Can't Stop Won't Stop (Young Adult Edition): A Hip-Hop History

Martin Luther King, Jr. credited soul music as being a powerful tool for uniting Black and white youth in America. Ice-T pointed out that white kids were starting to view Black people as cool and intelligent thanks to hip-hop. Historically in America, Black efforts are often assuaged and credited to white people. The same can be said of music, as jazz, soul, and hip-hop all required crossing over into the territory of white people to become successful. Record companies often favored white artists, who often stole their ideas or even whole songs from Black artists. After World War II, Black radio stations were still segregated from white stations. A producer named Sam Philips noticed that white teenagers were interested in R&B records and sought to find a white man who could sound and feel like a Black man. He signed Elvis Presley in 1953, who would be called the King of Rock and Roll. Hip-hop arriving on the music scene meant that Black people could finally be respected and hone their own craft, apart from white people—that is, until Eminem came along.

Eminem, named Marshall Mathers III, grew up in Detroit, Michigan. Racial segregation was blatant there, with white neighborhoods strictly prohibiting Black and Asian home ownership. Ghettos were forced on Black people. The suburbs around Detroit were mainly white while the inner city was mainly Black. Marshall grew up on welfare as his single mother struggled to make ends meet. Eminem grew up “in primarily Black neighborhoods with Black friends and mentors” (249). As a result, he was always a minority, often bullied, and shot at once. Hearing hip-hop was like a revelation for Eminem, and once he heard about the Beastie Boys, he figured he could also be a white man who rapped. He started at 15, joining rap battles at the Hip-Hop Shop. Eminem learned how to rhyme entire lines with each other. He had a dream to become a master storyteller and made his first EP, Slim Shady. This did not lead to immediate fame and riches, but when Dr. Dre heard the EP on a radio show, he knew he had to meet him. They recorded an LP with two new songs, “which would showcase Eminem’s undeniable rhyme skills, dark sense of humor, and what his critics would call violence, homophobia, and misogyny” (251). When asked about his whiteness, Eminem was not afraid to voice his frustration. He did not see his race as the reason for his success, though he knew others did. Dr. Dre encouraged Eminem to be more extreme in the studio, knowing it would feed controversy and sell records.

As hip-hop transformed from having majority Black audiences to the mainstream, other groups began finding it a useful tool for “hope, expression, and survival” (253). In the 1980s, a hip-hop crew called 3rd Bass included Irish American rapper Pete “Pete Nice” Nash and Jewish American rapper Michael “MC Serch” Berrin. Pete Nice grew up in New York playing basketball with his friends, who would often lend him their hip-hop tapes. He hosted a hip-hop radio show in university, and soon after met MC Serch, who was an incredible b-boy dancer. 3rd Bass made two gold albums under Def Jam. Many accused them of using Black music to become rich white men, but that was not their motivation. When “Ice Baby” was released in 1990 by Vanilla Ice, people recognized the hook from Black fraternity Alpha Phi Alpha. They were shocked to see a white man when the music video released, but the song became the first rap song to hit number one on the pop music charts. Vanilla Ice wrote a false autobiography in which he claimed to be a member of a Miami street gang despite growing up in the wealthy part of Dallas. Scrutiny was fierce, and when he was interviewed, he bragged about being a white man in rap and insisted he was from the streets because “the majority of white people cannot dance” (255). Black people expressed outrage that so many white people were suddenly interested in rap now that they were seeing someone white performing it. Vanilla Ice’s career never fully recovered after this exposure. The debate raged over whether hip-hop would “help whites better understand Blacks and heal deep historic racial wounds […or] be just a new way for whites to exploit Black culture and erase Black artists” (255).

