How Hip Hop Made the World: Dr. Todd Boyd on Cultural Foundations & Global Impact of Hip Hop

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[00:00:57] Dr. Todd Boyd, this fantastic, well-crafted and well put together tomb that I've had delivered, Rappers Deluxe, How Hip Hop Made the World.

[00:01:08] Dr. Todd Boyd. Good evening sir.

[00:01:12] Hello, how are you?

[00:01:13] I'm doing well. How are you?

[00:01:15] I'm good. I'm good.

[00:01:17] Good is good. I'm glad you're good. And I thank you for your time and for making some time for us tonight here on Hip-Hop Can Save America.

[00:01:24] Why don't you, if you could sir, please, I could just read your bio. I've given a little bit of preamble to who you are and what you do.

[00:01:31] But sometimes what we do today isn't what was on the bio yesterday. If you can kindly present yourself as you prefer to be presented to the world, to our audience.

[00:01:41] Dr. Todd Boyd, often known as Notorious PhD amongst other things, and happy to be here with you this evening.

[00:01:50] Thank you very much. I appreciate your time. This book, which I've enjoyed on several levels and I've told people a little bit about it, but as well let's try to get into it.

[00:02:00] I'm going to start at the now, kind of where we're at. Then maybe we'll go a little bit way back and see how we got here.

[00:02:06] If you could, this book is recently released. Again, it's called Rappers Deluxe, How Hip Hop Made the World.

[00:02:11] If you could, the short synopsis of the book, what it's about as you intended it to be received.

[00:02:18] Well, the book is a, let's say 50 year history of hip hop as a cultural movement.

[00:02:26] Specifically looking at not only the music, but hip hop's connection to film, to sports, to art, politics, language, fashion.

[00:02:40] It's the cultural movement, as I suggest. We look at it from the very beginning to the present, covering half a century and talking about so many things in a way that people don't often talk about hip hop, but demonstrating how hip hop came to be, but also how it has influenced so many other things.

[00:03:03] Right, the cultural movement as we talk about often. I don't know how much you know about what we do here, but that's sort of our role is to remind and advocate for the idea that hip hop is more than music.

[00:03:14] It is a cultural movement and it's something that's really unique in its, as a remix culture, right? Something that's taken from so many different elements, created so many new things.

[00:03:23] I think that's a lot of what you get into in the book, which is divided into basically chapters based on decades, but has these tie-ins, this idea of a remix culture, right?

[00:03:34] Well, remix is a great metaphor to use because the idea of taking something that already exists and reworking it so as to find ways to get new meaning out of something that previously existed is at the root of hip hop.

[00:03:52] You know, when you talk about remixing and sampling, hip hop was of course music that didn't necessarily start with a live band creating original tunes, but instead took pre-existing music and created something new out of what had already been recorded.

[00:04:12] And so it's remix in that sense, but also if you use remix as a metaphor for what hip hop has done to American culture.

[00:04:22] You know, what it's done to American history, what it's done to other areas such as I mentioned, film and fashion and art.

[00:04:31] When we talk about how hip hop has taken all of these areas and kind of reshaped it, reformatted it, put it into a context that previously didn't exist and in this way created something new and fresh.

[00:04:47] And so, you know, remix is such a powerful metaphor because ultimately that's what hip hop has done to American culture and society.

[00:04:56] And perhaps we could even say global society.

[00:04:59] I agree, certainly global.

[00:05:01] I'd like to explore a couple of the connections that you make.

[00:05:04] This isn't the can't stop, won't stop type of book which goes through the step by step organization and history of everything that happened.

[00:05:13] What you do is you do a lot of tying it in with the times, right?

[00:05:17] And the other cultural influences that were both influencing hip hop and like you say that hip hop went and influenced outwardly, which I think is pretty brilliant because young people,

[00:05:28] because younger folks may not know all of the early days and all of the influences and how hip hop came to be.

[00:05:35] And then folks who are kind of older in the hip hop world, you know, some of us OGs a little bit jaded and we don't necessarily appreciate how much is happening amongst the younger generation that we sometimes look in a disparaging way.

[00:05:49] So I'd like to if you could expand on a few of the connections that you talk about in the book.

[00:05:53] And I just want to go quickly.

[00:05:55] You know, I've said this whole point people go get the book.

[00:05:57] We're not gonna tell them about the whole book.

[00:05:59] But you know, so you start in the 70s.

[00:06:01] You obviously touch on some of the landscape for lack of a better word, both physical and cultural, including the political, the socioeconomic landscape, but also the music at the time and the film at the time.

[00:06:18] All of these things kind of reached in and kind of helped the music and the culture, which wasn't called hip hop then coalesce.

[00:06:25] Right.

[00:06:26] What was happening in the 70s that made this thing a thing?

[00:06:31] Well, you know, there's a very well known origin story to hip hop now.

[00:06:37] People reference, you know, DJ Kool Herc and the party in the Bronx in August of 1973.

[00:06:45] Sure.

[00:06:46] And so what I did when I was doing the research for the book was went and looked up what was going on at the box office in terms of Hollywood during that same time.

[00:06:59] And I discovered that that same week, the number one film in the country was Pam Grier's film Coffee.

[00:07:09] And when I saw that, it indicated that at this moment when hip hop was being born underground, you know, if you weren't there, you didn't know about it.

[00:07:19] Right.

