Mcing Quotes

I rapped on the door. By which I mean I knocked on it, not that I did a little MC-ing. But if I had’ve done a little MC-ing, it would’ve been quite angry stuff, like NWA when they’re on about the Rodney King incident. Only I’d have made it less about police brutality and more about old Devon men ripping young folk off with their made-up stories of broken down cars. And there I think you’ll find the main difference between British and American crime.

The very subjects and activities that rappers rap about today are exactly what Hip Hop was created to avoid and even overcome. The point here is that knowledge and overstanding were also at the birth of Hip Hop right along with b-boying, MC-ing, graffiti writing and DJ-ing. However, the desperate quest to exploit Hip Hop’s artistic elements for profit (in Hip Hop’s later years) buried the principles and life skills that accompanied Hip Hop’s early artistic elements.

Nation hosted community events with Bronx youth, organizing local music and dance movements into a single cohort that, over time, produced the formative language of hip hop, encompassing everything from beat-making to emceeing (MCing)—acting as the “master of ceremonies” following the West African griot practice of rhythmically telling stories and sharing oral traditions over drum beats. The success of “Planet Rock” was a slow burn; first received as a type of funk music, it could slip onto the radio at a time when mainstream stations were convinced that the entire genre of hip hop was a fad that would soon pass. The release landed the same summer as Grandmaster Flash and the Furious