Dylan Qu
The sidelines of hip hop are heavy with spectators— people in the crowd plug in, turn on and cop out. Hip hop is brought to you in four parts without commercial interruption, and consumers become further separated from the artists and culture as time passes. The barrier widens, the product rises to the surface and the ideologies of divergence and challenge are left behind. Breaking is reduced down to street gymnastics, while its strong community and deep history get ignored. Graffiti artists forget their etiquette and start writing in places they shouldn’t, like school bathrooms. The purpose of graffiti is not to make a janitor’s life harder, and there’s no reason to write something that will immediately be removed. There absolutely is a difference between reclaiming and beautifying a public space and destroying a bathroom. Homophobia plagues a community that is supposed to endorse self expression and human rights. When an event titled “Battle of the Year” posted a pride flag on Instagram, a flood of comments complained about how hip hop had existed without the presence of social and political issues for many years. Even a quick 20-second internet search could prove otherwise. But how could these ideas so vital to the community be forgotten?
Everyone knows about the internet. It’s a central part of our lives, but if someone was asked to explain it, they probably wouldn’t be able to. A similar dilemma exists with hip hop: Everyone knows and loves Kendrick Lamar and MF DOOM, but many overlook the culture that they come from. The four elements of hip hop are MCing (rapping), DJing, breaking and graffiti. MCing and DJing challenged the public’s idea of what music should sound like, breaking rejected many traditional ideas of dance and graffiti defied what was acceptable as visual art. All four of these elements offer chances for artists to create with what they have. Hip hop is a catalyst for breaking norms, but as people separate from the culture, the central themes that are so important get neglected.
IF THERE IS NO EXTERNAL FORCE PREVENTING THE CULTIVATION OF HIP HOP IN PALO ALTO, THEN THERE MUST BE AN INTERNAL FORCE. THE INTERNAL FORCE, TO BE BLUNT, IS LAZINESS.
If the problem is that the audience is disengaged, then the solution seems pretty simple: to re-engage. This fix, however, is not as easy as it sounds, especially in Palo Alto. The break community is difficult to engage with in Palo Alto because it either does not exist or is highly elusive. Community is necessary for involvement, but when there is no involvement, there is no community— in other words, it’s a self-perpetuating cycle. Though a seemingly daunting task, the cycle has been broken before: Palo Alto used to have a strong breaking scene in the late 1990s and early 2000s. There are videos of people crammed into the Mitchell Park Community Center watching a 2v2 battle. A surface-level explanation for why such a large community fizzled out is that tech does not mix with hip hop, but there are plenty of dancers in San Jose that major in computer science and work for big tech companies.
If there is no external force preventing the cultivation of hip hop in Palo Alto, then there must be an internal force. The internal force, to be blunt, is laziness. The easy way into hip hop is not learning about its history and skimping over the heritage of this generation’s artists. It’s not as impactful, and the underlying themes are ignored at the expense of hip hop’s culture. The harder, more meaningful way into hip hop is participation. It can mean anything from listening to older music and reading about famous MCs to going to jams in San Jose. While much of hip hop history is not easily searchable on the internet, there is still a lot to learn from the readily available information. The best way to partake in hip hop is not to sit in front of a TV, but to sit in the driver’s seat. As Gill Scott-Heron put it, “the revolution will be live,”
and hip hop should be also.
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