by Skinny Black Girl for Till Death Till Do Us Part…Thoughts of Mrs. Hip-Hop
Last week, my homey and fellow blogger/hip-hop head Dee hit me with some pretty tough questions. He wanted to know 1.) Excluding “Rapper’s Delight,” what was the most important song in Hip-Hop? and 2) What was my all-time favorite Hip-Hop song?
These had me stuck in my car for a minute. The most important song in hip-hop? My all-time favorite hip-hop song? Wow. Such weighted questions. So many possibilities.
So I considered the first question. What was the most important song in Hip-Hop? My first thought was “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. It was one of the genre’s first “conscious” records and it communicated the ills of the Black community to the world at large. The video itself is timeless, immortalizing the concrete jungle that birthed Hip-Hop back in the late 1970s. But then I began to reconsider.
In my opinion, there is a song that showed a true transitioning of Hip-Hop from an “urban cultural fad” to a musical genre that could reach the masses, without compromising any of its original swagger. And that song is the Run DMC and Aerosmith collaboration, “Walk This Way.” “Walk This Way” propelled Hip-Hop into mainstream culture and proved to the world that the genre’s seduction was not exclusive to the hood. Run DMC showed that Hip-Hop was to the new generation what rock was to previous generations. Bold. Defiant. Brash. Enticing. Pretty soon, it wasn’t just Black boys in Queens rockin shell-toes minus the laces. Jimmy and Billy in Orange County were running around in search of bucket hats and dooky rope chains as well. “Walk This Way” was Hip-Hop’s message to the world: I am here. And I ain’t goin’ nowhere.
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Got to disagree, Ma. The most “important” song in hip hop can’t be just the song that made white boys pick it up. I’m a bit biased I know, cause backintheday I was virulently against hip-hop/rock mix–saw it as an attempt to water down and undermine rap culture. It gets better; I was and remain a true Afropunk (www.afropunk.com).
Still, back to the most important song in hip-hop: a song that changed the way we see ourselves, bridged generations.