Having a 250th birthday may be nice for America, but for New York City, a semiquincentennial is old news. Literally. New York City was founded — depending on who you ask — about 360 years ago, more than a century before the United States. In all that time, we’ve been busy.
New York is widely acknowledged as a hub of industry and creativity, as it should be. Yes, this is the land of Wall Street and Ellis Island, of Stonewall and the Statue of Liberty. But alongside the city’s big landmarks are smaller ones you can't necessarily visit — the quirky ideas that emerged from New York's melting pot and spread across the country.
For the next month, we’ll be celebrating the concepts that came from the city (and our beloved neighbor, New Jersey), talking to experts about how the United States would not be what it is without New York City. You’re welcome, America.
Today. we're looking at hip-hop, which began in the Bronx before it became a global movement — including some perspective from rap critic and native New Yorker Alphonse Pierre on why it's still best when close to home.
Hip-hop’s origin story is well-known by now: In 1973, at a party in the Bronx, the teenage DJ Kool Herc began to isolate the drum solos on funk and soul records and play them across two turntables. That endless rhythm was the backbone of hip-hop’s instrumental sound. And while the drums were going, Herc was on the microphone, shouting out enthusiasm to dancing partygoers. His staccato delivery was an early blueprint for rap’s sound. Thus, at Sedgwick and Cedar avenues some 53 years ago, was created arguably the greatest cultural export in New York City history.
In the decades since, New York has doubled down on its importance as the progenitor of hip-hop, with a surfeit of rap stars, from Sugar Hill Gang and Grand Master Flash, Run DMC and EPMD, LL Cool J and Queen Latifah. Nas, Notorious B.I.G., Jay-Z, and the Wu-Tang Clan. A Tribe Called Quest, Cam’ron, 50 Cent, Nicki Minaj and Cardi B. We have had an embarrassment of riches, often dominating airwaves both nationally and internationally.
But hip-hop’s epicenter has shifted over time. New York has shared its spotlight with Atlanta and Los Angeles, with occasional detours to Houston or to Memphis. Despite being rap’s originating city, New York has not remained the sole center of the sound. After taking over the United States and then the world with the sound of rap, New York has found comfort in articulating what the sound of Harlem is, the sound of Staten Island, the sound of Brooklyn. Global domination is less appealing than local definition.
Critic Alphonse Pierre grew up between Canarsie and Staten Island, listening to rap music from his city. That sometimes meant the genre’s heavy hitters, but also smaller artists popular in borough-wide scenes. For Pierre, rap was as much a beloved New York utility as tap water. Along with his friends, Pierre was so immersed in the city’s music growing up that he didn’t realize it could be another way until he left home for college.
“It was kind of a mind-blowing experience for me because I just had never really left the city, the five boroughs. I was meeting so many people that were listening to things that I kinda didn't care about,” Pierre said. “I missed talking to people from New York about music. And so that's when I started writing about it, cause I was always very opinionated.”
Pierre’s opinions have appeared for nearly a decade at Pitchfork, where he is a senior writer. As a sharp observer of rap’s constantly shifting sound, he’s earned a devout following among rap fans, and has been recognized for the importance of his work with an ASME Next Award for journalists under 30.
He spoke to Gothamist about his own experience immersed in New York rap: his love of Uptown's jittery Litefeet movement of the 2000s, of the Harlem group Dipset and their shenanigans, and the schoolyard chant style of rap of the Yonkers group the Lox.
He acknowledged, of course, the importance of the city's megastars, but, for him, the most important rap in New York always felt closer to home. More from Pierre is below.
ALPHONSE PIERRE: My dad used to have a Haitian restaurant in East Flatbush and I would spend a lot of time there.
I wouldn't really do anything because I was about 6, 7 years old, and he would usually leave me alone either in the car or in the back of the restaurant, and he would leave the radio on. And so I would just be listening to whatever Funk Flex was playing. And that was really my introduction.
Almost everything I was listening to was from the five boroughs or Yonkers or Long Island. Funk Flex would always play a lot of older stuff and DJs at that point were able to mix in different generations. So I feel like I was introduced to a little bit of ’80s rap then, like EPMD or Boogie Down Productions, “The Bridge Is Over.”
