It's Bigger Than Hip Hop: The Rise of the Post-Hip-Hop Generation (13 page)

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) in New York City introduces Buffen, a machine used to remove the increasing amount of graffiti appearing on subway cars. To the MTA’s frustration, the machine ends up further damaging the trains and is quickly discontinued.

The disco group Chic releases “Good Times” on their album
Risqué
. Despite the song’s success on Billboard’s Hot 100, “Good Times” is the last disco hit record. Months later, DJ Steve Dahl blows up thousands of disco records at an anti-disco party in Chicago, marking the symbolic death of the disco era.

Race rebellions, beginning on May 17
, erupt in Miami after the acquittal of four white former police officers on charges that they beat Arthur McDuffie, an unarmed Black businessman, to death. The rebellions end with seventeen deaths and are the bloodiest since Watts and Detroit in 1965.

Mr. Magic (aka Sir Juice) introduces
Rap Attack
, the first radio show devoted to hip hop. Mr. Magic ends each show, which air on
WHBI from 2:00 to 5:00
A.M
., with “Get on it, doggone it. ’Cause any fool can learn from his own mistakes, but it takes a wise man, a wise guy like you to learn from the mistakes made by others. Be yourself, ’cause you might find yourself by yourself, and that’s no fun.”

Dr. Molefi K. Asante, a professor at Temple University, articulates the theory of Afrocentricity, an idea that challenges Eurocentric notions and urges people of African descent to “see the world through African eyes.” Rappers KRS-One, Public Enemy, Dead Prez, and Common would embrace this worldview, infusing Afrocentric themes, images, and ideas into their rhymes.

Ronald Reagan, a former Hollywood actor
and spokesman for General Electric, becomes the fortieth president of the United States. His policies, mainly Reaganomics and the War on Drugs, which many would call a “War on Blacks,” would have a particularly devastating effect on Black people.

ABC’s
20/20
newsmagazine airs the first national TV story on hip hop titled “Rappin’ to the Beat.” Later in the year, ABC News would
air snippets of a Rock Steady Crew performance at Lincoln Center. Both television events would help to popularize hip-hop culture with many Americans who were unfamiliar with it.

New York City mayor Ed Koch declares a “war on graffiti,” allotting over $22 million to build double fences with razor edges in eighteen subway yards and employ guard dogs. Despite his efforts, graffiti writers, rather than be deterred, would grow more motivated to tag and intensified their efforts.

Tommy Boy Records is founded in New York City by Tom Silverman. Four years after its inception, Warner Bros. Records would buy 50 percent of the label, which Silverman would later buy back in 1995. Tommy Boy would sign such artists as Queen Latifah, De La Soul, and Naughty by Nature.

Close to one million
activists and concerned citizens rally in New York City’s Central Park calling for nuclear disarmament as President Reagan, undeterred by the protests, prepares to unveil Star Wars, a strategic defense initiative to use ground-based and space-based systems to protect the United States from attack by nuclear ballistic missiles.

Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five release “The Message,” one of the first rap songs to address the desolate conditions and hardships of the ghetto. The song’s chorus—“Don’t push me ‘cuz I’m close to the edge”—resonates through the inner cities of America and becomes one of the most cited and well-known choruses in hip hop.

The United States, under President Reagan, floods the inner cities with crack cocaine in an effort to fund the Honduran contras to overthrow the Sandinista government of Nicaragua.

The term “AIDS” (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) is coined by the CDC. The disease claims the lives of 853 U.S. citizens. Thirteen years later, N.W.A. rapper Eazy-E would die of AIDS at just thirty-one years old. From his deathbed, he released the following statement:

Wild Style
, the first feature film about hip-hop culture, hits theaters. The film spawns a
Wild Style
tour with artists such as Fab 5 Freddy, Cold Crush Brothers, and Rock Steady Crew performing throughout the United States and Europe, making
Wild Style
the first international hip-hop tour.

Political activist and journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal, in a trial rife with injustice, is falsely convicted of the murder of a Philadelphia police officer. As a result, Mumia, a political prisoner, receives the death penalty. Mumia says: “At my trial I was denied the right to defend myself. I had no confidence in my court-appointed attorney, who never even asked me what happened the night I was shot and the police officer was killed; and I was excluded from at least half the trial. Since I was denied all my rights at my trial I did not testify. I would not be used to make it look like I had a fair trial.” His conviction ignites an international movement in his support.

