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The global reach of hip hop

BY GLENN GAMBOA | Staff Writer

October 10, 2004

Amanda and James Smith are hip hop fans.

Amanda Smith, a senior at Dickinson State University, with her husband, James, They are both fans of hip-hop, even though most of hip-hop culture doesn't reach them in North Dakota. (Teri Finneman/AP for NEWSDAY)

Amanda Smith likes having a few surprises tucked up the sleeves of her light pink sweater.

She's 21, but already happily married. She loves North Dakota, but yearns to live in a big city -- preferably one where she can work as an international affairs attorney. She's the student body president at Dickinson State University, but she loves a good party, too. And in one of the reddest of the red states, she isn't positive President George W. Bush is going to get her vote.

For her biggest revelation, though, she leans forward, and looks around the Applebee's in her hometown . "You won't believe this," she says, her voice dropping slightly. "I love hip-hop."

She knows the odds are against this. This rural city in southwest North Dakota couldn't be more different from the urban life that most hip-hoppers rap about.

A hip-hop age

It would take only 10 minutes to drive through the city, and that's only if you hit all of the 11 stoplights. In this county of about 23,000 residents, only 51 - about 0.2 percent - are African-American and 236 or 1 percent are Hispanic. Slope County, the neighboring county to the south, has the distinction of being the whitest county in the United States, with only one non-white resident, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Not much bling in this part of the country. Not a lot of tricked-out rides either. No hip-hop played on the area's four radio stations. No hip-hop dance clubs, unless you count the makeshift dance floor at Ralphy's Grill and Bar when Jay-Z comes on the jukebox.

However, in this small-world-after-all age of Internet downloading and non-stop cable TV programming, hip-hop can reach fans anywhere. And it does. Nearly 30 years after its birth at a Bronx house party and 25 years after it jumped into the mainstream with the release of the Sugar Hill Gang's single "Rapper's Delight," hip-hop is in its prime -- an industry that generates $10 billion annually.

In 2003, nearly one out of every four CDs sold in the United States was a hip-hop or R&B CD, totaling $2.8 billion, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. The most popular CD of the year was 50 Cent's "Get Rich or Die Tryin'," helping hip-hop become the second-biggest genre in music, behind rock. Its popularity has nearly doubled since 1995, going from 6.7 percent of the market to 13.3 percent last year.

Public Enemy's Chuck D used to say that hip-hop was "the black CNN," the way many minorities and the disenfranchised communicated with each other and the outside world. With hip-hop's continuous growth, the rapper and radio host has expanded the metaphor.

"Hip-hop is now a worldwide religion," Chuck D says. "People all over the world understand its language, its culture. Each country has its own brand, its own style."

Instrument of social change

Hip-hop is a music. It is a culture. It is a marketing platform. It has slipped into nearly every aspect of U.S. culture -- from movies and TV to fashion to the way people speak. Fo' shizzle, yo.

Hip-hop has created a new class of mogul, leaders who excel in both business and entertainment -- a dual success once reserved for sports. And now those magnates, such as Russell Simmons and Sean "P. Diddy" Combs, want to turn it into an instrument of social change.

Hip-hop's control over popular culture grows even as supporters acknowledge that much of the music remains obsessed with violence (both real and imaginary), with demeaning portrayals of women and with consumerism of the highest order.

Yet, Brooklyn project dwellers, Brazilian rebels, French high society and Japanese hipsters all convene through hip-hop -- allowing them to bond with each other and Amanda Smith, her friends in Dickinson and the millions like them around the world.

Today's hip-hop is so expansive that there's something for almost everyone -- from the gangsta scenarios of 50 Cent and party tunes of Lil' Jon to the socially conscious rhymes of Mos Def and politically charged anthems of Jadakiss.

Hip-hop, it's no surprise, was born of frustration.

On Nov. 12, 1974, Kool DJ Herc was playing records at a house party in the Bronx, but the crowd wasn't responding the way he wanted. To keep them moving, he played the instrumental pieces of the song they liked, "the break," over and over again. When the bit ended, he picked up the needle and put it back at the beginning of the piece. The crowd went wild.

His musical creation began to merge with other arts. Soon, groups of DJs and the MCs joined forces with breakdancers, known as b-boys, and graffiti artists, known as taggers.