For the Culture— Hip Hop Preservation
Hip-hop continues to evolve globally, but without intentional preservation, its foundational values, traditions and cultural codes risk being lost across generations.
Hip hop must evolve to survive but it also must maintain its roots. Over almost three generations, hip-hop has grown, evolved and manifested several permutations of itself. It started as a little-known local trend — only visible in the poor Black and brown neighborhoods in certain parts of the U.S. that became a social pariah and target for the powers that be, fearful of its growing popularity, influence and impact on society. But it grew to become a cultural phenomenon that has been woven into the very fabric of mainstream life, across the globe. With each transformation, the culture’s origins and ideas have shifted, and morphed, sometimes taking on new shapes, and even disappearing altogether. While the culture of hip-hop has survived for much longer than its early detractors thought it ever would, what the culture is now is unrecognizable to some, especially those from the first generation. When we think of art forms broadly, and the movements and culture that sprung from them, it’s a (seemingly) natural process for certain traditions and practices to fade away, with others to take their place. As new minds and ideas and experiences are exposed to the culture, the culture itself is also changed. However, the ideas that serve as its pillars and foundations should never change, and if anything at the very least should never be forgotten, and maintained and recognized as foundational for anyone who participates with or interacts with the culture. But how can this be done when competing with market forces? How do you maintain a continuum of traditions when the intergenerational connections are at best frayed, if not altogether severed?
For more than 15 years I have traveled internationally to Africa, South America, Europe and Asia to perform and to facilitate workshops with various communities who, like me, are lovers and practitioners of the culture. In short, we are “heads” — persons with an affinity and passion for the customs, practices and traditions that are embodied inside hip-hop culture. To add to my multi-hyphenate is another title: preservationist. I first heard this term applied to hip-hop on a cultural ambassador mission to Botswana when I was working with a dear friend of mine, Konee-Rok — a founding member of Chicago Tribe, the second-oldest breaking crew in the city. He coined the phrase over dinner one evening after our workshops as a part of the Next Level program. Konee observed something I had too in countless tours, shows and workshops I’d done across the United States and abroad; the culture of hip-hop had spread across the globe, and in doing so established an ethos and ways of being that were universal.
No matter the country, city or village, and no matter the language, we came across individuals who identified as hip-hop that had not only shared experience but also language, customs, traditions and even code or law on the ways of being in space and in community. In our conversation we both acknowledged that after 50+ years of existence, however, many new and different ideas, values and traditions had also become a part of hip-hop that were not recognizable. On top of that, many of these new ideas were erasing or casting into irrelevance the traditions, values, code, law and ethos that had brought us to the second city in the country, Maun, to facilitate with the community there on the artistic practices of hip-hop. In this, Konee considered the work that we do as the work of preservationists — individuals advocating for, maintaining and restoring historical artifacts for the purpose of learning, appreciating and understanding an existing or previously existing culture, idea or species.
This idea deeply resonated with me because I’d experienced similar happenings in my travels in Brazil, Europe and other parts of Southern Africa as well as in the United States: the dissonance of a culture both yearning to know and understand its origins as it was simultaneously being erased or relegated to irrelevance due to a number of factors. In the spaces in which I’m called to facilitate, what I’ve experienced other practitioners are hungry for is a knowing, and not simply a recounting of the “old school” but an understanding of how and why emcees and rap practiced certain ideas or upheld certain codes — for example, the ideas of “keeping it real” as a means of verifying the authenticity of an artist, and how that realness created a respect and connection to their work. Another example has been the rap cipher, as a proving ground of sharpening and testing skills, but also a gathering of community to network or “build” with other community members that could, or would often, manifest into deeper connections later. These are ideas and practices no longer at the center or the zeitgeist of what is now considered hip-hop “culture” and yet are still deeply meaningful and relevant to the artistic elements that persist and also to the artists and practitioners who continue to operate in the academic and even social justice spheres.
This has meant that as I create music reflecting the times and my own lived reality and experience, I also — as a facilitator, educator and practitioner — look to create and participate in spaces that uphold these examples and other similar practices. As practitioners and educators, it is vital to connect with spaces where these rituals and practices are happening, especially if you are an educator who isn’t someone from, or in, the culture of hip-hop. The need and value is apparent when I go into New York City schools and speak with current students. Many of them listen to rap music from different eras but don’t identify with hip-hop. Some have styles and even language and sensibilities that would signal they are at least aware of the culture, and yet many don’t associate with the culture at all. In my travels abroad, similarly I’ve seen a shift from what I originally experienced in the late 2000s — that of communities holding largely a reverence for the cultural practices, which in many places has given way to some of those same communities no longer embodying them, instead adopting and mimicking the commercial trends they see through popular media. When I think about the next 50 years of hip-hop, I can’t imagine it without the rituals, ethos and practices that are the foundations of it. I do see, however, without conscious and active participation in those things, there is a real threat that it will not survive, or just as worse, a simulacrum will take its place.