[00:07:20] There's no radio airplay or nothing on television that would have announced this.

[00:07:24] But at that same moment, the most popular movie in the country is a Pam Grier film Coffee, part of the blaxploitation era.

[00:07:33] Now fast forward 20 years and you have in the 90s, the rapper Foxy Brown referencing another Pam Grier film from that era.

[00:07:43] Right.

[00:07:44] And also Quentin Tarantino's film Jackie Brown starring the same Pam Grier blaxploitation of course was hugely influential on hip hop.

[00:07:55] And that was what was current at the moment.

[00:07:59] Hip hop was born.

[00:08:01] And of course, when you get to the late 80s and you know so many rappers are starting to appropriate from blaxploitation characters, blaxploitation films, there's always been that strong connection.

[00:08:12] So when hip hop was being created, what was going on in the larger culture that would have influenced it?

[00:08:22] And it took us a while before we could see those influences manifest.

[00:08:28] So to talk about hip hop to me is to talk about blaxploitation in the 70s.

[00:08:33] It's to talk about the influence of people like Richard Pryor, the influence of someone like a Miles Davis in their early 70s.

[00:08:43] People don't often make these direct connections, but the connections over time become quite apparent.

[00:08:50] We also talk about what's happening in New York.

[00:08:53] What's going on in the South Bronx?

[00:08:55] What's happening politically?

[00:08:57] Right. This is the era of course when New York, very different than the way people think about it now.

[00:09:03] The famous blackout, the 70s, urban decay.

[00:09:08] So you look at a film like Scorsese's classic Taxi Driver.

[00:09:12] Most people when they think about taxi driver Scorsese don't think about hip hop.

[00:09:16] But to me, that film gives us an indication of what New York is like at that moment when Herc and those other pioneers are, you know, developing the culture.

[00:09:28] So all of those connections, you know, which have long existed, but people haven't always made relative to hip hop.

[00:09:37] Someone said to me, I've read a lot of books about hip hop.

[00:09:42] This is the first one I've ever read that mentioned Angela Davis.

[00:09:45] Well, one of the photos that I included in the book is this photo of Angela Davis, you know, Afro iconic photo smoking a cigarette and the whole vibe of the photo based on the smoke of the cigarette.

[00:10:01] I mean, that's a great influence.

[00:10:04] Right. And that's hip hop.

[00:10:06] The connection between black power, black nationalism, social activism.

[00:10:12] Again, all of these things will come up in various ways in the future for hip hop.

[00:10:16] But what I was showing in that first chapter, which honestly for me was the most enjoyable chapter to write because I got a chance to relive all that culture from that era.

[00:10:28] What I'm focusing on there is how those things present at that time influenced hip hop as hip hop itself was growing and developing and how in future decades, we would see those influences in very obvious ways.

[00:10:44] Yep, I get it.

[00:10:45] 100% my dad and shouts to the educators that are watching and part of the often part of the audience yourself included.

[00:10:51] I included my dad was a distinguished professor of sociology, taught at SUNY Old Westbury in Long Island.

[00:10:58] And he was very, you know, kind of ahead of the times when it comes to he was woke before it was a thing.

[00:11:04] I knew what gentrification meant when I was eight.

[00:11:06] You know, it was one of those kind of things.

[00:11:08] He's from New York, New Jersey studied urban studies, sociology, minorities at the time.

[00:11:13] And he taught me about Robert Moses.

[00:11:15] And when I got a little bit older and I started doing my own independent scholarship about hip hop, I said, Robert Moses helped make hip hop like you wouldn't make these connections normally.

[00:11:23] And that's exactly I mean there's so many figures and currencies and events and elements that led to the creation of hip hop.

[00:11:34] And if you study going forward, as I do in subsequent chapters, you'll see those things manifest.

[00:11:40] You'll see them represent themselves and they're all part of that, you know, fabric in the same way that, you know, I'm born in the 60s, grew up in the 70s.

[00:11:49] Right.

[00:11:50] I'm a child of the 70s.

[00:11:52] All of those influences, all those blaxploitation movies, Richard Pryor albums, the fashion of the cats coming back home from Vietnam, which I talk about.

[00:12:03] To me, that's the beginning of, you know, streetwear.

[00:12:06] Guys wearing those jackets that they got in Vietnam, but they're back home, you know, walking the streets of America, stylistically speaking.

[00:12:14] So there's so many examples that happened at that time that led to the culture as it blew up in future decades.

[00:12:24] So pointing those kind of things out to me was a lot of fun.

[00:12:28] And hopefully when people check out the book, they'll see things that connect to hip hop that they probably don't even imagine.

[00:12:34] Yeah.

[00:12:35] So I'm just some of the points you've already brought up is, you know, would be things that it's very easy to tie in the musical lineage and talk about the the asparic origins of, you know, griots and, you know, talking and speaking and drum circles and all those things.

[00:12:49] We talk about that and we hear about that a lot.

[00:12:51] But these specifics, you know, gang, the gang culture in New York City, we hear about these things.

[00:12:56] But these are some angles that we spend less time on.

[00:12:59] That's what I appreciated about this.

[00:13:00] Move forward a little bit.

[00:13:01] These things continue, but they evolve.

[00:13:03] They morph.

[00:13:04] So when you talked about streetwear, for example, 80s, a little bit more of a fashion sense was working into the culture.

