Jeff Chang

Unemployment is skyrocketing.

And Reagan is getting rid of social services.

And so there's a feeling in the inner cities of hopelessness.

And he goes into a rhyme that talks about a sort of second-class criminal who, before too long, he realizes that there's no way out but hanging himself in the jail cell.

And what this song does is it brings back the sort of testimonial aspect of Black freedom culture, of Black freedom music.

It brings back the idea of the blues.

It brings back the idea of being able to tell the truth in the face of a lot of lies.

The message becomes a huge hit in the summer of 1982 because of that.

It steers rap music in a different direction.

You know, hip hop is something that even from the very beginning evolved dramatically over the course of every three years.

Like every three years would be a new stylistic shift.

And a whole bunch of new young people would be able to express themselves and be at the center of what was happening.

And so it's a continuity in a way, right?

That hip hop remains very close to these neighborhoods that it was birthed from.

And it's also the break, the change.

in that.

The fact that the kid who was, you know, 14 years old when he first heard DJ Kool Herc can three years later, you know, have his own sound system and be able to express himself in his own kind of a way.

It's still like that now in hip hop.

And the dances, the dances turn over maybe even faster than that now in the internet era.

But I also think that there's something more fundamental, which is that it's born of the DNA of Black freedom culture.