DJ Red Alert launches his hip-hop
show on WRKS in New York, playing a mix of hip hop and dance hall. Red Alert’s show airs on Friday and Saturday nights, and becomes the first rap show on a commercial station. “That’s when I started learning the fundamentals of how to be in and out without playing certain records around the clock,” Red Alert told
Billboard
.

On September 15, Michael Stewart, a twenty-five-year-old Black man, is arrested for writing graffiti on a subway platform in New
York. While in handcuffs, Stewart is beaten to death by two white NYPD officers.

The Fearless Four, whose members include The Great Peso, Devastating Tito, Mighty Mike C, Krazy Eddie, OC, and DLB, are signed to Elektra Records, making them the first rap group to sign to a major record label.

President Ronald Reagan signs a bill establishing January 20 as a federal holiday in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.

Guion “Guy” Bluford Jr., a NASA astronaut, becomes the first African-American in space as a member of the crew of the space shuttle
Challenger
on mission STS-8. Bluford, a mission specialist, would later be inducted into the International Space Hall of Fame.

The Color Purple
, a novel by Alice Walker, receives the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The novel, which addresses critical issues facing African-American women in the early twentieth century, would later be adapted into a film directed by Steven Spielberg, as well as a Broadway musical produced by Quincy Jones and Oprah Winfrey.

Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin found Def Jam Records
with eight hundred dollars and release sixteen-year-old LL Cool J’s “I Need a Beat,” which would go on to sell more than 100,000 copies, establishing the label as a force and launching the careers of Simmons, Cool J, and Rubin.

KDAY, the first rap-only radio station in Los Angeles, hits the airwaves. Dr. Dre, a well-known local DJ from Compton, mixes music on Saturday nights. Dre would go on to be instrumental in rap as a producer, rapper, and executive.

Run-D.M.C., founded by Joseph “Rev Run” Simmons, Darryl “D.M.C.” McDaniels, and Jason “Jam-Master Jay” Mizell, releases the self-titled album
Run-D.M.C.
, which goes gold, becoming the first hip-hop album to do so.

In support of Jesse Jackson’s first presidential run, Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel release “Jesse,” an overtly political rap song in support of Jackson’s presidential campaign. Despite hard-hitting, promotional lyrics—“Brothers stand together and let the whole world see / Our brother Jesse Jackson go down in history”—Jesse Jackson did not use the song during his campaign.

Philadelphia’s first African-American mayor
, Wilson Goode, orders the Philadelphia police to drop a bomb from a helicopter on the headquarters of MOVE, a Black nationalist, back-to-nature organization founded by John Africa. The bombing leaves eleven people dead, including five children. Two hundred and fifty people are made homeless and more than sixty-two homes on Osage Avenue in West Philadelphia are destroyed.

Run-D.M.C. releases
King of Rock
, the first rap album to go platinum. The following year, their album
Raising Hell
would become the first multiplatinum rap album, thus turning hip hop into a mainstream commodity.

Krush Groove
, a feature film about the early days of Def Jam Recordings and Russell Simmons, directed by African-American film pioneer
Michael Schultz, is released by Warner Bros. In addition to coproducing the film, Simmons makes a cameo as a club owner in the film.

Run-D.M.C. releases “My Adidas”
and, as a result, signs an endorsement deal with Adidas. Additionally, Kurtis Blow performs in a Sprite commercial. These events mark the first partnership between hip-hop artists and nonmusic corporations and set the stage for the corporate relationships that would become rampant in hip hop. KRS-One and Scott La Rock release the highly influential album
Criminal Minded
, which posits a sociopolitically conscious viewpoint and boasts samples from James Brown and AC/DC. The next year, Scott La Rock is shot and killed while trying to stop a gang fight in the Bronx.

The first national celebration of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday takes place on January 20, eighteen years after it’s first introduced by U.S. Congressman John Conyers (D-MI).

The Iran-Contra investigation
reveals illegal and covert actions by the Reagan administration. Among the revelations are that the U.S. government allowed the inner cities of America to be saturated with crack cocaine in order to fund the Honduran contras to overthrow the Sandinista government of Nicaragua.