Five classic hip-hop songs that represent New York City
Hip-hop is today a global phenomenon, listened to and practiced all over the world. But, still, one place above all others remains so central to its identity: New York, where the form was born.
Hip-hop emerged out of the block party scene of 1970s New York, especially from within the ethnic minority neighbourhoods of the Bronx. DJs there started messing around with instrumentals, which breakdancers and MCs, in turn, responded to and played around with. Disco tracks were especially important to these early experiments in hip-hop music, which later came to be known as “old school.”
Hip-hop eventually broke out of its New York home and spread across America, and, eventually, around the world. Its sound expanded, and it’s fair to say that it has since changed the face of popular music in general. There’s an argument to say that it is the most important form of popular music today.
Hip-hop, as a cultural force, has grown way beyond its early New York origins, but the city will never be written out of its history. Some of the greatest hip-hop songs ever are rooted in the place, so, with that in mind, here are five classic tracks that embody New York City.
5. Beastie Boys – ‘An Open Letter to NYC’
‘An Open Letter to NYC,’ a track from Beastie Boys’ 2004 album To the 5 Boroughs, was written in response to New York’s darkest ever moment: 9/11. The group were New Yorkers through and through, and, like everyone else from the city, September 11, 2001, greatly affected them—so they wrote this song as a tribute to the stuff that makes the city great.
The song specifically celebrates New York’s multiculturalism and all the different people that make it what it is. “Asian, Middle-Eastern and Latin / Black, White, New York you make it happen,” as the song puts it. It’s a celebration of the very cultural diversity that lies at the heart of hip-hop itself, and it was intended as a statement of unity following such a traumatic event.
4. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five – ‘New York, New York’
Released in 1983, ‘New York, New York’ isn’t quite the celebration of the city that its title might imply. The song actually expresses many of New York’s downsides, reflecting on the inequality, police violence, and general malaise that the Bronx’s Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five detected around them during the ’80s. The “big city of dreams,” as the song puts it, “ain’t always what it seems.”
New York, for all its good qualities, is undeniably difficult, too, and hip-hop has long sought to deal with that fact. ‘New York, New York’ doesn’t shy away from the city’s more unsavoury side, its “poverty-stricken reality.” Despite its dark lyrics, the song proved popular and became one of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s more commercially successful tracks.
3. Gang Starr – ‘New York Strait Talk’
‘New York Strait Talk’ is a real celebration of the city’s hip-hop traditions, but, funnily enough, it comes from a legendary group who weren’t technically natives. Gang Starr’s DJ Premier was born in Texas, while MC Guru was from Boston. They both eventually relocated to Brooklyn, which is where their legendary hip-hop duo really started to take off. They became a part of the city’s fabric, for which they were both grateful. That was why they made their ’98 track ‘New York Strait Talk.’
As Preemo once remarked in a conversation with Wax Poetics, “This was mainly to pay homage on how New York accepted us, even though we’re originally out of town—I’m from Texas and Guru’s from Boston. But I’m proud to be considered honorary New Yorkers because through the years, no matter what, we laid it down for New York. And people can tell just how much we love New York.”
2. Jay-Z featuring Alicia Keys – ‘Empire State of Mind’
In its earliest stages, ‘Empire State of Mind,’ was initially written by Angela Hunte and Janet “Jnay” Sewell-Ulepic, who were inspired to do a tribute to their home city while they were homesick on a trip abroad. “We said to ourselves, ‘We complain so much about New York—about the busy streets, about the crowds and the pushing, about the subway system—but I would trade that for anything right now,’” Hunte recalled to Billboard in 2009. “Before we left the hotel that night, we knew we would write a song about our city.”
The duo later sent a demo of their track to Roc Nation, hopeful that fellow New Yorker Jay-Z would listen to it and like what he heard. It took some time, but, eventually, that’s what ended up happening. Jay rewrote the verses that Hunte and Jnay had put together, and, as per Hunte’s wish, Alicia Keys was brought on board to sing the chorus. The song proved to be a huge hit.
1. Nas – ‘NY State of Mind’
Over DJ Premier’s beat, Nas raps about the dangerous side of New York’s streets on this classic song. Featured on his debut album Illmatic, ‘NY State of Mind’ sees Nas’ story-telling at its most vivid, not shying away from the violence and deprivation that unquestionably forms a key part of New York’s make-up. This is a side of the city defined by “bullet holes,” “baseheads” and “villains and creeps.”
“That one right there is one of my favourites,” Nas told Rolling Stone of the track in 2007, “because that one painted a picture of the city like nobody else at that time. I’m about 18 when I’m saying that rhyme… I was a very young cat talking about it like a Vietnam veteran, talking like I’ve been through it all. That’s just how I felt around that time, and the track does that for me.”