Work, Politics and the Birth of Hip Hop
Matthew Birkhold

I’m tired of people calling hip hop the child of the civil rights and black power movements.  Everyone from hip hop artists, hip hop activists, hip hop scholars, and regular everyday listeners have called it that and all of them are wrong.  I believe this error is made for two fundamental reasons, as a nation we don’t understand the civil rights or black power movements nor do we understand labor in a capitalist society.

If we did, we would understand that hip hop is the child of unemployment.

If we want to understand the relationship between the civil rights movement, black power, and hip hop we must first understand the civil rights movement as a struggle to grant black people basic citizenship rights.  Basic citizenship rights include the right to vote and the right to have access to public spaces such as parks and busses.  Black power emerged as a critique of the civil rights struggle based on the premise that if black people had basic citizenship rights their lives would not improve because they did not have political and economic power.  Advocates of black power argued that racial equality required a revolution.

Black power advocates typically took one of two positions.  One group argued that before a political revolution could occur, black people had to undergo a cultural revolution to throw off the shackles of internalized white supremacy.  The other group argued that such a cultural revolution was impossible under the political order of the time and therefore argued that a political revolution had to take precedence over culture.  Examples of the second position include the Black Panther Party and the Revolutionary Action Movement.  This latter group also bore the brunt of state repression and many of its activists did time as political prisoners.

The fact that advocates of political revolution were politically imprisoned is important to our understanding of hip hop’s birth.  In the South Bronx, according to author Jeff Chang, street gangs made up what he calls “the other side of the revolution.”  Like political revolutionaries, gang members were often locked up and the victims of violence.  Because both gang members and advocates of political revolution were the older brothers and sisters of the young people who created hip hop, its makes sense to assume that young people believed that choosing to follow their siblings footsteps would get them locked up or killed.

Because of this, young people had to forge a path that was different than what came before them.  Because the black youth unemployment rate was 60% in New York City from 1965 up until the 1980s, getting a formal job was not part of that path.  Because of this, hip hop itself quickly became a source of employment for young blacks in New York.

According to Chang, the first hip hop party was thrown because Kool Herc’s sister wanted to raise money so she could go back to school shopping.  She threw the party, Herc deejayed, and within a couple weeks, Herc had a reputation as the man who was getting money in the Bronx.  These parties quickly created their own economies where entrepreneurial deejays paid graffiti writers to draw flyers and turned gangs into paid security crews.  According to Afrika Bammbatta, “We was young entrepreneurs, when we didn’t even know we was entrepreneurs.”
The economy of hip hop didn’t stop with deejay entrepreneurship.  At parties there were people who sold beverages and food as well as people who recorded deejay sets and began selling mixtapes.

Because the deindustrialization of New York had already begun by the late 1960s, young blacks needed jobs.  Given the circumstances they faced, creating a job using hip hop often seemed like a much more viable option than getting into politics or a gang.  If we don’t take this into account when talking about the birth of hip hop, we aren’t looking at the whole picture.

Matt Birkhold is a Brooklyn based educator and writer.  He can be reached at birkhold (at) gmail (dot) com.  

Spam Sales On The Rise

Sales of Spam, the Hormel canned-ham product, have increased 11 percent in the first quarter of this year. What do you think?

Julie Porter,
Receptionist
“Spam is still a bit too pricey. I’m going to have to settle on Spologna.”

Max Emmerson,
Systems Analyst
“It never left my table.”

Don Hazeltine,
Camp Counselor
“Somebody should make a movie about this.”

Can you believe it’s been been 30 years?

Today’s video of the day comes from Underground Village in New York, where Shaq dissed Kobe HARD in a freestyle. Thoughts?

Question to the Sexpert:

“I just started sleeping with my new boyfriend, and I’m worried about our sex life. He’s OK in bed, though he has some skills to learn, and he has great stamina – we can go for long periods of time. However, once we’ve had sex, and he’s come, he can’t go again. He literally can’t go more than once in a day. In fact, if we have sex at night, and then I want to have sex again in the morning, around twelve hours after the last time we had sex, he still isn’t ready! I am not fulfilled by this amount of sex, and I’m worried that if this continues, our relationship will suffer. What’s wrong with him? He’s only 29 – he’s not that old. Could it be because I’m the first person he’s slept with in two years? That he hasn’t had a girlfriend in almost seven years? Please help.”

Well, the upside is that you certainly don’t ask much of partners, seem to have a deep abiding connection with this man based on shared values and are more than willing to look introspectively for your own responsibilities in sexual relationships.

Wait, I’m doing that passive aggressive bitchy thing again. Damn.

I guess it’s just that normally, when I get the “my partner never/always wants sex and it’s driving me nuts” questions, the writers include tidbits such as “I love her and find her attractive” or “our relationship is otherwise awesome.” You just sort of launched into the meat of your question, taking a break only to mention his sexual prowess was “OK” but lasts a long time.

So I’ve gathered that you believe the only thing better than mediocre sex is mediocre sex on a more frequent basis.

As much as you might be seeking out an explanation as to why this man, whom you delight in reporting has had limited sexual experience in recent years, does not have a perma-erection and an unquenchable thirst for your body, there likely is none.

Sex once a day is well above the national average, believe it or not. Aside from any physical impediments that might slow his refractory period (the time most men need between bouts), he may not have the libido to keep up with yours out of sheer exhaustion, busyness or lack of interest. And really, it’s not the end of the world. You’re still getting it daily, and in long sessions. You ought to be grateful.

I appreciate your sentiment, that you fear the relationship will be damaged by your sex drive discrepancy. It’s wise of you to seek counsel on the matter and to look for a solution. But today I get to play bearer of bad news and let you know it’s only going to get worse- as relationships mature, the frequency of sex declines. Hopefully that boinking is replaced by something more substantive, like love. Just something to think about.

So just talk to the man. Tell him what would make the sex go from OK to phenomenal and tell him that you enjoy the passion so much you’d love to experience it more often. Let him know how important it is to you, make sure you’re doing your part to make the sessions inviting for him and do your best to be patient.

Timaree Schmit is a trained sexologist who has also worked as an HIV prevention counselor and sex educator. She has written widely for numerous publications and was recently recognized by Coed Magazine as one of the 10 Most Famous College Sex Columnists in America. Timaree is completing a doctorate in Human Sexuality at Widener University.

Do you have a question or comment? Please email Timaree directly at sexpert@MarcLamontHill.com