50 Years of Hip-Hop: How a generation fostered creativity from urban despair and racial barriers
Hip-hop, a subculture and an art movement, was born when urban youth in crime and poverty-ridden neighbourhoods in South Bronx in New York City sought street corners to hang out and found ways to express their despairing selves. In the late 1970s, South Bronx was rocked by a manufacturing decline and an expressway that ended the local businesses. The emerging hip-hop movement gave the youths a recreative space to voice their despair and hardship, which grew to become a global phenomenon. Here's a look at the pioneers
Curated By: Madhu Kapparath
Rapper Ice T at the 57th Street subway station on February 15, 1993, in New York City. Los Angeles rappers like Ice T and NWA, reacting to the New York brand of hip hop, led to the rise of the genre known as Gangsta rap. Ice T's 1992 single "Cop Killer" from the album Body Count, about a criminal getting revenge on racist, brutal cops, ignited a national controversy, leading to a protest by police advocacy groups in the US.