By the year 2000, white consumers were 70% of the market for hip-hop music. Eminem’s success was unparalleled, and he soon “became the bestselling artist in hip-hop history” (255) and was crowned the King of Hip-Hop by Rolling Stone in 2011. When his movie 8 Mile released, people were concerned that it inaccurately portrayed the possibility of achieving the American Dream, negating the fact that much of the reason for people being poor is systemic, not individual. It also depicted Black people as not accepting of white people in hip-hop and Eminem as the victim of reverse racism when in reality they were the first to accept him and had launched his career. In truth, Eminem had help from wealthy people like Dr. Dre and did not get to the top simply through ingenuity and effort. Eminem resented the fact that people saw him for his skin color more than his skill, but this attitude soon morphed into a humble appreciation and debt to the Black artists who came before him and established hip-hop and his career. By the mid-2000s, Eminem was openly criticizing his own whiteness on his records: “Though I’m not the first king of controversy / I am the worst thing since Elvis Presley / To do Black music so selfishly / And use it to get myself wealthy” (258). Eminem was fully aware by then that his whiteness was a large influence in his success. In 2017, he openly denounced Trump and any fan who supports him and expressed hope that hip-hop could help to lessen racism in America.

As hip-hop evolved over the second half of the 20th century, it became a global cultural phenomenon. By the 2000s, hip-hop was “the most influential popular youth culture around the world, fueled both by a global market and a network of vibrant local underground scenes” (261). In 1979, an Afro-Filipino musician named Joe Bataan heard rap music that inspired him to try and create his own. When he released “Rap-O Clap-O,” he was shocked to find it a sensation in France, Belgium, and Luxembourg. He took his music on tour and exposed the world east of the Atlantic to New York rap for the first time. The Sugarhill Gang were also of worldwide fame, with people covering their song in all corners of the world. Afrika Bambaataa’s “Planet Rock” (1982) fused British rock, German electropop, and African American disco rap together, uniting the world through music. Bambaataa and his crew became the first hip-hop group to tour outside the United States, and everywhere they went, they “planted the seeds for the hip-hop movement in Europe, Africa, and Asia” (262). After a brawl at one of their shows, they were interviewed on television, and their fame was sealed. Japan picked up their movie Wild Style, which brought graffiti, scratch-mixing, and rap into the country. In England, punk groups like the Clash began collaborating with hip-hop artists, and by the 1980s hip-hop was a fully established scene there. Influence began spreading back toward the States as well, with artists in France heavily influencing New York artists. In South Africa, connections were drawn to ancestors as people saw hip-hop as a return to the ways of the past. MTV Raps was the first MTV show to be aired globally, and Public Enemy took their fame around the world to spread their messages of Black empowerment and unity. In South America, Brazilians were digging DJ Kool Herc. Hip-hop education programs also developed, particularly in Brazil, allowing youth to create music, discuss lyrics, run radio stations, and more. When Nelson Mandela won the presidency in South Africa’s first desegregated election, he asked Prophets of Da City, a group inspired by Public Enemy, to perform at his inauguration. German b-boy Thomas Hergenröther started a small b-boy competition in 1990, which has since exploded into “the World Cup of hip-hop dance” (270), drawing together artists from around the world. Hip-hop became a global culture for youth that went beyond music into fashion, language, politics, and a way of being. It allowed young people to connect with one another. At the same time, it became more and more heavily commodified. However, it never lost its ability to be a vehicle of expression for those who are oppressed. In the 1980s, African American music was banned off South Korean radio stations as part of a campaign to purify the nation and prevent South Koreans from getting “too many ideas about freedom” (272). After the election of Kim Young-Sam in 1992, pop hip-hop artists like MC Hammer began being allowed into the country, eventually inspiring K-Pop. Korean Americans Johnjay Chon and Charlie Shin saw hip-hop as a way to empower themselves and express their experiences with racism in America and brought b-boying to the country with their competition, the R-16. South Korea has mandatory military service, and some b-boys have mutilated themselves or remained hidden to avoid it. 

In East Oakland, California in the 1960s, teenager Jerry Rentie was inspired by seeing the Black Panthers marching and began to dance. He was given the nickname “Worm” because of his unique dance style. He and his crew, One Plus One, mixed in moves from James Brown to Disney cartoons, and Rentie was passionate about involving his crowd. He believed the crowd and performers fed off each other and always put in extra effort to get his audience laughing, clapping, and dancing. He called this connection “a moment of alrightness” (275) because in those moments, nothing seemed wrong in the world. It was that feeling that kept Black peoples’ hope alive as they moved toward Black empowerment and freedom.