[00:13:10] Sports now you talked about, you know, was sort of becoming that.

[00:13:15] And again, it's like a push pull, right?

[00:13:16] The influence influences on hip hop.

[00:13:18] But then hip hop turns around and influences on it back.

[00:13:21] So what was happening in the 80s that stands out that you that you looked into?

[00:13:25] I mean, you know, one of the photos and I should point out this is, you know, image and text.

[00:13:33] Yeah, I mentioned earlier, I think it's a it's beautifully shot.

[00:13:36] There's so many great photos in there, iconic ones and ones we've never seen before.

[00:13:40] It's great collection of visually as well.

[00:13:42] Thank you.

[00:13:43] Thank you.

[00:13:44] You know, it was a lot of it was again, a lot of fun curating the images which I did and then writing the text.

[00:13:51] And so the stories in the book are visual, but they're also textual.

[00:13:57] We have this one photo in the book of Ronald Reagan in 1980 campaigning in the Bronx.

[00:14:05] And, you know, the South Bronx was, you know, thought to be kind of ground zero for urban decay.

[00:14:12] And here's Reagan and behind him, you know, there's the word decay, you know, on the wall.

[00:14:19] Right. I mean, you know, and you consider Reaganomics and the negative impact that the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 had on the development of hip hop throughout the era.

[00:14:31] This is also the era of crack cocaine, the beginning of the crack cocaine epidemic.

[00:14:36] The impact that this had on hip hop, a film like Scarface, which I call the canonical text of hip hop in the 80s.

[00:14:45] That film became much more than a movie for people who saw it and who embraced it, who did their own interpretation of it.

[00:14:54] I often like to say, you know, if you look closely at Scarface, it's a cautionary tale.

[00:15:00] Like you don't want to end up like Tony Montana. Right. So many people misread that film, but it's right there if you look at it the right way.

[00:15:08] But hip hop is still at this time, I would say in its infancy, it's growing, but it's not what it will become.

[00:15:15] And so to talk about a grand master flash in the furious five, but specifically, Melly Mel and Duke Booty on the message doing this critique of Reagan's America.

[00:15:26] Right. I mentioned Gil Scott Heron, not a rapper, but certainly an influence and what he does on his track B movie.

[00:15:34] Right. And all of this is happening at the time when, for instance, MTV won't play videos by black artists and they're being criticized by David Bowie and Rick James.

[00:15:46] But by the end of the decade, you have the emergence of your MTV wraps, which becomes one of its most influential shows and helps to spread the music to people outside of urban America.

[00:15:59] And you also have, you know, LL, LL Rock and Air Jordans.

[00:16:03] This is the emergence of Michael Jordan, you know, his sneakers, the whole sneaker culture that develops.

[00:16:10] There's so many things in that era that are foundational.

[00:16:13] But I also talk about, you know, this early period, which I remember vividly, there's not a lot of music to listen to.

[00:16:21] So you get, you know, trash like rapping Rodney or Biggie Smalls says rap and Duke.

[00:16:28] A lot of people think that's just a line in the song.

[00:16:31] I literally remember rapping Duke, you know, this cat who's trying to imitate John Wayne.

[00:16:36] When you were in diapers and wetting the sheets, I was at the Ponderosa rapping to the beat.

[00:16:42] John Wayne was foul.

[00:16:48] Like, yeah, Wayne was was not cool by any stretch of the imagination.

[00:16:53] So we go into some of that in the book as well, covering that era when hip hop is not brand new, but it's not what it would become.

[00:17:02] Jean-Michel Basquiat, the great artist.

[00:17:04] I mean, his era in art is really the 1980s.

[00:17:08] And then, of course, in future decades, we will see rappers flexing by dropping lyrics about like having Basquiat in their collection.

[00:17:17] Nobody envisioned this back in the 80s, but that's what came to be.

[00:17:21] So this is a very pivotal time when you get to the late 80s, you're entering into the golden age of hip hop.

[00:17:28] But at the beginning of the decade, things, you know, worked a bit differently.

[00:17:32] I hear you. I remember, you know, I'm close to your age.

[00:17:36] You may have a couple years on me, but same thing.

[00:17:39] I remember, you know, having to be up, stay up Friday and Saturday nights from 10 p.m.

[00:17:43] to 2 a.m. and WBLS and Kiss FM in New York.

[00:17:47] The only places you could hear rap, maybe a college radio station if you're lucky to get a signal.

[00:17:51] And that was how you got it.

[00:17:53] But meanwhile, the culture was swirling all around you.

[00:17:56] It was different. It hadn't quite exploded into what we would call the mainstream back then.

[00:18:02] Yeah. You grew up in Detroit.

[00:18:04] I grew up in Detroit. Is that right?

[00:18:06] Yes, yes. Yeah.

[00:18:07] So, you know, similar, you know, I guess in some ways to New York City at the time.

[00:18:12] You know, we were in Long Island, so we were a half step behind.

[00:18:15] You probably were a full step behind out in the D.

[00:18:18] I don't know if we were a full step.

[00:18:20] I like the thing Detroit's the center of culture.

[00:18:22] So I understand that we would be having this conversation were it not for Motown Records.

[00:18:27] So to me, that's always where this thing starts.

[00:18:29] You know what? That's a valid point.

[00:18:32] That's a valid point.

[00:18:33] We'll have and then don't let other cities come check in.

