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Over five decades, after it began in the Bronx, Hip Hip has become the world’s most popular musical genre and culture, incorporating local sounds, styles, and traditions everywhere it touches.
Rob Swift: I began writing “The City of Hip Hop” back in March of 2023. As you know, we celebrated “50 years” of Hip-Hop culture in 2023. Still, it felt like too much of the content surrounding the anniversary was divisive, “Black people own Hip-Hop, and all other races are guests,” or the dialogue about what inspired the culture to grow in the first place was incomplete from a historical perspective. Thus, the inspiration to begin writing it was my attempt to provide a take that examines the origins of Hip-Hop through a political, economic, and geographical lens, as these subjects were not being talked about. The book is being produced and published through Routledge (based in the United Kingdom). It will also contain exclusive photography from some of Hip-Hop’s most respected photographers like Joe Conzo, “the man who took Hip-Hop’s baby pictures,” Martha Cooper, who was one of the first to document the Graffiti and Breaking scenes of NYC during the late 1970s and early 1980s, street photographer Jamel Shabazz, who captured the style and essence of Hip Hop as it exploded onto the streets of New York, Stephen Shane and Stephen Salmieri (cover). Forword by Chuck D from the legendary group Public Enemy and New York Times Bestselling, PEN Award-winning author Dan Charnas.
The City of Hip-Hop positions a unique conceptualization of the history of Hip Hop, namely that it was political, economic, and social forces that produced the environment for hip-hop to grow specifically in the geographies of New York City and its boroughs. This book argues it was the political forces of the 1970s, combined with economic forces of free market capitalism and privatization of public services, neoliberalism, and the deindustrialization of major cities, that led to the cultural creation of the “Boogie Down” Bronx. The City of Hip-Hop shows how hip-hop is a socio-political reaction that creates an alternate reality with a geographic specificity, and it is this interplay with those forces nurtured it to become a cultural force. Once those of us, as fans of the culture, zoom out to see the bigger picture, a need for criticism and retelling of the culture and art of hip-hop emerges.
This book is essential for students, scholars, and general readers interested in urban planning, urban design, urban geography, place-making, American Studies, Cultural Studies, Black Studies, and Latin American Studies.
The City of Hip Hop: New York City, The Bronx, and a Peace Meeting
