For a genre defined equally by loss and success, hip hop is still here. How, you ask? Because of its galactic reach and its eternal influence. Even now, at 50, what can’t hip hop do or be?
There was no identity it wouldn’t adopt as its own. Hip hop was UGK as much as it was Odd Future. It was Cam’ron and Cardi B, Slum Village and Crime Mob. It was Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. It was Trina. It was Nicki Minaj. With time, hip hop learned to wear different sexualities and religions through Young MA and Lil Nas X. Hip hop became a multi-hyphenate force.
And that force was undeniable. Hip hop inhaled jazz, rock and Latin influences along the way, waterfalling like emerald Matrix code across the internet, gushing endlessly into a world that didn’t always love it back. Then and now, there is no lid for hip hop’s sound, no cage for its platinum growl. Today, its autonomy is concrete, its reputation and reach unparalleled. Hip hop extends from Palo Alto to Park Avenue to Prague, from classrooms to Capitol Hill. Its origin an eternal wellspring of creative life. Hip hop is an encyclopedia of language and imagination. It is its own algebra, clear and cryptic, deeply personal and yet democratic. Hip hop is a bedrock of pop culture, always at the cusp. It is the prologue for what’s next, for who’s got next.
For a genre defined equally by loss and success, hip hop is still here. How, you ask? Because its reach is galactic. Its influence eternal. Even now, at 50, what can’t hip hop do or be? Hip hop has a stubborn will to live and live loud. Momentum is the genre’s greatest resource. Its uncompromising spirit is why we listen, why we love it. Hip hop is a sound, a people, and a culture that doesn’t know how to stop—and why would it want to? Fifty years on, hip hop excites as a story of surprising, curious evolutions. It is a timeline with no clear end, only new uncharted origins.
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