“So, when did you fall in love with Hip Hop?” is a question that Sidney (Sanaa Lathan), a Hip Hop journalist, poses at the very beginning of the 2002 film, Brown Sugar. And, consequently, everyone else who watched the movie and fell in love with it asked themselves the same thing. For most, falling in love with Hip Hop is synonymous with a memory: that first all-night skating rink, that first house party, that first crush, or that favorite older cousin or relative introducing you to your first cassette tape or fly Hip Hop artist rockin’ a Kangol, a thick chain, MCM pouch, and maybe even a gold tooth. Hip Hop was not just music; it was something more. It was that go-to when you needed a pick-me-up, when your confidence needed a boost, when you wanted to feel connected to something bigger. It was that feel-good vibe that you felt after watching Kid ‘N Play dance in House Party. It was the force that helped you decide what you would wear to the basketball game (high tops or low tops?), that picture of Salt-N-Pepa that you stared at before going to the hair salon to get that asymmetrical haircut and hairdo, and watching a video of LL Cool J, before deciding how big you wanted your chain to be when you went to purchase one from the swap meet. Hip-Hop had the fellas rockin’ high-top fades, and had the ladies showstoppin’ in oversized Nefertiti hoops and box braids.
Hip Hop was that beautiful disruptor that showcased the beauty and creativity of inner-city folks and shifted the world. But, along the way, Hip Hop, with its influence to elevate consciousness and empower marginalized communities, has become a commercial machine. An industry that now pushes out messaging that doesn’t necessarily align with the origins of Hip-Hop. In many instances, the perpetual use of the “n-word,” the degradation of women, the promotion of hypersexuality, and the subtle promotion of broken families and homes have crept in. But Hip Hop has always been bigger and better than that. And, yes, we still have musical pillars like Questlove, Erykah Badu, Outkast, Mos Def, J.Cole, Nas, Talib Kweli, LL Cool J, and many other discerning voices in Hip-Hop, to help recalibrate the musical atmosphere when things get too dark. But new artists have a responsibility to study and pick up the baton.
Ane Roseborough, M.A. American History, the founder of On-E Records and sits on the New Jersey Amistad Commission, shared with ESSENCE, “The history of hip hop and the NJ Amistad Curriculum are both about telling the whole story and empowerment. The Black experience in this country should always be included in narratives regarding American history. Songs on many occasions serve as the soundtrack to what is happening on both a local and national scale. “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five, [which has been added to the Library of Congress,] was literally telling the world the true story of how life was in the inner city. It was powerful storytelling, and this is just one example of a song that could be utilized in the classroom when discussing urban issues during the ’80s. Hip Hop is a great way to engage students and educators when sharing history[when the music is not diluted for material gain]. For example, Hamilton on Broadway has been extremely successful with this method of historical expression, and numerous educators incorporate hip hop into their pedagogical practices.”
She further shared, “I started my career at CBS Records in 1990, then had stints at Island Records, RCA Records, and Bad Boy Entertainment. When I founded On-E Records in 2021, I decided not to release music that could be perceived as degrading men, women, or children. I looked at the history of Black owned record labels from the past, and decided to follow that route.”
November is Hip Hop History Month, and below are several titles that examine the legacy of Hip Hop from the perspective of educators, historians, and cultural archivists who carry a deep respect for this art form.
Rapper’s Deluxe: How Hip-Hop Made The World by Todd Boyd
In Rapper’s Deluxe, Todd Boyd offers more than a chronicle of beats and rhymes; he presents Hip Hop as a form of cultural anthropology, with its own coded language that Black communities have carved out to express their survival, style, and resistance. The book takes a journey that begins with the Bronx block parties of the 1970s and how it has evolved into global fashion, movies, the sports world, the political arena, art, and beyond. Boyd shows how Hip Hop did not simply enter “the world,” but reinvented the world according to its own terms: remixed traditions of Black speech and style, rewrote the map of what is center vs. margin, and recast the tools of cultural production (turntables, fashion, vernacular) into sites of assertion and belonging. For readers who love to be visually stimulated, this book uses unique fonts, graphics, and photographs to really bring the text alive. Rapper’s Deluxe also highlights Sugar Hill Records, Run-D.M.C., Rakim, Slick Rick, Public Enemy, MC Hammer, KRS-One, and many others. Rapper’s Deluxe is a visual manifesto, weaving images and essays to argue that hip-hop is a major axis of modern Black identity: urban, diasporic, digital, global. It is a testimony to the fact that when Black people create sound, language, style, and community, they become the blueprint.
Afrocentric Style: A Celebration of Blackness and Identity in Pop Culture by Shirley Neal
AfroCentric Style is not a coffee-table fluff book; it’s a cultural archive and written testimony of how Blackness is the foundation of Hip Hop. It’s written in such a way that readers will further understand the aesthetics and politics of their everyday fashion expression, and how fashion, hairstyles, and even social-media trends are a part of a larger cultural lineage. This book includes photographs and captions that archive cultural identity, and to understand the world of pop culture, one must understand the role that authentic Black culture plays in cultivating it. In AfroCentric Style, Neal showcases Blackness as a poignant, cultural locus: where style, image, identity, history, and popular culture intersect. The book includes more than 100 color and archival black-and-white photographs, and the pages of the book delineate how Black expression permeates our everyday world. This book shares that how Black people dress is not just fashion, it’s an indication of our very essence. Afrocentric Style serves as a visual map in which the visual language of the streets, churches, salons, block parties, boardrooms, and Instagram feeds can be traced back to legacies of artistry, resistance, and reinvention. This book carries a strong theme of identity in motion and how heritage expresses itself through our innate use of style.