[00:18:35] Be quiet in the chat. I don't want to hear about it.

[00:18:37] You mentioned another interview, and this is one of the things.

[00:18:40] Now, again, I'm young. I'm hanging out.

[00:18:42] We're listening to Red Alert and Molly Mall on Friday and Saturday.

[00:18:46] We're getting into it late 80s.

[00:18:47] It's really starting to become a part of our routine, our lives.

[00:18:50] And I'm fortunate enough to grow up around folks who are, you know, into this music or into that community from just where I lived and grew up.

[00:18:57] You mentioned another interview I was checking out.

[00:18:59] You mentioned Do the Right Thing as a really milestone or a pivotal thing for maybe for you, but certainly for the touch points of the culture.

[00:19:07] And it was for me. It was really that kind of it made an impression on me.

[00:19:11] Why did you mention that one?

[00:19:13] Why do you feel so strongly about that moment in time?

[00:19:16] Well, you know, I was I was in college in the early 80s.

[00:19:20] So part of the story has to do with, you know, being in college when Michael Jackson's Thriller and Prince's 1999 came out.

[00:19:31] And so everybody was listening to one or both of those records.

[00:19:37] Right. But as I say, I'm, you know, Milly Mille and Duke Booty.

[00:19:41] I'm, you know, soul sonic force.

[00:19:43] I'm the emcee.

[00:19:45] You know what I'm saying?

[00:19:46] It's like I'm not trying to be like everybody else.

[00:19:49] Right. Right.

[00:19:50] That's what I want to hear.

[00:19:51] So there's not a lot to choose from at the time it's coming, but it hadn't gotten there yet.

[00:19:57] By the late 80s, when I'm in graduate school, it's a bit of a different story.

[00:20:02] And so, you know, Spike had come out in 1986 by Lee.

[00:20:07] She's got to have it.

[00:20:09] You know, Spike's very influential when helping to create the Jordan persona around the sneakers because of the commercials for the Air Jordans.

[00:20:17] He appears in them and here's his film Do The Right Thing that comes out of 1989.

[00:20:22] And it incites all of this controversy.

[00:20:25] I mean, they're, you know, film critics are freaking out.

[00:20:29] They're saying there's going to be riots in the theater and all this nonsense.

[00:20:35] And so I go see the film.

[00:20:38] I'm in Chicago and I go see the film that summer.

[00:20:42] And interestingly enough, Barack and Michelle Obama would later tell a story that this was their first date going to see the film in Chicago.

[00:20:50] Right. So I go to see the film in Chicago and I'm sitting there and I'm in graduate school.

[00:20:56] When I started graduate school, my thing was jazz and film.

[00:20:59] I was jazz head.

[00:21:01] You know, I wanted to do something with all that.

[00:21:03] But it's like I had a calling because I was hip hop.

[00:21:08] That's my culture.

[00:21:09] I grew up in the culture.

[00:21:11] Right. So as I'm sitting there, I realized watching Do The Right Thing that the culture was blowing up and somebody was going to have to be able to explain this.

[00:21:22] I knew based on my own experiences that I could be that person.

[00:21:27] And so at that moment, that film gave me a purpose.

[00:21:31] I'm going to use all the interest and controversy around this film to develop some ideas that extend far beyond the film because at the root of it is hip hop.

[00:21:43] Hip hop, you know, social justice.

[00:21:46] I mean, public enemy.

[00:21:48] My guy Chuck D's hot.

[00:21:50] You know, fight the power is like a character in that film.

[00:21:54] Just the idea that Spike was able to bring all of that attention to him by virtue of this film he had created was just a really powerful statement.

[00:22:06] And it indicated that going forward, there was going to be a lot of other things that were going to push buttons that were going to be in people in certain ways and annoy some people and and energize others.

[00:22:21] And I recognize that I could be the one to explain all this because I knew it personally from my life.

[00:22:30] But I was also adding this academic component.

[00:22:33] So you talk about remix.

[00:22:35] I'm remixing all this, you know, theory and, you know, all these books and these authors I'm reading and this whole intellectual take coupled with the fact that, you know, I'm hip hop.

[00:22:46] I'm part of the culture.

[00:22:48] And so I felt like at that moment watching do the right thing, I could be the one to, you know, explain this to the masses because if you're in the culture, you know, but of course a lot of people didn't and a lot of people in the culture weren't making these connections at the time.

[00:23:04] So it was just for me a moment, you know, the light bulb moment, the light bulb went off and I'm like, OK, this is what I'm going to have to do.

[00:23:12] Bridge that gap a little bit.

[00:23:14] Translation of it all.

[00:23:16] You need translators.

[00:23:18] Right, right.

[00:23:19] Dr. Bettina Love, who you probably know, was on the show, first episode ever did and said, you know, the reason why we can't always get some of the things that we know hip hop can do brilliantly, you know, teach social emotional intelligence, teach camaraderie.

[00:23:33] We can't get those programs like hip hop based programs into schools, for example, because the negative perception of hip hop is because we have to translate what we do and what we know inherently into the language of academia, for example.

[00:23:47] You know, yeah.

[00:23:49] And that's part of the work.

[00:23:50] I guess it's still part of the work.

[00:23:52] I'll just go off, you know, the the chronology for a second.

[00:23:55] It's still part of the work.

