All Rap Is Local
As it celebrates its 50th birthday, hip-hop is a global phenomenon. But to map the music's true impact, you have to look closer. Here's a guide to rap history, charted across more than a dozen cities.
July 17, 2023
Sheldon Pearce
Hey, young world. Here's a story about one measure of the distance hip-hop has traveled in its 50 years. Once upon a time, not long ago, to a great rap storyteller, an 11-year-old in Queens became obsessed with the nascent rap movement. But circumstances forced the young Q-Tip, the rapper-producer who would soon found A Tribe Called Quest, to get creative with his equipment. Like most Black kids then, he didn't have a track machine, so learning the craft required a workaround. As he 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
