeck, the director of the Center for Anti-Racism at Temple University in Philadelphia.

    Welbeck, who is also an independent rap artist and teaches courses on hip-hop in Temple’s Africology and African American Studies Department, said rap music’s accessibility is what makes the genre so popular and so impactful.

    “It makes sense that social movements would gravitate towards hip-hop, as a culture and rap music as a medium of expression,” he said. “And it also makes sense that rappers would position themselves in these movements, in part, because rappers are coming out of the communities that are experiencing the need to protest.”

    In an Associated Press interview earlier this year, Chuck D of Public Enemy said he sees hip-hop as a catalyst for the Black Lives Matter movement.

    “(BLM is) a collective where people felt the same way,” he said. “It spoke politically to the injustice regarding George Floyd and was a spark that connected around the world. Hip-hop has done the same thing. Hip-hop ties human beings for their similarities and knocks the differences to the side. It’s a movement.”

    Following worldwide protests over Floyd’s 2020 murder by police in Minneapolis, his brother Terrence Floyd joined an effort to fuse rap, gospel and spirituals on an album of protest songs. A former church drummer, Floyd said he wanted to use the music to affect change in his brother’s name.

    __“I’m at the preacher’s door/My knees gettin’ weak and my gun might blow/But we gon’ be alright.” – Kendrick Lamar, “Alright,” 2015

    __And then there’s hip-hop’s global influence on protest, resistance and political dissent. From the Arab Spring and the Palestinian freedom fight to feminism and class struggles, rap music is a popular medium for calls to action, as well as call-outs of despots and colonizers.

    Rap music videos produced by artists in African, Europe, Asia and South America often include beatboxers, breakdancers, graffiti and other elements of hip-hop.

    In 2016, on a visit to Vietnam during a historic tour of Asia, former President Barack Obama answered questions about human rights and free expression across the continent. One question came from Suboi, a female rapper known as Vietnam’s “Queen of Hip-Hop” who said she struggled against the Vietnamese stereotype that rap music isn’t a proper expression for Asian women.

    “Let’s be honest, sometimes art is dangerous and that’s why governments sometimes get nervous about art,” Obama said. “But one of the things that I truly believe is that if you try to suppress the arts, then I think you’re suppressing the deepest dreams and aspirations of a people.”

    Civil rights leader Rev. Al Sharpton, who turned 18 as hip-hop really took off out of his native New York, said rap music fueled the movement that has shaped much of his public life. At age 68, he believes hip-hop culture tilled the ground for the election of the first Black American president in 2008.

    “I didn’t come out of the ‘We Shall Overcome’ generation,” Sharpton said. “I came out of Fight the Power, Public Enemy.”

    He added: “Hip-hop took the chains off us and said, ‘No, we’re gonna say it our way, anyway.’ … It was that freedom. It was that raw, non-watered down kind of expression. We understood that rage and anger, even though we expressed it in different ways.”

    NEW YORK: In the early days of hip-hop, plugging turntables into a light post and converting an outdoor basketball court into a discotheque may have seemed like a simple invitation to party.

    A closer look scene revealed the truth: Hip-hop was a response to social and economic injustice in disregarded neighborhoods, a showcase of joy, ingenuity and innovation despite a lack of wealth and resources.

    The music emanating from the DJ’s equipment might tell partiers to “move your feet,” and in the very next set, tell them to “fight the power.”googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-8052921-2’); });

    Hip-hop has been an integral part of social and racial justice movements. It’s also been scrutinized by law enforcement and political groups because of their belief that hip-hop and its artists’ encourage violent criminality.

    Whether a warning, a demand or an affirmation, hip-hop culture and, especially, rap music have been mediums for holding the powerful accountable, for delivering lyrical indictments against systemic injustice. Hip-hop can champion the underserved and reclaim space, like tagged walls or impromptu breakdancing battles on a transit platform.

    Because it can threaten the concentration of power, certain forces have demonized the culture, said Willie “Prophet” Stiggers, co-founder and chair of the Black Music Action Coalition, a group of artists, lawyers, managers and producers unified against systemic racism in the music industry and in society.

