“The Bronx may have birthed hip-hop, but Queens embraced it with open arms and nurtured its growth. As the phenomenon spread through New York City, Queens quickly established itself as a hotbed for talent, nurturing the creativity of aspiring artists who would later become legends.”
A top hip-hop concert promoter, a veteran entertainment lawyer and a music journalist talk about the past and present of protest music, especially its hip-hop variety.
The dispute between a South Bronx landlord and a radical arts collective has become a rallying cry for supporters of the group, which combines youth development with political activism.
Silent Mob isn’t the only deaf rap group out there. But as far as the group members know, they are the only group that performs American Sign Language hip hop.
DeScribe is not the world’s first or most famous Hassidic rapper, but he is looking to obtain a higher level of recognition for his positive sound.
Hip-hop music has a powerful effect on New York’s youth–and an almost entirely negative one, say three young writers, who think that impact could, and should, change.
About 150 residents gathered Wednesday evening to vent their frustrations with the police, in the aftermath of the stop-and-frisk scandal that recently surfaced in their precinct. Gov. Paterson signed into law a bill that would prevent police from retaining some of the information collected during their stops.
For young people born without that proverbial silver Spoon in their mouths, New York City has never been An easy place to grow up. It’s a tough love kind of city.For every person who has described a rather idyllic Childhood in old New York, there are many more who Remember a harsher one, going as far back as the days of Jacob Riis, the social activist and photographer who chronicled The lives of poor young people in Lower Manhattan in The late 19th century. What he saw and showed the world influenced attempts at making their tenement lives better. In How the Other Half Lives, he observed:“Bodies of drowned children turn up in the rivers right along in summer whom no one seems to know anything about. When last spring some workmen, while moving a pile of lumber on a North River pier, found under the last plank the body of a little lad crushed to death, no one had missed a boy, though his parents afterward turned up.”A contemporary of Riis’ in the late days of the 19th century did even more.
On a warm Saturday morning a few weeks ago, a group of older tenants at the River Park Towers in Morris Heights, a neighborhood in the South Bronx, set up a plastic table across from their building. A handful of women stacked small, store-bought cakes wrapped in plastic on top of it and sat down to wait for customers.Someone wheeled in a PA system and a steady stream of 90s hip-hop tunes began to draw neighbors out of their apartments. Soon, a crowd of tenants and their children were sitting outside, enjoying the sunshine and talking about the conditions of the place where they live.”This is about taking back our building, ya’ll,” one woman shouted into the microphone. The story of New York City is often understood as a neat movement from peak to gutter and back up again. The city suffered in the seventies, muddled through the eighties, endured crisis in the early nineties and, at least until the recent recession, has enjoyed a steady ascent colored by declining crime and increasing real estate investments.The problems the city has, meanwhile, are discussed and dissected in isolation.
City Limits uses investigative journalism through the prism of New York City to identify urban problems, examine their causes, explore solutions, and equip communities to take action.
Founded in 1976 in the midst of New York’s fiscal crisis, City Limits exists to inform democracy and equip citizens to create a more just city. The organization is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit funded by foundation support, ad sponsorship and donations from readers.
Support local, investigative journalism that has informed and empowered New Yorkers for 45 years.
Support local, investigative journalism that has informed and empowered New Yorkers for 45 years.
