2023 brought us Hip Hop’s (it is now a proper noun, hence the capitalization) 50th anniversary. We can argue about whether or not the commonly told stories of Hip Hop’s origins are temporally and geographically accurate, whether or not the players who are lauded in the culture had as much impact as they claim to have, and we could mos def argue that all of the mainstream attention on the culture was so long overdue as to be comically insulting, as KRS-One feels. However, our energies and attention could be better utilized by holding up a contemporary mirror to the culture.
I won’t sit here and pretend that I wasn’t swept up in the excitement. From shows, to museum exhibits, to so many televised specials and documentaries (I’m sure I haven’t seen them all) it felt like a time of arrival, that Hip Hop was getting its just due. Not that Hip Hop has ever had to prove itself. As a culture, I’d argue that Hip Hop is just as important as the Italian Renaissance. Yup. I said it. And if you’d like to battle me on this point, I can show my work. Hip Hop changed (for better and for worse) commerce, art, culture, spirituality, DIY ethos, poverty consciousness, language, male-to-male (non-sexual) affection, and so many other things I’m sure I’m forgetting. Hip Hop’s fingerprints are everywhere.
In the early 2000s, my then finance and I were in the Philippines. We were on the island of Cebu, in the city of Carcar. We were with some of her maternal relatives, driving through what was basically jungle. We saw goats, wayward dogs roaming around, karabaw chilling in streams. We got out of the open air truck and wandered around. I don’t do nature, or animals very well, so I was more than a little on edge. What if one of these giant ox looking things decided to charge us? What if her family were all secretly anti-Black and abandoned me in all this lush greenery? As we pushed deeper into the foliage, we hit a clearing where there was an old burned out church. Amongst its fire-blackened brick, there was one spot on one of the only walls still standing. On that wall was spray painted, “Snoop Dogg” in Olde English lettering. How in the hell? I hadn’t seen any kind of power line, paint store, or civilization for dozens of miles. Out of everything we could’ve seen, we see ‘Snoop Dogg’ tagged up. Yes, I know. Snoop is a rapper. But he is a rapper because of the culture of Hip Hop. If you’ve perused any part of the ‘innanetz’ - shouts out to Combat Jack (R.I.P. #combatcancer) - there’s always someone standing on their digital soapbox, making sure that we, the faceless digital denizens of the cyber cypher, know, ‘Rap is something you do. Hip Hop is how you live.’ We know. KRS emphasized that years ago. Rap is a function of hip hop.
Hip Hop is everywhere. It is a global phenomenon. It is a culture in and unto itself.
And before we get any further into this, I want to make something insanely clear: Hip Hop is not youth culture. Hip Hop is Black and Latin folk culture. If you’d like to argue this, I’ll battle you. And I’ll win.
One of the most impactful things I experienced during all of the #HipHop50 celebrations was the world’s greatest entertainer, Dougie Fresh, performing (with the aid of digital projection) what amounts to a living memorial. He rocked the stage, shouting out those of the Hip Hop Nation we lost. As the names scrolled across the screen and spilled from Dougie’s mouth, I was overcome with a wave of sorrow. So many dead. So many preventable deaths. It was almost overwhelming as Hip Hop has been one of the most influential cultural forms I’ve ever been connected to. So many of my fellow Hip Hoppers, gone. And those were just the folks who were in the public eye. Seeing those popular folks get honored, made me think of the unknown B-Folks who died through violence, poor health, or because their bodies betrayed them (#combatcancer). Then my mind turned to another group of Hip Hoppers who have basically been banished to some pocket universe where their voices have been stripped from them: those who have been harmed and injured within the cultural context of Hip Hop.
When we critique Hip Hop, we have to be prepared for the backlash. We have to be prepared for the possibility that our relationship to and with it might change—maybe not for the better. It is profoundly foolish to expect our culture to be free from the bullshit that exists in the world. If we do, then we don’t have a culture. We are engaging in decidedly harmful cultural cosplay—a pantomime of reality, free of reality. And when the bullshit of the everyday rears its Hydra head in our culture, there’s a personal calculus: Do I confront this and at what cost? Do I ignore it? Do I help to throw a sheet over the Hydra and pretend it isn’t there, and go on about my business as if a giant ass Kaiju isn’t wreaking havoc? So many, too many, have chosen the third option.
When I heard that Afrika Bambaataa was being accused of sexual assault, it shook me to my core. There were always hints, people who felt “an energy” about him. For so long I was complicit in Hip Hop myth-making that I flat out refused to believe it. How are you going to accuse the godfather of Hip Hop culture, one of its architects, of something so irredeemable heinous? How dare you. But once that accusation was made, the hints became rumors that became gossip that became impossible to ignore. So many people, famous and not, leapt to his defense. All kinds of time-worn accusations of “they” trying to eviscerate a Black man; claims of lyncing were bandied about. For this Hydra to rend apart our culture, there had to be something or someone nefarious behind it? Yes, there was. It was Bambaataa and every single person, Zulu Nation member or not, who allowed this behavior to happen more than once. To allow young men and boys to be brutalized and instead of taking care of them, making them as safe as can be, there was a concerted effort to cover it up. A prominent and influential part of Hip Hop culture, my culture, used its power and influence to insulate a predator and hide the harm he caused made me sick to my stomach. Doubly so as a survivor of abuse.