In the early 1990s, the youth voted in Bill Clinton as their president only to find him turning up the severity on Black incarceration and policing. By the end of the decade, California’s Proposition 21 (to end affirmative action) along with several police shootings and beatings of Black people, propelled a new wave of protests, many led by hip-hop artists. Mos Def spoke out about rappers’ responsibility as representatives of their communities to speak out against injustice. In 2003, the National Hip-Hop Political Convention was held, which saw over six thousand attendees from 25 states and 10 countries. They discussed the need to address police brutality, mass incarceration, and education. Sean P-Diddy Combs (Citizen Change), Russell Simmons (Hip-Hop Action Network), and the Hip-Hop Civic Engagement Project collectively registered several hundred thousand young voters of color. In 2008, Barack Obama was elected president with Black youth being “the highest youth turnout rate for any group ever recorded” (278). He was a fan of Black music, from Aretha Franklin to Public Enemy, and welcomed the support of rappers. Obama also respected their place in the fight towards equality for Black people and their importance in telling the stories that so often remain voiceless. Largely because of hip-hop artists’ drive to inspire Black youth to become politically involved, the first Black president was elected.

Obama’s election was a monumental step for America but not a cure for racism. After the murder of Oscar Grant by a policeman and Trayvon Martin by a vigilante, outrage reached new heights and spurred the creation of Black Lives Matter. Building on past movements, it spread through social media with a Twitter hashtag and an occupation in Florida by the Dream Defenders. Alicia Garza, an activist and artist in the San Francisco Bay Area, along with NYC organizer Opal Tometi and LA artist/activist Patrisse Cullors, began the movement after the Zimmerman verdict. In Ferguson, Missouri, Michael Brown was shot by a policeman a year later, causing the BLM movement to escalate and spread even further. As protests exploded in Ferguson, around 200 police swarmed in and blocked it off. Tef Poe, an aspiring rapper, provided play-by-play information about the protests, giving the people there a voice. In Ferguson, police organized a system whereby they would stop Black people for minor auto violations. The tickets and warrants issued were triple the number of residents, and police had excuses to stop everyone and anyone. They would even hang around voting centers during elections to discourage people from coming to vote. After Michael Brown’s death, social media became a vehicle to spread the news about many more subsequent incidents across the country.

With the new millennium came a new means for selling and distributing music. As online piracy caused the music industry to plunge, artists had to find ways to adapt, often distributing their music through mixtapes and later on through platforms like Spotify. At the same time, new artists emerged as the internet opened up new possibilities and platforms. Nicki Minaj established herself not as a female rapper but as a rapper, and artists like Kid Cudi and Future found their fame largely through the internet. Kendrick Lamar became the first hip-hop artist to win the Pulitzer Prize for music. In 2019, Black hip-hop artist and community activist Nipsey Hussle was murdered in Los Angeles by a member of his former gang. He grew up as a member of the Crips and had narrowly escaped prison and death, unlike most of his peers, until then.

In the 2010s, hip-hop artists like Cardi B and the Geto Boys used their power to become politically active and inspire youth to do the same. When George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis, a city notorious for police brutality, in 2020, videos of the incident went viral and massive protests began across the country. While this was going on, the coronavirus was spreading across the country, affecting people of color at a disparaging rate due to their likelihood of being essential workers and needing to perform their jobs in person. Trump’s response to the pandemic and the protests were negative and led to escalations of both. These protests are now known as the Uprisings and sparked new protest songs by artists like Public Enemy and Rebel Diaz. The protests led to the removal of several monuments across the country and fires that spread through Los Angeles and Atlanta. Rapper Killer Mike spoke out about the protests, calling for people to organize and strategize rather than burn their own houses down. He acknowledged understanding their motivations but urged people to become powerful sources of refuge instead. In 1999, DJ Kool Herc was finally recognized at the Source awards. He took the opportunity to share a message of gratitude for all those who died in hip-hop and to encourage youth to respect one another: “I gave respect to give respect and that’s how I keep my life flowing” (297).