    “Of course they want to weaponize it,” Stigger said. “The narrative can’t be that this genius cultural expression, that is the greatest cultural force that we have globally, grew out of a disenfranchised people.”

    Many trace hip-hop’s birth to a back-to-school party at a Bronx apartment building 50 years ago this month. And since its birth, emceeing, beatboxing, deejaying, and graffiti have done much more than entertain legions of fans around the world and generate billions of dollars in commerce – hip-hop’s four elements carry the spirit of resistance and free expression as a comfort to the afflicted and affliction to those who are too comfortable.

    __
    “Got to give us what we want/Gotta give us what we need/Our freedom of speech is freedom or death/We got to fight the powers that be!” – Public Enemy, “Fight the Power,” 1990

    __
    Social and religious conservatives of all stripes have long seen hip-hop as a threat to so-called traditional values, peace and order – but their attempts at stifling the culture have only propelled it to worldwide acclaim and grown its influence over public debates and democracy.

    However, racial justice activists and free speech advocates see the ongoing persecution of rappers as a proxy war primarily waged against Black and Latino men who are the early pioneers of the culture. And for hip-hop artists who live under repressive regimes throughout the world, “dropping bars” to air one’s grievances against the government can mean time behind bars or worse.

    “Black history is under attack, Black culture is under attack, rap music is under attack,” said US Rep. Hank Johnson, a Democratic sponsor of federal legislation that would protect artists from having their lyrics and creative expression used against them in court.

    The Georgia congressman spoke in support of the legislation to the thousands who attended a Rolling Loud hip-hop music festival in Miami late last month. Johnson and fellow Democrat Rep. Jamaal Bowman of New York sponsored the Restoring Artistic Protection Act, or RAP Act, to ensure that lyrics aren’t the only evidence supporting a criminal case. Similar legislation in a handful of states would require prosecutors to prove a defendant’s lyrics aren’t figurative, exaggeration or out-right fictional.

    A study by University of Georgia law professor Andrea Dennis, who co-authored the 2019 book “Rap on Trial: Race, Lyrics and Guilt in America,” found roughly 500 criminal trial cases dating to the late 1980s in which rap lyrics were successfully used as evidence. Dennis and other advocates believe the cases, brought against mostly Black defendants, have led to unjust incarceration.

    Some have pointed to the criminal street gang conspiracy case, brought under Georgia’s criminal racketeering law, against Atlanta rapper Young Thug and over two dozen purported affiliates of the rapper’s Young Stoner Life record label. In 2022, Fulton County prosecutors included lyrics from the rapper, referencing drugs and violence, as evidence of an “overt act in furtherance of a (gang) conspiracy.”

    Young Thug, whose legal name is Jeffrey Williams, co-wrote the Childish Gambino hit “This is America,” which is a commentary on violence and systemic racism in the US The song made history in 2019 as the first hip-hop track to win the song of the year Grammy – and it was parodied by global artists to speak to corruption and injustice in Nigeria, Malaysia and Australia.

    __
    “Cops give a damn about a negro/Pull the trigger, kill a n——-, he’s a hero.” – Tupac, “Changes,” 1992

    __
    As hip-hop and rap music grew into a force in American culture, its pioneers used it as a medium to speak to their personal realities. In 1982, in the song “The Message,” Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five decried stark poverty and disinvestment that seemed especially concentrated in Black communities. A decade later, Tupac Shakur railed against police brutality in the song “Changes.”

    In 2016, following the fatal police shootings of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, rap music and protest were almost inextricably linked. It was rare then to attend a demonstration and not hear Kendrick Lamar’s 2015 song “Alright,” a celebration of triumph over adversity in the face of systemic oppression and injustice.

    “All Black creative expression is political because Black life is political,” said Timothy Welbeck, the director of the Center for Anti-Racism at Temple University in Philadelphia.

    Welbeck, who is also an independent rap artist and teaches courses on hip-hop in Temple’s Africology and African American Studies Department, said rap music’s accessibility is what makes the genre so popular and so impactful.