[00:23:56] I guess it's part of what you continue to do because much of America, particularly white America or those are, like I say, less familiar with the culture or the cultures that we're talking about, be it hip hop culture, be a black culture, the Venn diagram where they kind of live together.

[00:24:12] They don't get it a lot of times and we miss out on a lot of brilliance and a lot of great dialogue and a lot of American history if we don't do the translating.

[00:24:23] That's still part of the work you do.

[00:24:24] Yeah.

[00:24:25] Well, as part of the work I do and really that defines the book.

[00:24:29] Yep.

[00:24:30] I mean, it's being able to explain to the masses something that exists in the culture.

[00:24:39] And honestly, there are a lot of people in the culture who don't think about these things.

[00:24:44] Right.

[00:24:45] They might be in the culture, but they don't make these connections.

[00:24:48] So a lot of times it's about explaining to people this is what's going on.

[00:24:53] Some of those people may be in the culture and have some idea.

[00:24:57] You don't have to explain as many references, but you still have to explain the context and other people.

[00:25:03] You have to explain the context and the references.

[00:25:06] My motivation was from the beginning.

[00:25:10] Like I need to be in the right location to be able to do this.

[00:25:13] Right.

[00:25:14] So it's like if I'm in Detroit and I'm Todd and I'm saying some really brilliant things, who's going to listen to me?

[00:25:24] But if I'm Dr. Boyd, I want to have a bigger audience.

[00:25:28] You know, doctor has done some of the work for me.

[00:25:32] Right.

[00:25:33] So it's like I need to be in a place where I can have the most influence.

[00:25:37] And when I got to USC in the early 90s, that's what that was.

[00:25:42] I'm in Los Angeles.

[00:25:43] I'm at USC by 1992.

[00:25:46] The culture is popping, right?

[00:25:48] Sure.

[00:25:49] And I'm situated in a position to be able to lead this conversation.

[00:25:55] But it's always been about explaining it to people who didn't get it or who don't get it and also explaining it to people who think they get it but really don't understand the magnitude of it.

[00:26:09] You know, you can be part of it like the music.

[00:26:13] But what else do you know?

[00:26:16] What else can you talk about?

[00:26:18] So, you know, you're speaking to what is it?

[00:26:21] You know, reach the bourgeois and rock the Boulevard like, you know, that's always what it's been about.

[00:26:27] You have to appeal to multiple audiences.

[00:26:30] Some people streets to the boardroom.

[00:26:32] There it is.

[00:26:33] Always, always, always.

[00:26:35] Yeah.

[00:26:36] Has that gotten?

[00:26:37] I love it.

[00:26:38] It's what I do.

[00:26:39] I should be Dr.

[00:26:40] Faces.

[00:26:41] It would make my life much more easier.

[00:26:42] Over the years that you've been doing this, though, has it gotten easier?

[00:26:46] Has it gotten better?

[00:26:47] Have the institutions opened up their, you know, their ears and eyes a little bit more?

[00:26:52] Has it been easier getting press just over the course of, I don't know, the last 10 years since, as you mentioned in here, you know, the connection to President Obama being elected in part due to, you know, hip hop mindset that young folks had or, you know,

[00:27:05] young folks had or hip hop allegiance that which is great.

[00:27:08] I wrote a piece very soon after he was elected said, you know, hip hop helped elect Barack Obama.

[00:27:13] Like that's, you know, so we've seen that.

[00:27:15] OK, there's been hip hop influence, younger people who are now older in these positions of green lighting films and right, you know, signing off on programs in your, you know, work in your perspective has has it gotten easier or and I'm going to, you know,

[00:27:31] pose this.

[00:27:32] Once it started, I always say hip hop did community very well, but there was a time when it started to look like constituency and that scared some people maybe perhaps and things maybe then didn't get so easy once they were hit to what was really happening.

[00:27:46] Give me all of that word saluting, but let me, you know, your perspective on that.

[00:27:51] Well, it's easier to the extent that if I say, you know, Jay Z or Nas or Big or, you know, Lady of Rage or Snoop Dogg or Trey or, you know, it's easy to the extent if I say any of those names, a lot of people know who I'm talking about.

[00:28:11] Sure.

[00:28:12] And that wasn't necessarily the case in the early 90s.

[00:28:14] I mean, a lot of people have heard music and, you know, we have multiple generations of people who've grown up with hip hop as a reality.

[00:28:23] And so it nothing if nothing more than they recognize the artist and they recognize the music and, you know, they know the difference between rap in country and Western.

[00:28:34] It's easier in that sense.

[00:28:36] You know, I mean, when I started at USC in early 90s, there were people very hostile to what I was doing.

[00:28:43] But I expected this.

[00:28:44] But, you know, you know, what are you doing?

[00:28:46] Why are you playing this music?

[00:28:48] We've heard this already.

[00:28:49] Like, what does this have to do?

[00:28:51] You know, people are freaking out over the language.

[00:28:53] Like, why are you playing music with this language in a classroom?

[00:28:57] You know, I have administrators who want to come and sit in the class and, you know, see what's going on because they have people complaining to them.

[00:29:05] But what those people didn't understand was I love this.

[00:29:10] I wanted that because that was that was true.

[00:29:15] And that was honest and that was real.

[00:29:16] That's how you felt.

[00:29:18] And I'm going to show you based on the hatin that you're doing what's really going on.

