December 2021
In a 2007 National Geographic article, James McBride, author and beleaguered jazz lover, bemoaned the rise of hip hop over the last few decades- in fact, calling it ridiculous and avoiding it whenever possible. Yet he has shifted his views to recognize hip hop as a major force, influencing cultures worldwide and becoming a representation of self-expression, acknowledging how he has overturned his own biases over the course of the development of the genre. In his article “Hip Hop Planet”, McBride uses parallelism to connect early American hip hop with African culture and analyses the process of how hip hop evolved in order to give complexity and depth to hip hop as a genre, showing that it holds historical interest and importance.
McBride starts Burning Man with an acknowledgement: hip hop is based on race and class divisions. This the audience could be expected to glean from the demographics of hip hop artists, but McBride takes it a step further by delving into why hip hop artists in poor, black areas pioneered their new music. By explaining that lack of funds for self-expression in education and dearth of opportunities for social mobility motivated young artists to start trading beats, word play, and recording equipment, McBride lends a socioeconomic perspective to the roots of hip hop. Early American hip hop, described in McBride’s essay like an encyclopedia entry, was formed of “pioneers” who would have no idea that they were “writing musical history”. High words from an author who, at the very beginning of his essay, professed his deep aversion, even disdain for the genre, but his contradiction works in his favor because he reflects the views of his audience, guiding them along his mental shift to professing that hip hop is a modern yet ancient form of self-expression. By providing this history, McBride lends an academic weight to hip hop, asserting its persistence across time.
Not only will readers of National Geographic be McBride’s target, but they will also be similar to McBride in his music taste- skeptical, a little close-minded even. This shorter history of hip hop, which could reasonably be documented by anyone with some knowledge of American socioeconomic dynamics, does not flesh out the full story of hip hop’s identity. McBride, creating a more cohesive history of what hip hop really represents, then draws parallels between hip hop artists like Spoony Gee and Kurtis Blow to Louis Armstrong and Gil Scott-Heron (a political spoken word pianist). Though these artists seem worlds apart, McBride shifts from simply analyzing the process of hip hop to explaining why hip hop has certain traits that broke the mold of what was considered music. Referencing experts from Columbia College and taking on a historian’s syntax, McBride interprets the black American music traits in African griots, jazz musicians, and hip hop artists as “defensive empowering strategies” which elevated the art of all three genres to a new level. It is this analysis that forms McBride’s argument: hip hop not only has weight, but derives from a culture and represents key traits of that culture, making it a genre worthy of serious consideration.
McBride may not be a hip hop lover now- after all, he himself acquiesces that it is hard to overturn the beliefs over the formation of hip hop that it is a lowbrow form of art, a weak imitation of real music- but by documenting the evolution of hip hop and tracing its roots to ancient world history, he communicates the idea that hip hop is interconnected with global culture, and should be considered a form of art that simply comes in a different packaging. When hip hop has perpetuity, it has the power to influence, to become an art form for young people, and to form new cultures. McBride asserts that readers bearing witness to the formation of this movement should look to its roots to debunk their disdain, to see the real importance of what he argues hip hop is.