    “It makes sense that social movements would gravitate towards hip-hop, as a culture and rap music as a medium of expression,” he said. “And it also makes sense that rappers would position themselves in these movements, in part, because rappers are coming out of the communities that are experiencing the need to protest.”

    In an Associated Press interview earlier this year, Chuck D of Public Enemy said he sees hip-hop as a catalyst for the Black Lives Matter movement.

    “(BLM is) a collective where people felt the same way,” he said. “It spoke politically to the injustice regarding George Floyd and was a spark that connected around the world. Hip-hop has done the same thing. Hip-hop ties human beings for their similarities and knocks the differences to the side. It’s a movement.”

    Following worldwide protests over Floyd’s 2020 murder by police in Minneapolis, his brother Terrence Floyd joined an effort to fuse rap, gospel and spirituals on an album of protest songs. A former church drummer, Floyd said he wanted to use the music to affect change in his brother’s name.

    __
    “I’m at the preacher’s door/My knees gettin’ weak and my gun might blow/But we gon’ be alright.” – Kendrick Lamar, “Alright,” 2015

    __
    And then there’s hip-hop’s global influence on protest, resistance and political dissent. From the Arab Spring and the Palestinian freedom fight to feminism and class struggles, rap music is a popular medium for calls to action, as well as call-outs of despots and colonizers.

    Rap music videos produced by artists in African, Europe, Asia and South America often include beatboxers, breakdancers, graffiti and other elements of hip-hop.

    In 2016, on a visit to Vietnam during a historic tour of Asia, former President Barack Obama answered questions about human rights and free expression across the continent. One question came from Suboi, a female rapper known as Vietnam’s “Queen of Hip-Hop” who said she struggled against the Vietnamese stereotype that rap music isn’t a proper expression for Asian women.

    “Let’s be honest, sometimes art is dangerous and that’s why governments sometimes get nervous about art,” Obama said. “But one of the things that I truly believe is that if you try to suppress the arts, then I think you’re suppressing the deepest dreams and aspirations of a people.”

    Civil rights leader Rev. Al Sharpton, who turned 18 as hip-hop really took off out of his native New York, said rap music fueled the movement that has shaped much of his public life. At age 68, he believes hip-hop culture tilled the ground for the election of the first Black American president in 2008.

    “I didn’t come out of the ‘We Shall Overcome’ generation,” Sharpton said. “I came out of Fight the Power, Public Enemy.”

    He added: “Hip-hop took the chains off us and said, ‘No, we’re gonna say it our way, anyway.’ … It was that freedom. It was that raw, non-watered down kind of expression. We understood that rage and anger, even though we expressed it in different ways.”

  • Hip-hop was born in the Bronx amid poverty, despair and 50 years later, there’s pride, still hard times

    By Associated Press

    BRONX, NEW YORK: Before it was a global movement, it was simply an expression of life and struggle: a culture that was synonymous with hardship and suffering, but also grit, resilience and creativity.

    Hip-hop rose from the ashes of a borough ablaze with poverty, urban decay and gang violence. It was music that “had the sound of a city in collapse, but also had an air of defiance,” said Mark Naison, history professor at Fordham University in the Bronx. Block parties and the various elements of hip-hop served as an outlet for creativity and an escape from the hardships of daily life.

    The four foundational elements of hip-hop — DJing or turntablism, MCing or rapping, B-boying or break dancing and graffiti “writing” — emerged from the Bronx as a “cultural response to a community that was institutionally abandoned,” said Rodrigo Venegas, also known as “Rodstarz” of the hip-hop duo Rebel Diaz, made up of two Chilean brothers in the Bronx.

    “You want to cut our art programs? We’re going to turn the whole city into a canvas. You want to cut our music programs? We’re going to turn turntables into instruments. You want to silence our communities? Then we’re going to grab these microphones and use our voices,” Venegas said.

    Subway cars heading into Manhattan were covered in graffiti in the 70s and 80s, after young “writers” tagged their names and messages from top to bottom. At a time when New York City politicians disparaged the Bronx and deemed it unworthy of investment, it was a way for teenagers and young adults to express themselves and take control of their narrative.