[00:29:25] Because at the same time, you know, Luke's been taking the court in Miami, South Florida over obscenity charges.

[00:29:35] Right.

[00:29:36] You have court cases about sampling.

[00:29:39] You know, eventually you have court cases about due to lyrics of this song justify being able to charge somebody with murder like hip-hop in the courts.

[00:29:50] Right.

[00:29:51] So in the court of public opinion, there are haters and you have to address those haters.

[00:29:59] Yeah.

[00:30:00] Now I don't have to explain nearly as much as I had to explain 30 years ago.

[00:30:05] But on the other hand, I think a perception is developed like, oh, that's hip hop or that's rap and that's that's fun.

[00:30:14] Or, you know, I say something to somebody about hip hop and they're like, oh, that sounds like fun, which is, you know, it can be kind of dismissive.

[00:30:22] Right.

[00:30:23] And I'm saying if you look at what I wrote in this book, my book is a 50 year history of hip hop.

[00:30:30] It's a 50 year history of black culture.

[00:30:33] But ultimately what it is, is a 50 year history of America.

[00:30:37] Right.

[00:30:38] That's the key.

[00:30:40] I have used hip hop as a way of telling a story about America.

[00:30:45] Right.

[00:30:46] Because hip hop is so now intertwined with what has happened over the last 50 years.

[00:30:52] And so it's getting people to see through the right lens what's really going on.

[00:30:59] One of the things I notice is I'll say to somebody, you know, hip hop and they think it's for kids.

[00:31:07] Right.

[00:31:08] And, you know, it's like, do I look like a kid to you?

[00:31:11] Right.

[00:31:12] You know, I was a kid a long time ago.

[00:31:15] Right.

[00:31:16] And yourself, others, you know, the generation of people who created it.

[00:31:21] Like people are in their 60s and 70s now.

[00:31:24] Right.

[00:31:25] We've grown.

[00:31:26] We're not talking about 50s.

[00:31:27] We're not talking about children.

[00:31:30] Right.

[00:31:31] We're talking about grown ass people.

[00:31:33] Right.

[00:31:34] So, you know, this thing that you associate with children, the childhood of hip hop was a long time ago.

[00:31:41] You know, we're in our 50s now as a culture.

[00:31:46] And so in the same way that you respect or overly you respect a person in their 50s, you need to respect hip hop as a culture in its 50s.

[00:31:56] Indeed.

[00:31:59] Speak on it.

[00:32:00] I don't want to keep you too much longer.

[00:32:01] Thank you for dropping that, Jim.

[00:32:03] Obviously we barely touched and we haven't even gone through halfway of the chronology yet.

[00:32:07] So we're not going to go all the way down the line.

[00:32:09] It's a great book.

[00:32:10] It great touches on all these things.

[00:32:11] I will ask one more thing.

[00:32:13] One of my more preferred through lines in hip hop culture has been, and I do some work on the side with this as well, social justice.

[00:32:21] We talked about a little bit as how it was obviously born from that.

[00:32:25] It was born from a social justice need for identity, for all of the things you say.

[00:32:33] Folks, we talk about hip hop.

[00:32:34] They think it's just for kids.

[00:32:35] One of the things I find in today's time is that they often similarly would reject the notion that hip hop still has that, you know, fight the power in it.

[00:32:47] Right. That that was then we stopped.

[00:32:49] Oh, I remember Caris one and public enemy.

[00:32:51] That doesn't happen anymore.

[00:32:52] And I I'm one of the ones and people that we talk to here and the work you're doing even in this book, it exemplifies the fact that no, it's still happening.

[00:33:01] It's happening differently.

[00:33:02] It's evolved.

[00:33:03] You touch upon it in the 2010s.

[00:33:05] You know, we talk about the Black Lives Matter movie talk about Kaepernick.

[00:33:08] These are all still.

[00:33:09] It's all still hip hop.

[00:33:10] It's all hip hop.

[00:33:11] Right.

[00:33:12] So to the naysayers or the folks who don't think that hip hop has that counterculture ability anymore, what do you say when that comes up in the conversation?

[00:33:22] Well, hip hop, I feel, has always dictated what was going on.

[00:33:27] But it also responded to what was going on.

[00:33:30] And so you can't expect hip hop to be the same from decade to decade because the circumstances surrounding it are not the same.

[00:33:41] Makes sense to me.

[00:33:42] In the 80s, what happened in the 90s?

[00:33:45] What happened in the 2000s?

[00:33:47] That's history.

[00:33:48] Right.

[00:33:49] And hip hop, you know, helped elect a president, helped elect the nation's first and only black president.

[00:33:57] Right.

[00:33:58] Not the guy with the saxophone.

[00:33:59] He didn't count.

[00:34:00] Well, you know, I know you did.

[00:34:03] I know you did.

[00:34:04] I saw it.

[00:34:05] I did.

[00:34:06] The Sister Soldier.

[00:34:07] That guy doing that same week that he's playing the saxophone on Arsenio Hall and getting dapped up.

[00:34:13] He's also going after Sister Soldier and saying her lyrics are like the Klan.

[00:34:18] So the real first black president.

[00:34:22] You know, I mean, Clinton was fine in 92 because there was nothing else.

[00:34:27] You know, at the time you look back on it and it looks a little different.

[00:34:30] But I think the point is hip hop rises to the challenge.

