Popping, locking, and looking back: A music journalist reflects on 50 years of hip-hop
The genre, which traces its roots to a 1973 party in the Bronx, has endured for five decades. An entertainment writer looks back at how it captured his imagination — and helped inspire a career.
In the winter after I started 10th grade, I regularly trekked a mile from the old Richard Allen public housing projects to Bodine High School on blustery mornings when the temperature was almost identical to my age. I was bundled in a black Triple F.A.T. Goose trench coat, red skully, and thick gloves like a lot of my peers, but what really kept me warm on those frigid walks to school was my Sony Walkman.
Cassette tapes and headphones transported me to a dimension where hip-hop music reigned supreme. I marveled at the cuts, beats, and rhymes. The lyrics of MC Lyte, Public Enemy, Big Daddy Kane, MC Hammer, KRS-One, Kid ‘n Play, and many others captured my imagination — and ultimately helped inspire my career as a music journalist.
My godmother, Mae Frances, encouraged my developing obsession by blessing me with the coins that I needed to build my record collection. The creative album covers — many of which would go on to become the emblems of a musical era — were just as valuable as the songs themselves to my peers and me.
My sister Joycelyn and I memorized the lyrics to our favorite songs and choreographed dance routines to Heavy D, Doug E. Fresh, and Stetsasonic. We couldn’t afford to buy the albums, but that didn’t stop us from getting to the music. The wildest part is that we sometimes didn’t even know what some of our favorite artists looked like because we simply taped their songs from Lady B’s live radio show on Power 99 FM on Friday nights.
We popped, locked, and slid across the floor without a care in the world, sweating to the music — and dogging our sneakers in the process. In between dance sessions, we taught our 3-year-old brother, Malcolm, the words to “Peter Piper” by Run-DMC.
Even as a toddler, he would spit those lyrics with great accuracy despite not yet knowing how to read. Our mother, Joyce, known far and wide simply as “Starr,” asked us to demonstrate all the new dance moves so she would be ready to show her skills at Jerry’s Bar at 13th and Christian Streets.
Looking back, it’s hard to believe that this artistic juggernaut has now endured for five decades. All year, the 50th anniversary of hip-hop as a musical genre — which is usually traced to the pioneering use of scratching by DJ Kool Herc at a rec center party in the Bronx in 1973 — has been celebrated with reflections on its global impact.
On a personal level, the events of this milestone year have been beyond the wildest dreams of my teenage self. After all, it was hip-hop that inspired my decision to pursue a career in journalism, which helped lift me out of public housing.
A month after transferring to Overbrook High School during my junior year, I was caught sneaking backstage at a Salt-N-Pepa concert at the Valley Forge Music Fair.
I lied and told the security guard I was Pepa’s cousin.
Wildly enough, she backed up the lie and told him to leave me be — and the rest is history. Interviewing rappers and celebrities seemed like a pretty cool day job that suited my extroverted personality.
Back in February, I walked the red carpet at the 65th Annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles with my good friend Dee Dee Roper, known to the world as the iconic DJ Spinderella. She was on deck to perform with her former group Salt-N-Pepa during an electrifying 12-minute “Hip-Hop 50 Tribute” organized by Philly’s own Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson.
I could not help but reflect on my own personal hip-hop journey as I sat in the green room at the show’s rehearsal alongside DJ Jazzy Jeff, who was the first person I interviewed as a young, aspiring journalist.
I was then a 17-year-old high school senior writing for “Fresh Ink,” a now-defunct teen section that ran every week in the Philadelphia Daily News. The day after the ceremony, Jeff and I reenacted the photo from the Powerhouse concert in October of 1992 where we first met.
During rehearsals, I was fortunate enough to tell LL Cool J, Chuck D, and Rakim how much their art has inspired me. I discovered their voices while living in Philadelphia’s housing projects and eventually became a homeowner by covering hip-hop.
Following the performance, which received a roaring ovation from the audience, I was joined at my table by Salt (Cheryl James) and Pepa (Sandra Denton), making it a complete full-circle moment from that fateful evening in October 1991 when I snuck backstage after their concert.
In June, I organized and hosted a hip-hop tribute during the annual Juneteenth celebration put on by the African American Museum in Philadelphia. DJ Spinderella and Mister Mann’s Jam Band — a high-octane, nine-piece band and four incredible vocalists — rocked a crowd of nearly 8,000 lovers of the culture.
Later in the summer, I went to the Essence Music Festival in New Orleans, where it was especially gratifying to see Philly’s own Eve rocking the crowd at Caesars Superdome. I was one of the first journalists to interview Eve when I wrote about music for the Daily News in the late ‘90s and early 2000s.
With only one single out at the time, Eve spoke then of how she wanted her career to expand into film and television — goals she has achieved many times over.
Last month, I attended a taping at the YouTube Theater in Los Angeles. It was a jaw-dropping gathering of hip-hop icons who performed hit songs that are the soundtrack of my life and the lives of millions of others.
» READ MORE: 50 years of Philly hip-hop, from Lady B to Will Smith to Lil Uzi Vert | Opinion
So many styles, geographic regions, and eras of rap music were represented throughout the taping, which will air on Sunday on CBS at 8:30 p.m. as a two-hour special, A Grammy Salute to 50 Years of Hip-Hop.
No spoilers here, but if you are a true hip-hop fan, there will be moments when the dose of nostalgia will make you jump off the couch.
My advice to hip-hop fans born in the ‘60s and ‘70s is to stretch and hydrate before you tune in, because you may just have dance flashbacks from your senior year in college, or that eighth-grade dance where your classmates taught you how to do the Roger Rabbit.
Long live cuts, beats, and rhymes. Long live hip-hop.
Mister Mann Frisby is a music journalist, best-selling author, and event curator who may or may not still be able to do all of the dances that were popular at his senior prom.