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Home > The Dossier > USA VS HIP HOP EP. 1
Podcast: The Dossier
Episode:

USA VS HIP HOP EP. 1
Category: Society & Culture
Duration: 00:34:19
Publish Date: 2024-10-30 10:00:00
Description:

In America in 2024, we have all watched major American cities burn the result of a powder keg that exploded around incidence of police killings. We should all know the names by now, George Floyd, Trayvon Martin, Breanna Taylor, Stephon Clark, Philando Castille, and more.


And the list goes on the debate surrounding race policing, mass incarceration, and the war on drugs it seems has reached the tipping point. Fault lines have been drawn as our divided country simmers in a cauldron of new stories that may or may not be true, internet conspiracy theories, and a fracturing of what is commonly held facts and assumptions that should guide any democracy are hanging by a thread to understand the vast societal shifts that are going on in contemporary America.


And the proposition of understanding where we are now has to be analyzed through the eyes of an art form, that for close to 40 years, arguably, has been the voice many generations, and an analytical mirror that has reflected back the ills of the United States of America.


And that is Hip Hop, an irony filled twist of fate, the music that has caused 1000s of controversies and internal war and conflict really has come to define America in 2024.


The proposition is not easy, and the narrative will go down many roads.


USA vs. Hip Hop will tell this 40 year story through the eyes of the gangsters, the cops and the artists who wrote lyrics, and created visuals not only has shifted the world, but is a living and breathing experiment where Crime and Punishment can be unpacked and traced.


The starting point for our story is in two places.


First New York City in 1980. Also 1981 was engulfed with a crime wave in Oakland, California, not an obvious place to start any story as it relates to hip hop music, but arguably one of the most important geographical cities where the symbiotic relationship between the fall of the Black Panthers and the rise of a young man named Todd Shaw will begin this 40 year Odyssey.


Remember, this tale will have music, but it won't focus on the music, MTV VH1, and Netflix has already given you the paint by numbers version.


Recently I listened to the NPR podcast Louder than a Riot, an impressive piece of journalism, and a narrative track that they define as stories at the intersection of crime and punishment.


I did notice one missing piece to their stoop, puzzling, that I will address in depth and that is the symbiotic relationship between the iconic and mythological gangsters that were attached to hip hop music and how their stories and myth-making has created hip hop's version of War and Peace.


Like the original, the 40 year story of hip hop, and its characters of the underbelly, came to define thematically America's relationship with crime.

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