Street Scriptures: Between God and Hip-Hop by Alejandro Nava
In Street Scriptures, Alejandro Nava does more than trace the lineage of hip-hop; he digs deep into the soul of the music: the spiritual, the prophetic, the sacred, and the street-wise and shares how the rhythms and rhymes of Black urban life are in constant conversation with questions of power, divinity, resistance, and hope. Street Scriptures shares that in most marginalized spaces like block parties, cyphers, graffiti-tagged walls, church revivals, and gospel performances, these are theological spaces and can be considered “street theology”. Street Scriptures highlights themes and messaging that there’s a sacredness in everyday experience, understanding that performance is also a form of preaching, and that soundscapes can be sites for revelation.
Fresh Fly Fabulous: 50 Years of Hip Hop Style by Elizabeth Way and Elena Romero
In Fresh Fly Fabulous, Way and Romero invite readers into a cultural tapestry of Black style, telling the story of how the sound of Hip Hop gave the world an intimate language about aspects of Black life. Beginning with the legendary “back-to-school jam” thrown by DJ Kool Herc and his sister in the Bronx in 1973, this volume traces five decades of aesthetics, aspiration, and agency. For readers who love both Hip Hop and fashion, this is a book that honors how Black culture turned the sidewalk, block party, the thrift store rack, and whatever was leftover when the bills were almost paid into spaces of style, taking autonomy over what was available and fashioning it into something iconic. The pictures and messaging within this book affirm that the gold chains, Kangol hats, nameplate necklaces, baby-fros, sneakers, and custom jackets weren’t just accessories, but rather statements of being. These fashion choices were declarations of presence in a society that often tried to make marginalized communities feel invisible. Fresh Fly Fabulous has themes centering visibility, style as resistance, and cultural legacy with global reach. And, when the exhibit “Fresh, Fly Fabulous” opened at FIT in New York City, it was an immediate hit.
Hip Hop: The Illustrated History of Break Dancing, Rap Music, and Graffiti by Steven Hager
In this compact yet potent volume, Hager charts the raw emergence of what we now call Hip Hop, presenting the intertwined stories of break-dancing, rap, and graffiti as the heartbeat of Black, Brown, and working-class youth taking up space in late-20th-century America in huge ways. Tracing the beats from the stairwells and block parties of the South Bronx to the subway cars sprayed with tags and the turntable wars of early DJs, the book holds up Hip Hop culture not merely as entertainment but as “vernacular survival art”, a way of naming one’s presence, one’s body, one’s future. This book has strong themes on the roots of Hip Hop and resistance, and focuses on the four foundational aspects of Hip Hop, which include DJing, break dancing, MCing, and graffiti. And, it’s a great read for those seeking to learn more about the foundations of Hip Hop.
The Hip Hop Years: A History of Rap by Alex Ogg and David Upshal
In The Hip Hop Years, Ogg and David Upshal provide a cultural history of the global impact that Hip Hop has made. With great detail, The Hip Hop Years chronicles the evolution of rap from its roots in Black neighbourhoods to the world’s mainstage. It includes first-hand interviews with more than 100 MCs, DJs, producers, and music writers, and places the narrative around Hip Hop in the hands of those who actually lived it: record label execs, music critics, and industry insiders. This book is candid and has strong themes on the notion that one must understand the roots of Hip Hop in order to fully grasp what it’s all about. The legacy of turntables, street parties, and beat-boxing was a form of Black agency, and Hip Hop carries a historical pulse.
Cultural Codes: Makings of a Black Music Philosophy by William C. Banfield
With Cultural Codes, Banfield positions Black music and Hip Hop as “a living system of values, aesthetics, and meaning rooted in the Black experience.” Black music, with its musical beginnings in Africa, with communal call-and-response, through ragtime, the gospel, blues, jazz, soul, funk, R&B, and into the burst of hip-hop, Banfield implores readers to examine how music has been a lifeline for survival, and is the starting point for so much in Black culture. Culture Codes digs deep and provides a framework for why we feel a certain way when listening to Black music. This book is a great read for lovers of music and music history who desire a deeper philosophical and psychological understanding of the impact of music on our lives and culture.
Make Rappers Rap Again: Interrogating The Mumble Rap Crises by Heidi R. Lewis
Language has always been political, and when it comes to choosing to express language in an alternative manner, things can get murky. In Make Rappers Rap Again, Lewis shares a defense of the modern rap form, called “Mumble Rap”. In Make Rappers Rap Again, she provides a good argument for how we interpret authenticity, lineage, and change within Black creative expression. Tackling the so-called “Mumble Rap Crisis”, her book shares how this art form is, in fact, rooted in an aesthetic and historical tradition similar to the likes of improvisational jazz, blues, and other Black musical stylings. Lewis asserts that Mumble Rap is often dismissed due to connotations that it’s ignorant and promotes speaking in an improper manner. However, after reading this book, readers will further understand that in most cases, musical utterances are intuitive and rooted in an innate cultural and historical memory.
Message In The Music: Hip Hop, History, and Pedagogy by Derrick P Alridge (Editor), James B Stewart (Editor), Professor of History V P Franklin (Editor)
In Message in the Music, editors Alridge, Stewart, and Franklin bring together a large spectrum of poignant essays that explore the foundations of Hip Hop as one of the most powerful cultural phenomena of the past five decades. This volume of essays examines Hip Hop’s roots and its philosophical and historical links to the major Black social movements and beyond. This book also highlights that if used properly, Hip Hop has the power to empower the youth. Message In the Music has empowering themes on Hip Hop, such as the benefits of using music and Hip Hop as a teaching tool, and how music is a great resource for self-reflection.
To learn more about the origins of Hip Hop, visit the collections at the Smithsonian Anthology of Hip Hop and Rap, and the National Museum of African American History.