It took a minute, but (eventually) the Universal Zulu Nation issued half-assed apologies to the accusers (the harmed) and made attempts to distance themselves from Bambaataa. When Melle Mel said, “everyone knew”, I was gutted. That this was an open secret is devastating. It could be argued that so many people, particularly men, had jobs in Hip Hop while no one else would employ them because of their combination of gender and race and/or interactions with the justice system, and they didn’t want to give up the money, prestige, and bonhomie. It could be argued, but not justified. There is no justification that absolves abuse of any kind. When you side with a predator, you’re a predator by proxy. The distancing tactic of, “that’s what he’s into” is nor only futile, but implicates you more. Granted, some of the reticence to speak out was because of homophobia. How could a former gang leader who took all that energy and presence to help build one of the most influential cultural movements of our contemporary era be gay? His behavior wasn’t that of a gay man. It was that of a child molester. There could be some truth in this? That he was forced to be closeted because Hip Hop was so hyper-hetero-masculine…Nah. There are millions of people who were forced to be closeted for so long and never devolved into being a sexual predator. There are no excuses. Bambaataa hasn’t been charged or convicted of anything. His absence, and the suppressed presence of the Zulu Nation during all #HipHop50 events was a subtle condemnation of Bambaataa and his enablers, but there are still people who’ve been harmed—probably much more than self-reported—who have yet to have any kind of redress. We need to find and take care of them, as a nation.
That is my hope, but I feel that there isn’t any real possibility of this happening because detrimental history had a way of repeating itself, while also metastasizing.
Enter Sean [insert nickname/alias here] Combs at his most monstrous. Once again, the rumors have always been there. What makes this even more heinous than Bambaataa is that Combs was the very embodiment of Hip Hop’s ethos. He elevated himself into an ambassador of the culture. He came from humble beginnings and through the sheer force of his will (and alliances with some less than legal sources) was able to fundamentally impact Hip Hop culture just as Russell Simmons (another predator..what the actual fuck?) did. In more than one interview, Combs professed to follow in Simmons’ footsteps—I guess he found those predatory footsteps to be worth following in.
If you model yourself after an abuser, do you also model their abusive mindset and actions?
While the rumors of Comb’s behavior have been following him and his roving circus for years, it took Cassie Ventura’s bravery to hold Combs to account. What sucks is that it took a video of her being beaten for more people to believe her and the rumors about him—and this video appeared after she’d won substantial damages from him. Then he had the nerve to get on our Internet to offer a half-assed apology that was not only disgusting, but such a worn tactic that we need to automatically dismiss public apologies until redress is made to the victims. And with Combs, we know that there are more victims. Victims who are too afraid to come forward. And we also know that there is (hopefully, was?) a machine that not only protected Combs but also helped to further perpetuate harm done to who knows how many people.
Then there are the Hip Hop adjacents, R.Kelly and Nicki Minaj’s husband, and scores of others. One is too many. This many, and we need to have a very hard conversation about the rot in our culture, the willful blindness in our culture, and the, ‘oh well, not my my business’ distancing in our culture.
When I bring this up, people try to shout me down by saying things like, “You’re worse than the white man. Why are you trying to bring down Black men? Why are you attacking the culture you claim to love? You acting like this stuff doesn’t happen in any other cultures.” They do happen in other cultures, but those cultures are not where my focus is. Some folks even want to elevate to a physical level. When I invite them to express themselves in any way they see fit, they decline.
I’m not attacking anything. I’m a middle aged B-boy who still loves this culture in a way that is probably silly. I still have hope that it can become this egalitarian safe zone that provides love and protection for all who pour into it. Also, I hate predators and those who abet them.
Hip Hop started with an ethos of: Peace, Love, Unity, and Having Fun. Now let’s add Accountability and Intervention to the mix. The initial four elements of Hip Hop were: B-Boy(Girling), DJing, Graf Writing, and Emceeing. It’s time to add Keeping the Culture Safe For all as an additional element.
For every person who has been preyed upon and abused in the Hip Hop Nation, there needs to be four or more people attempting to help them heal while also running the predators to ground. We need to engage in an ethics of radical accountability, otherwise why are we still fighting for this culture? Why are we still engaging with it?
Every cultural context has bad actors, people who use their standing and influence to prey on people, who exert their power over people who don’t have any. And? Hip Hop is where I am, who I am, and this is where I’m choosing to engage radical accountability.
Word is bond.