[00:34:35] But again, using the metaphor I used previously, if you're in your 50s and you're doing the same thing you were doing in your 20s, you haven't made any progress.

[00:34:46] So we can't expect that hip hop is going to be the same from decade to decade because the circumstances change.

[00:34:54] When I get to the end of the book, this art I'm talking about Nas.

[00:34:59] He's not in Queens Bridge projects rapping.

[00:35:03] He's rapping at the Kennedy Center with the National Symphony Orchestra.

[00:35:07] Kendrick Lamar is winning a Pulitzer Prize.

[00:35:10] J.M. Beyonce are doing a Tiffany's ad with a Basquiat painting in the commercial.

[00:35:16] Right.

[00:35:17] I mean, you know, there are all these things that have transpired.

[00:35:21] You know, Pharrell is the creative director in Louis Vuitton.

[00:35:25] Right.

[00:35:26] That was not happening in the 80s and 90s.

[00:35:29] So I think in that same way, the fuel behind hip hop has always been counterculture.

[00:35:38] It's always been socially and politically conscious.

[00:35:42] And at the same time, there are some rappers, some people in the culture who go a different direction.

[00:35:48] We're seeing that now.

[00:35:50] Like all of this is part of that evolution.

[00:35:53] Right.

[00:35:54] So I think throughout Black Lives Matter, Colin Kaepernick, hip hop was right there.

[00:36:01] But at the same time, hip hop is also in many cases now endorsing Trump.

[00:36:09] Trump's name was always popular in hip hop.

[00:36:11] Some rappers, I should say, are endorsing Trump.

[00:36:14] Not hip hop's endorsing Trump.

[00:36:15] Some rappers are endorsing Trump to be clear.

[00:36:19] Yes. Right.

[00:36:20] That's part of it.

[00:36:21] Right.

[00:36:22] Maybe you don't want to see that, but that's part of it.

[00:36:25] And if you think about was hip hop a woke?

[00:36:29] Was it always democratic?

[00:36:31] Was it Republican?

[00:36:32] Was it libertarian?

[00:36:34] Like you had all those strands mixed up in it.

[00:36:38] Right.

[00:36:39] And so I think now what you see is a representation of what's always been there.

[00:36:45] Hip hop has never been one thing.

[00:36:48] Right.

[00:36:49] It's never been monolithic.

[00:36:52] And so I think to appreciate the magnitude of the culture, you recognize that there are moments when, and it may just be a lyric.

[00:37:01] Right.

[00:37:02] So for instance, I mentioned this in the book.

[00:37:05] I know people think about, oh, this person's a conscious rapper.

[00:37:08] What have you?

[00:37:09] I remember right after 9-11, Jay-Z says, Ben Ladin been happening in Manhattan.

[00:37:15] Crack was anthrax back then, back when police was allocated the black men.

[00:37:21] When people think about Jay-Z, they don't think about a conscious rapper.

[00:37:24] That's one of the coldest lines I've ever heard on that issue.

[00:37:27] Hip hop was about speaking truth to power.

[00:37:30] Right.

[00:37:31] Hip hop was about authenticity, the real.

[00:37:33] And so what you got in that bar was a street cat.

[00:37:37] I mean, I grew up around conscious street cats.

[00:37:40] Right.

[00:37:41] For sure.

[00:37:42] Street, but they weren't dumb.

[00:37:43] They just what was going on and what you were going to hear from them might be more enlightening.

[00:37:48] What you would hear from somebody who had a title or degree or position.

[00:37:54] Malcolm was a street cat.

[00:37:56] Absolutely.

[00:37:57] And Malcolm to me has always been Malcolm X, the spiritual leader of this movement.

[00:38:02] Right.

[00:38:03] So sometimes things come from places you don't expect.

[00:38:07] And so there's always, I think, been that level of consciousness.

[00:38:11] And it just happens to be applied in different ways by different people relative to the circumstances.

[00:38:19] But we have to think about it in terms of how hip hop has evolved as opposed to expecting it to look like it did in a previous time.

[00:38:28] When you consider we move beyond that, I agree wholeheartedly.

[00:38:32] I like to say sometimes it's we often try to put something, keep something in a box that's by its very nature not supposed to be in a box.

[00:38:40] It's never it's never been in a box and never going to be in a box.

[00:38:44] That being said, we'll wrap with this again.

[00:38:46] Rappers Deluxe, How Hip Hop Made the World.

[00:38:48] Andrew, my man, Andrew Wang says it looks like the Hip Hop Commandments is such a beautifully designed book and has, like I said, very visually pleasing.

[00:38:56] It's a mix of great work.

[00:38:58] We use that man.

[00:39:00] I like that.

[00:39:01] I like so you know it's it looks like a tablet delivered from on high.

[00:39:06] But I do I do appreciate this.

[00:39:08] The idea of this show, the idea of the work that I do is to highlight the intersections right these these connections that don't often get highlighted.

[00:39:18] So that's why it appealed to me.

[00:39:20] I'm really glad that we were able to make this happen.

[00:39:22] I'll ask you this kind of final thought experiment that I ask a lot of folks who come here if you would indulge me.

[00:39:28] The name of the show is Hip Hop Can Save America.

[00:39:31] And it's a lofty idea.

[00:39:33] And perhaps we need more than just hip hop.

[00:39:36] I think that's one of the reasons for why I name it that and why that's sort of the the mantra.

