Half a century of hip-hop. The language of the Bronx is now the musical Esperanto.

Tonight, Cindy thought that there would only be a school party at her house in the West Bronx. Instead, it was a revolution, that evening of August 11, 1973. He asked his brother Clive Campbell, also known as Dj Kool Herc (he smoked packs of Kools and was as big as Hercules), to “put on records”, and he showed up with two turntables and a mixer, inventing “scratching”. It was early, around 9pm because everyone was sixteen or seventeen, but if hip hop is everywhere and anytime these days, well, thanks to that little Coke and chips party at 3:20pm on the very long Sedwick -avenue. One of the most dangerous roads in the world becomes the cradle of a musical genre that will change the world. As soon as rock and roll succeeded in doing this, hip-hop (a term that seems to mock the gait of the military during marches) influenced not only music, but also society, and also, of course, customs, quarreled with politics . and now it conditions it, it sows death, it pervades the generations, carrying sounds always distinct but never different. From house parties to block parties in the Bronx or Harlem, to new school, gunsta rap, alternative and trap, hip hop has expanded to the point where no music genre today is immune to a code so fluid that it adapts and innovates. over time. . A slow, very slow process that was born when Led Zeppelin filled American stadiums and coliseums, and for the rest of the West, black music was James Brown music at best, and blues and soul signed by Motown or Stax Records not quite full of anger, unpublished or incomprehensible slang, a burning desire to dream differently. The strength of hip hop is that it’s not just music, but a subculture expanded with graffiti, breakdancing, beatboxing and language, yes, language, because hip hop’s language is currently the most spoken Esperanto among young people under 50 years. By the way: usually hip-hop and rap are used as synonyms, but they are not. Rap is definitely hip-hop. But hip-hop can incorporate other elements of the movement’s culture as well, such as DJing, turntablism, scratching, etc. Today, half a century old, the faces of DJ Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash, Afrikaa Bambaataa and The Sugarhill Gang are carved into hip-hop the music of Mount Rushmore, who in 1979 recorded the first hip-hop song Rapper’s Deliance. There are coordinates in the Rapper’s delight that are so far, revised and (c) very correct, the benchmark of the genre, i.e. the use of instrumental parts of pre-existing songs (in this case Good Times by Chic) and so on. – the so-called “rap”, which is a syncopated way of communication, originating from the Jamaican “toasting” and necessarily mixing content, “flow”, i.e. rhythm, and flow, i.e. rhythm. Growing up hand in hand with technology (as sampling and drum machines became available to everyone), hip hop was primarily a denial of the cornerstones of music up to that time, i.e. the virtuosity of vocal or instrumentation and the presence of musicians. Hip-hop can be created anywhere, even alone, even without tools. Therefore, it can be mixed with everything. And it is no coincidence that between 1983 and 1986 the second wave of rap absorbed rock and, above all, thanks to Run Dmc, LL Cool J (today Sam Hanna in Ncis Los Angeles), Public Enemy and the Beastie Boys (epoch-making Walk this path with Aerosmith) , hitting the world charts, getting Grammy nominations, getting on the cover of Rolling Stone. In the late 1980s, the genre, previously closed in the ghetto, rose to the top of the world and has not come down since. He grinded up cheap Guns N’ Roses, Nirvana grunge, alternative rock to become a main character. Hip-hop is a billion dollar empire. And he became one too, creating mysteries and legends, sacrificing Tupac Shakur (“shot” in Las Vegas on September 8, 1996, died a few days later) and The Notorius BIG (“shot” in Los Angeles with a 9 mm 9 March 1997) and launched artists who position themselves as transnational corporations. According to Forbes, the richest rapper of all is Kanye West with $6.6 billion, Jay-Z is second with $1.3 billion, Sean Combs, aka Diddy, is third with $900 million, and so on. It’s not just records or concerts that generate income, but gigantic merchandising, branded merchandise, fashion lines, and even wine cellars (Snoop Dogg) or champagne (Jay Z’s Armand de Brignac). Surely their fees are a hundred, or even a thousand times higher than those of the first MCs, the entertainers who set the tone for block parties in the late 70s. And these turns are also a paradigm for how far rap has achieved its original goal of breaking isolation by leaving the ghetto (physically and politically). A decisive spark, which, however, is becoming increasingly parodic today, especially in Italy, where “ghettos” are much less defined than the ghettoes of the 80s in the States. But undoubtedly the “hip-hop code”, even at the “gangsta” stage with songs like Cop killer (cop killer) Ice T, which pissed off everyone, including George W. Bush, helped overcome racial mistrust that would have taken much more time. This is the power of music, a power often forgotten by politicians. And, of course, the power of rap is that, unlike rock, it’s an ever-evolving magma, so it’s always new no matter what. If it’s been the world’s best-selling music genre since the late ’90s (with a bit of a decline), then it’s true that late ’90s rappers are far from new. Take Eminem, the first “white man” to achieve resounding success, the first to “reunite” the rap population as a main character. His 2000 Marshall Mathers record was a bombshell of unprecedented violence (even verbal) and he remains a three-star rap general. But when you compare these songs to the songs on Travis Scott’s new Utopia album, Kanye West’s protégé and new trap hero (there’s still some controversy over his August 7th Circus Maximus concert in Rome), they seem geological. back. However, they all have a hip-hop stamp. In a word, without rap the world would have been, would have thought, would have voted, would have dressed differently. And he would probably also speak differently because, with the exception of such exceptions as Kendrick Lamar, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Music, the (multi)language of rap has established itself in the world’s vocabulary. Opening to new, decisive arguments. But lowering its level and strangely remaining outside the politically correct trap that anesthetizes communication. After all, popular music is often “disobedience” and, as Sartre said, “those who are young want to take orders so they can disobey.” Jim Morrison, Bob Dylan or Nick Cave disobeyed writing poetry. Now we prefer poetics to vulgarity, and who ultimately decides what they like better.