But all rap is local, if not literally, then philosophically. Even as hip-hop has spread far beyond American city centers, it is still born of grassroots movements.ĭo some rappers exist outside traditional scenes? There are always outliers.

Look at NBA YoungBoy, or Ice Spice, or Toosii, or Rod Wave. Something at its core has remained linked to transmission in closer spaces: over the air, hand to hand, connected to the character of a place. It might seem that instantaneous direct-to-consumer dissemination portends a new world or meaning for hip-hop, or that the fundamental nature of the genre has changed, but no. Now playlists dictate what is heard - powered not just by algorithms, but by major labels - seemingly limiting grassroots development in favor of corporate enterprise. First, DatPiff and iTunes collapsed the distance between the stars on national radio and the up-and-comers on hometown promo flyers, then the blog era let a more scattered assortment of tastemakers churn out recommendations by the download, and finally recording technology made creation and distribution a simple matter of clicking buttons. You can plot the course along a timeline of technological breakthroughs rap's steady growth coincided directly with that of high-speed internet. Hip-'Til Infinity: A vision of hip-hop's next 50 yearsĪlongside this gradual evolution from decks to plug-ins and RPMs to streams, two things have happened: Rap has become the dominant cultural export in America, and it is now seen primarily as a virtual phenomenon - one that plays out primarily within the social media ecosystem, where digital footprint supersedes regional identity. Today, nearly anyone can make a song in 15 minutes, upload it a few minutes later, and have someone in another hemisphere hear it that same day. 'While doing those takes I was like, 'Man, I gotta make something out of this mess.' ' It's a glimpse of rap's humble beginnings but also its early hurdles: the need not just for equipment and technical prowess, but for a connection, for finding someone with clout to whom you could hand that tape.

As he told Red Bull Music Academy later, he would take 'some janky-ass stereo system' with dual cassette recorders and make pause tapes out of his dad's jazz collection, taking hours at a time to loop small sections of songs into crude beats. Like most Black kids then, he didn't have a track machine, so learning the craft required a workaround. But circumstances forced the young Q-Tip, the rapper-producer who would soon found A Tribe Called Quest, to get creative with his equipment. Once upon a time, not long ago, to paraphrase a great rap storyteller, an 11-year-old in Queens became obsessed with the nascent rap movement. Here's a story about one measure of the distance hip-hop has traveled in its 50 years.

Mafia city equipment set