Then he’d mix it in with, like, “Mighty D-Block.” That was one of my favorite songs to listen to as a kid because it felt so animated. I loved the chanting and the way it had this stomping sound that I still love to this day. I feel like a lot of my favorite rap has this schoolyard, pounding-your-fist-on-a-table sound. If you go back and listen to some of the ’80s stuff, like Treacherous Three or Fearless Four, they had those kinds of stomp rhythms that, to me, feels like a classic New York trope.
New York rap is kind of built on myth-making. Jay-Z’s probably the greatest at that sort of thing, at just turning himself into a hero even, even if it's sometimes undeserved. I definitely like Jay-Z. I probably even love Jay-Z. But I also, at the same time, can't stand Jay-Z. It’s probably not even about the music itself as much the way people talk about the music. It could just be so dominating and cloud over everything else, and you're just like, “Enough.”
I think when people think about New York rap, they still think about that '90s era. They think about "Ready to Die." They think about "Illmatic." Maybe if you find somebody that's a little bit nerdier, they think about Mobb Deep. Maybe even some would think of Wu-Tang.
I wasn't really familiar with them until I moved to Staten Island —this is probably like 10 years after their peak — but it was kind of a shock to me how they could reach so many different types of people. When you live on Staten Island, you could meet a 12-year-old Italian kid that could just quote "Cuban Linx" at you. Or you go to their house and their parents have a Wu-Tang flag out on their front lawn like people would have a political flag now. And to this day, it's still extremely unique and almost tribalist among boroughs like that. And I feel like that's something maybe somebody from outside New York wouldn't catch on to, how important what borough you're from — or when you get even more granular than that, what neighborhood you're from — ties into how the music spreads throughout the city.
When I was in middle school, there was like a huge dance-rap movement in New York called Litefeet. It was a lot of DJ Webstar who had the “Chicken Noodle Soup” song and later Lil Mama’s “Lip Gloss,” which some people might look at as a kind of silly song, but that song was so important to us.
After school, you'd hear people clapping that out, dance circles happening. When I played basketball in high school, we would do that after every practice. I was always the worst dancer, everybody on the team would make fun of me about it, but I loved getting in the middle.
We loved Dipset, too. We loved Juelz Santana the most. The most important aspect of a rapper to us wasn't even how well they rapped, it was how cool they were, how they dressed, if you could imitate them. Juelz Santana had a slow-ish flow that was easy to rap along to, even on the bigger hits like “The Whistle Song.” It’s kind of a corny song in retrospect. I feel like I even knew it was corny at the time, but it's just something you like humming to yourself.
One of my favorite New York rappers is Max B. He’s from Harlem, and had a pretty niche movement. He had this really melodic, soulful sound that I still look for in a lot of my favorite music today. I really didn't listen to him [when he first came out]. He was so hyper-focused in that Uptown Bronx area where I wasn't from. And that's probably why I love it so much now because he could almost drop you on Lenox Avenue or up there on 125th. [His songs] felt like these Western adventures in Harlem, terrorizing these Dipset rappers that were the mainstream institution of New York rap. He was coming from an outsider perspective, which is something I still look for in a lot of my favorite rap music today.
Max B ended up getting into a lot of legal troubles. He went to prison for over a decade, from the early 2010s, and he only got out about less than a year ago. I saw him perform at a club in Midtown a couple days or a week after he got out of jail. It was honestly the worst performance ever. It just seemed like everybody was drunk. He just mouthed along to maybe two songs after about four hours of waiting.
But I was still happy to be there just to be around other people that wanted to hear Max B songs and were kind of singing to themselves even though Max B wasn't doing it himself. Most of the crowd was 35 and up. A lot of Pelle Pelle jackets, True Religions, Nike ACG boots. Exactly what you expect.
I spoke to some people that were saying they drove in from Long Island, New Jersey, a lot, a lot of the places where the people that have traditionally lived in Harlem and the Bronx have moved to. It was cool, even though I didn't hear a single thing.