[00:39:41] I'd like to know what you thought of when you first stumbled upon this tiny speck of the Internet and heard this title and what you think about it.

[00:39:49] What do you think about that?

[00:39:50] That thought, that idea, that concept.

[00:39:52] I mean, I like it because my book is about America.

[00:39:56] And so to talk about saving America, I mean, America certainly needs saving.

[00:40:02] To me, I've always been interested in this notion of America.

[00:40:07] What does it mean?

[00:40:09] Who does it apply to?

[00:40:10] Who is an American?

[00:40:12] You know what we consider American, right?

[00:40:15] Hip hop is so uniquely American.

[00:40:17] A lot of people would hear that get been out of shape.

[00:40:20] But that's real because this culture was created in America by conditions in America.

[00:40:25] And so the idea of hip hop saving America, I think is very consistent with the 50 year arc that I traced in my book.

[00:40:34] How we go from the 70s to the present and recognize there's so many elements within hip hop that are uniquely American.

[00:40:42] It's not a subculture.

[00:40:44] Right.

[00:40:45] It's not marginal.

[00:40:46] Right.

[00:40:47] It's not.

[00:40:48] It started underground.

[00:40:49] It's not been underground a long time.

[00:40:52] It's America.

[00:40:53] America writ large.

[00:40:55] So I like the title and I can implement, you know, work that I do in the book.

[00:41:01] And hopefully people will check it out and see this for themselves while at the same time reminiscing, enjoying some of these connections and being able to appreciate what it means for this as American culture explained through hip hop culture.

[00:41:19] Yes, indeed.

[00:41:20] Well, I appreciated it.

[00:41:21] I'm sure that the folks who pay attention to what I do will as well.

[00:41:25] It could be purchased wherever you purchase fine books, I would imagine.

[00:41:30] We out here.

[00:41:31] We everywhere.

[00:41:32] Indeed.

[00:41:33] And other than that, anything else you want people to know about the work you're doing?

[00:41:37] What's is there another book?

[00:41:39] Do another book.

[00:41:40] I'm so mad at people that could just do a book.

[00:41:43] I can't be working on a book forever.

[00:41:44] I hate all of you.

[00:41:45] You authors.

[00:41:48] Anything else people should know about?

[00:41:49] If not, like how to reach out, contact, but you know all the end of interview things.

[00:41:53] I mean, you know, these days a lot of people know me for my documentary appearances.

[00:41:58] So you never know what might pop up.

[00:42:01] You know, this is book number eight already thinking number nine.

[00:42:05] So we'll see.

[00:42:06] I'm on the gram IG notorious PhD.

[00:42:10] Yeah.

[00:42:11] Giving you some color, giving you some fashion, some vibes.

[00:42:15] I'm easy to find.

[00:42:16] I've been in the same place for a long time.

[00:42:18] So seems about me.

[00:42:20] All right.

[00:42:21] Well, listen, have fun out there.

[00:42:22] Keep doing what you're doing.

[00:42:23] I really appreciate you and you and take us some time to talk with us and please come back when you do book number nine, whatever.

[00:42:29] And we'll talk in the meantime.

[00:42:32] Hopefully we'll cross paths in real life someday soon.

[00:42:35] Well, thank you very much for having me and for plugging the book and you know, by the out there fingers.

[00:42:40] Peace.

[00:42:41] All right.

[00:42:42] Right.

[00:42:43] Peace and love, sir.

[00:42:44] Dr. Todd Boyd, the notorious PhD in the place to be.

[00:42:49] He wrote a book called Rap is Deluxe.

[00:42:51] You can see.

[00:42:52] All right.

[00:42:53] Listen, there it is.

[00:42:54] Hip hop could save America and hip hop has been saving America.

[00:42:58] Some might say, you know, it gets a bad rap.

[00:43:02] See what I did there?

[00:43:03] Bad reputation as one of my talks is titled.

[00:43:07] Dr. Boyd there breaks down why and why it's become such an integral part of America, American history, American culture, not just popular culture.

[00:43:15] You know, lots of you say, you know, hip hop is popular.

[00:43:17] Yeah, popular culture, but unpopular culture, just culture as a whole.

[00:43:23] Manny Faces, you sick for this one?

[00:43:26] Once again, thanks for listening to another episode of Hip Hop Can Save America, AKA the world's most important hip hop podcast.

[00:43:39] My name is Manny Faces.

[00:43:40] You can find out more about the show at hip hop can save America dot com.

[00:43:43] You can watch the show now as a live stream on YouTube hip hop to save America dot com slash watch.

[00:43:48] Check back for all the replays as well.

[00:43:50] The interviews from the live stream will be brought here onto the audio feed so you always get the best of the live stream.

[00:43:56] You can also check out our substack newsletter.

[00:43:58] It's free at Manny Faces dot substack dot com filled with stories of hip hop innovation, inspiration and in general hip hop news that isn't about dumb.

[00:44:08] Eternal shouts to our consulting producer, Summer McCoy.

[00:44:11] Be sure to check out her dope initiatives, hip hop hacks and the mixtape museum.

[00:44:15] We'll be back soon with another dope episode, but check us out on the live stream as well.

[00:44:18] Monday's nine p.m. Eastern hip hop can save America dot com slash watch.

[00:44:23] Until next time, it's Manny Faces wishing peace and love to you and yours.