OPINION: The Roots drummer argues in his new book that hip-hop changes every five years. I’ll be the judge of that.
In Questlove’s fascinating new book “Hip-Hop Is History,” he rewrites hip-hop history to his own specifications. It’s thrilling to read a really thoughtful hip-hop history book written from the perspective of an elite practitioner who’s also a superfan and a historian. One of the first ideas that jumped out at me is how Questlove views hip-hop history: He marks 1982 as a critical juncture but also believes that every five years, there’s a significant change in the culture, enough to mark a new chapter in the genre. I wanted to look deeper and see what happened in those change years to understand what Quest is saying.
1982 was a crucial year marked by the release of two landmark singles — “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five and “Planet Rock” by Afrika Bambaataa & the Soulsonic Force. With these two songs, hip-hop quickly grew more serious as a political force and as a dance-music force. These songs also had more of an epic scope than many of the songs that arrived before them. At this point, the culture was beginning to expand from a small New York subculture into a New York subculture that’s noticed by much of the country.
By 1987, hip-hop was still a growing subculture but it’s clearly national, and as a whole, it’s far more complex than it was five years earlier. This was the year that gave us the debut albums of Public Enemy, Boogie Down Productions, and Eric B. and Rakim. That group showed us how the music had grown far more political with MCs acting like they’re activists or spokesmen for the Black community. Rakim also marked a new zenith for the complexity of MCing. ’87 also gave us the debuts of Ice T and N.W.A and the major label debut of Too Short. The rise of the West Coast, specifically California from L.A. to the Bay. Now hip-hop was no longer a New York thing.
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