    “It was a way to feel like we mattered,” said Lloyd Murphy, who tagged his name as “Topaz1.” “We saw New York City and the trains going by as a billboard to put your name on and say, ‘I’m somebody.’”

    Hip-hop eventually expanded across New York City, then to different parts of the country and the world. But as artists and hip-hop giants mark the 50th anniversary of a multi-billion dollar global industry this month, the original birthplace of the movement remains the poorest section of New York City. The Bronx has yet to capitalize off of the culture it created in any significant way.

    At the time of hip-hop’s inception, the Bronx had the highest poverty rate of not just New York City, but of all 62 counties in New York state. Fifty years later, it holds that same status.

    “I do find it ironic that one of the richest parts of American culture comes from a place that is still one of the poorest parts of our country,” said Majora Carter, an urban revitalization strategist and founder of The Boogie Down Grind, a cafe in the South Bronx that has images of old hip-hop party flyers from the 70s and 80s lining the walls and classic hip-hop jams playing over the speakers. Carter, 56, grew up just blocks away from where the cafe now sits in Hunts Point and lived the realities of urban blight. Her brother was killed in gang violence and she saw her neighborhood fall prey to drugs, prostitution and violent crime throughout her childhood.

    The earliest hip-hop culture was a reflection of those difficult realities in the South Bronx.

    “Poverty was the flavor of the day,” said Murphy, who also grew up in the South Bronx in the 1960s. He remembers multiple families crammed into public housing units, sometimes up to 15 people living in a two or three-bedroom apartment, sharing the space with rats and roaches and dealing with negligent landlords.

    New York City as a whole was facing bankruptcy in the 70s, and the Bronx, which was already suffering from disinvestment, redlining, resident displacement and white and middle-class flight, descended into urban decay. Privately-owned housing buildings across the borough went up in flames, often set ablaze by landlords themselves for insurance money. The Bronx was on fire, and Vietnam veterans – often missing limbs, addicted to heroin and other drugs – found themselves returning home to a war zone. Life in the Bronx was bleak, and Murphy said his neighborhood of Fort Apache was infamous for its violent crime.

    “The world was not flowers and butterflies and sunshine, especially if you were living in the Fort Apache section of the South Bronx,” said graffiti writer Edward Jamison, also known as “Staff 161.” In December, 1972, Jamison painted an entire subway car with an image of the Grim Reaper, “because that’s what I knew.”

    Originally, the Fort Apache neighborhood was supported by the Black Panther Party. They worked security and distributed food through programs around the neighborhood. When they left, block crews filled the void. Those turned into street gangs.

    “A block crew was the protector of that block and the street gang was the security for the community, more than the police department,” Murphy said. “We felt forgotten. We felt like we were our own world where we just had to fend for ourselves. And we did.”

    It took the murder of peace keeper “Black Benjie” of the Ghetto Brothers, a gang and music group in the South Bronx, for rival gangs to convene and sign a peace treaty. It was this truce that paved the way for block parties to be held in the Bronx, and for residents from different neighborhoods to attend them freely, without fear of street violence.

    In the wake of that peace treaty, 18-year-old Clive Campbell, also known as DJ Kool Herc, threw a back-to-school party with his younger sister in the recreation room of an apartment building on Sedgwick Avenue one August day in 1973. Herc introduced the attendees to “the break” – extending the musical beat between verses to allow for longer periods of dancing. A musical phenomenon was born.

    “It’s very easy to look at the Bronx during this period in terms of deficits, redlining, disinvestment, white flight, the loss of economic opportunity,” Naison said. “But during those years, the Bronx was also creating more varieties of popular music than any place in the world.”

    For those who call the Bronx home today, it can be an uphill battle to counter the narrative that their neighborhoods are a lost cause.

    “We’re literally trying to give people reasons in our community to feel as though there’s something worthwhile about it – that all of the hype that we hear in the media about how awful these neighborhoods are, that there are actually amazing things going on in them,” Carter said.

    After years of proposals, the Universal Hip-Hop Museum is expected to open its doors in 2025. The hope is that the development, which will include affordable housing and retail space, will make the South Bronx a destination for tourists and New York City residents, and will capitalize off of the legacy of hip-hop.

