Hip-Hop At 50: Cheo Hodari Coker On Icons, Evolution & The Spirit That Remains – Guest Column
11.08.2023 - 21:41
/ deadline.com
Editors’ Note: This guest column by former Luke Cage showrunner and Creed II writer Cheo Hodari Coker is part of Deadline’s series commemorating the 50th anniversary of Hip-Hop on August 11.
In 1999, Yasin Bey — then known as Mos Def – dropped the seminal album “Black On Both Sides.”
The first song, “Fear Not Of Man” still gets me every time I play it. It’s a classic – — just as powerful now as the first time I heard it two decades ago. A meditation on everything Hip-Hop is…and isn’t.
You know what’s going to happen with hip-hop? Whatever’s happening with us. If we smoked out, hip-hop is going to be smoked out. If we doin’ alright, hip-hop is gonna be doin’ all right.
We are hip-hop. Me. You. Everybody.
So the next time you ask yourself where is hip-hop going, ask yourself – where am I going?
Twenty-four years later, as we celebrate hip-hop’s 50th birthday, the music finds itself at a crossroads. Where is it going? Respect is up, sales are down. What’s going on?
The reason people my age are so nostalgic about hip-hop’s Golden Anniversary is because hip-hop was something older white folks predicted wouldn’t make past the early 80s.
Remember the Pet Rock? Big League Chew? The Chia Pet?
All of them had a better odds of surviving than hip-hop. (Although, strangely enough, Big League Chew is still around).
Anytime you saw rappers on television when I was a kid, it was a punchline. A novelty. The last thing you would ever expect is for Queen Latifah to have a dramatic CBS TV show (her second hit series), or for former “Copkiller” singer Ice-T to be playing a cop for twenty-five years, the longest-running male series actor in history. For Will Smith to win Best Actor — although all anyone thinks about now is him slapping