in the 1970s and ’80s was under attack on multiple fronts. One cadre of aggressors was the political and religious leaders lobbing accusations of moral turpitude and seeking remedy through censorship—as if Black teenagers had smuggled violence, materialism, and misogyny into a heretofore unsullied America through this vile, nascent subculture. The other set of antagonists was the music critics, radio program directors, jazz neocons, and sundry gatekeepers of the culture’s citadels who maintained that rap was not music, graffiti was not art, and sampling was merely theft and who deemed it all unworthy of the airwaves and the arts sections, to say nothing of the classrooms and museums. It’s worth noting how many of those same motherfukkers showed up last year to celebrate hip-hop at 50, with nary an apology tendered.
In the heat of those culture wars, hip-hop needed two things as it scrapped for the right to exist: credentialed defenders and representative geniuses. When New York City declared “war” on graffiti and vilified its practitioners as sociopaths, The Village Voice’s Richard Goldstein looked at subway cars adorned with masterpieces by PHASE 2 and RIFF 170 and clapped back that these artists seemed like the healthiest and most assertive people in their neighborhoods. When Melle Mel dropped the social-realist dispatch that was “The Message” in 1982, he became the representative genius who handed rock scribes the rappers-are-reporters argument that would be marshaled on behalf of everyone from Schoolly D to N.W.A by the decade’s end.
But it wasn’t until Rakim Allah—born William Michael Griffin Jr.—came along four years later that hip-hop’s defenders found a representative behind whose banner they could storm those citadels of culture and end any arguments about whether this new thing was art with the finality of a sword through the chest.
The class of 1986-87 changed hip-hop, and Rakim was its valedictorian. That emergent cohort—Eric B. & Rakim, Boogie Down Productions, Big Daddy Kane, Kool G Rap & DJ Polo, Ultramagnetic MCs, Biz Markie, and Public Enemy—pulled hip-hop out of a lurching transitional period and into a golden era, with a new sample-based aesthetic that provided thrilling sound beds for lyrics of astonishing dexterity, intensity, and complexity. But Rakim stood apart, even from the titans with whom he rode in.
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