    But in the poorest section of New York City, some are cautious when it comes to new buildings. The Mott Haven neighborhood, a waterfront enclave located in the South Bronx, has undergone a wave of new development in recent years, and many residents fear gentrification and displacement. In 2021, the poverty rate for the district that includes Mott Haven was about 36%.

    “You have hip-hop museums being built in The Bronx that I view, personally, as concessions to the real estate buyouts that have been happening here,” Venegas said.

    Venegas and his brother grew up in Chicago but formed their musical identities after moving to the Bronx in the early 2000s. They lead workshops and host events at the BronxArtSpace to support the culture of hip-hop in the Bronx as the birthplace of the movement, with a particular emphasis on using it as a tool in struggles against oppression, from the Bronx to around the world.

    “We’re trying to maintain the legacy of hip-hop through liberation,” he said.

    Amid the commemorations and celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of hip-hop, the Bronx basks in a momentary spotlight for its contributions to a global movement. For the early pioneers who shaped and molded an entire culture out of their daily plight, that value can’t be fully measured.

    “These kids had everything taken away from them, and they created something to give their lives direction, meaning, safety, and a sense that their talent meant something,” said Mark Naison. “Big money? Nobody involved in Bronx hip-hop made big money. But they saved lives. They gave lives meaning.”

    BRONX, NEW YORK: Before it was a global movement, it was simply an expression of life and struggle: a culture that was synonymous with hardship and suffering, but also grit, resilience and creativity.

    Hip-hop rose from the ashes of a borough ablaze with poverty, urban decay and gang violence. It was music that “had the sound of a city in collapse, but also had an air of defiance,” said Mark Naison, history professor at Fordham University in the Bronx. Block parties and the various elements of hip-hop served as an outlet for creativity and an escape from the hardships of daily life.

    The four foundational elements of hip-hop — DJing or turntablism, MCing or rapping, B-boying or break dancing and graffiti “writing” — emerged from the Bronx as a “cultural response to a community that was institutionally abandoned,” said Rodrigo Venegas, also known as “Rodstarz” of the hip-hop duo Rebel Diaz, made up of two Chilean brothers in the Bronx.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-8052921-2’); });

    “You want to cut our art programs? We’re going to turn the whole city into a canvas. You want to cut our music programs? We’re going to turn turntables into instruments. You want to silence our communities? Then we’re going to grab these microphones and use our voices,” Venegas said.

    Subway cars heading into Manhattan were covered in graffiti in the 70s and 80s, after young “writers” tagged their names and messages from top to bottom. At a time when New York City politicians disparaged the Bronx and deemed it unworthy of investment, it was a way for teenagers and young adults to express themselves and take control of their narrative.

    “It was a way to feel like we mattered,” said Lloyd Murphy, who tagged his name as “Topaz1.” “We saw New York City and the trains going by as a billboard to put your name on and say, ‘I’m somebody.’”

    Hip-hop eventually expanded across New York City, then to different parts of the country and the world. But as artists and hip-hop giants mark the 50th anniversary of a multi-billion dollar global industry this month, the original birthplace of the movement remains the poorest section of New York City. The Bronx has yet to capitalize off of the culture it created in any significant way.

    At the time of hip-hop’s inception, the Bronx had the highest poverty rate of not just New York City, but of all 62 counties in New York state. Fifty years later, it holds that same status.

    “I do find it ironic that one of the richest parts of American culture comes from a place that is still one of the poorest parts of our country,” said Majora Carter, an urban revitalization strategist and founder of The Boogie Down Grind, a cafe in the South Bronx that has images of old hip-hop party flyers from the 70s and 80s lining the walls and classic hip-hop jams playing over the speakers. Carter, 56, grew up just blocks away from where the cafe now sits in Hunts Point and lived the realities of urban blight. Her brother was killed in gang violence and she saw her neighborhood fall prey to drugs, prostitution and violent crime throughout her childhood.

    The earliest hip-hop culture was a reflection of those difficult realities in the South Bronx.

    “Poverty was the flavor of the day,” said Murphy, who also grew up in the South Bronx in the 1960s. He remembers multiple families crammed into public housing units, sometimes up to 15 people living in a two or three-bedroom apartment, sharing the space with rats and roaches and dealing with negligent landlords.

    New York City as a whole was facing bankruptcy in the 70s, and the Bronx, which was already suffering from disinvestment, redlining, resident displacement and white and middle-class flight, descended into urban decay. Privately-owned housing buildings across the borough went up in flames, often set ablaze by landlords themselves for insurance money. The Bronx was on fire, and Vietnam veterans – often missing limbs, addicted to heroin and other drugs – found themselves returning home to a war zone. Life in the Bronx was bleak, and Murphy said his neighborhood of Fort Apache was infamous for its violent crime.

    “The world was not flowers and butterflies and sunshine, especially if you were living in the Fort Apache section of the South Bronx,” said graffiti writer Edward Jamison, also known as “Staff 161.” In December, 1972, Jamison painted an entire subway car with an image of the Grim Reaper, “because that’s what I knew.”

    Originally, the Fort Apache neighborhood was supported by the Black Panther Party. They worked security and distributed food through programs around the neighborhood. When they left, block crews filled the void. Those turned into street gangs.

    “A block crew was the protector of that block and the street gang was the security for the community, more than the police department,” Murphy said. “We felt forgotten. We felt like we were our own world where we just had to fend for ourselves. And we did.”

    It took the murder of peace keeper “Black Benjie” of the Ghetto Brothers, a gang and music group in the South Bronx, for rival gangs to convene and sign a peace treaty. It was this truce that paved the way for block parties to be held in the Bronx, and for residents from different neighborhoods to attend them freely, without fear of street violence.

    In the wake of that peace treaty, 18-year-old Clive Campbell, also known as DJ Kool Herc, threw a back-to-school party with his younger sister in the recreation room of an apartment building on Sedgwick Avenue one August day in 1973. Herc introduced the attendees to “the break” – extending the musical beat between verses to allow for longer periods of dancing. A musical phenomenon was born.

    “It’s very easy to look at the Bronx during this period in terms of deficits, redlining, disinvestment, white flight, the loss of economic opportunity,” Naison said. “But during those years, the Bronx was also creating more varieties of popular music than any place in the world.”

    For those who call the Bronx home today, it can be an uphill battle to counter the narrative that their neighborhoods are a lost cause.

    “We’re literally trying to give people reasons in our community to feel as though there’s something worthwhile about it – that all of the hype that we hear in the media about how awful these neighborhoods are, that there are actually amazing things going on in them,” Carter said.

    After years of proposals, the Universal Hip-Hop Museum is expected to open its doors in 2025. The hope is that the development, which will include affordable housing and retail space, will make the South Bronx a destination for tourists and New York City residents, and will capitalize off of the legacy of hip-hop.

    But in the poorest section of New York City, some are cautious when it comes to new buildings. The Mott Haven neighborhood, a waterfront enclave located in the South Bronx, has undergone a wave of new development in recent years, and many residents fear gentrification and displacement. In 2021, the poverty rate for the district that includes Mott Haven was about 36%.

    “You have hip-hop museums being built in The Bronx that I view, personally, as concessions to the real estate buyouts that have been happening here,” Venegas said.

    Venegas and his brother grew up in Chicago but formed their musical identities after moving to the Bronx in the early 2000s. They lead workshops and host events at the BronxArtSpace to support the culture of hip-hop in the Bronx as the birthplace of the movement, with a particular emphasis on using it as a tool in struggles against oppression, from the Bronx to around the world.

    “We’re trying to maintain the legacy of hip-hop through liberation,” he said.

    Amid the commemorations and celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of hip-hop, the Bronx basks in a momentary spotlight for its contributions to a global movement. For the early pioneers who shaped and molded an entire culture out of their daily plight, that value can’t be fully measured.

    “These kids had everything taken away from them, and they created something to give their lives direction, meaning, safety, and a sense that their talent meant something,” said Mark Naison. “Big money? Nobody involved in Bronx hip-hop made big money. But they saved lives. They gave lives meaning.”