Feels like Home: Looking at the Birthplace of Hip-Hop

Amid the ruins of a city in crisis, young people came together and reshaped the world. As New York City faced a fiscal crisis in the 1970s, the Bronx suffered in particular. The borough grappled with the consequences of neglect. Neighborhoods deteriorated rapidly, buildings burned, residents fled, politicians abandoned the area, and new highways to the suburbs sliced through communities. Within this turbulent environment, a new music genre found its roots. As the borough faced desolation, disenfranchised Black and Latino youth in the Bronx built a new culture on the diasporic oral and musical traditions of their pasts, and fueled by their dreams and struggles. “Hip-hop”—a term first coined on the Sugarhill Gang’s 1979 song “Rapper’s Delight”—emerged as a response to corruption, hardship, and injustice.

A new generation sought refuge in the artistic realms that hip-hop offered, creating their own sounds, forming crews, and organizing parties and battles. Neighborhoods plagued by neglect and despair served as a canvas for new forms of expression. DJs and MCs searched dumpsters for music equipment, birthing new, hypnotic rhythms. Graffiti artists turned drab walls and subways into evocative murals, and dancers turned abandoned lots into fiery dance floors. Hip-hop gave agency to marginalized people to reclaim and articulate the experiences of urban life. Through these mediums, youth in the borough were able to carve a place and an identity for themselves that transcended the confines of their circumstances.

For me, hip-hop is a constant companion. From Jay-Z’s boastful declarations of perseverance over snares to Noname’s soulful calls to action, the genre is a manifestation of our triumphs, struggles, and aspirations. Despite its humble beginnings, hip-hop today stands as a transformative force and a global cultural phenomenon that has influenced every corner of the planet. In this Take Five edition, we’ll explore five works in the collection that contextualize the emergence of hip-hop in the Bronx. As a proud native, it fills me with immense joy to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the genre that evolved through the creativity and resilience of where I call home.

Neal Boenzi/The New York Times. Collapse: Firemen Scramble to Escape Falling Wall on 137th Street near Lincoln Avenue, in the Bronx. 1962

From the late 1960s through the ’70s, the South Bronx was ablaze. Eighty percent of the borough’s housing was ravaged by fires, leaving a quarter million residents displaced. Neal Boenzi’s image Collapse: Firemen Scramble to Escape Falling Wall on 137th Street near Lincoln Avenue, in the Bronx captures a five-alarm fire on July 18, 1962, moments before a wall crashes down, compelling firemen to scramble for their lives. Boenzi, who worked for four decades as a New York Times photographer, took the photo from a nearby rooftop. This image predates the emergence of hip-hop by more than a decade, but it illustrates the longstanding neglect that plagued the borough. Systemic disinvestment and redlining practices denied Black and Latino communities access to loans and insurance to adequately maintain their neighborhoods. Urban renewal projects such as the Cross Bronx Expressway further worsened the quality of life in the borough, compounding the dire conditions that gave rise to hip-hop.

Joel Sternfeld. The Bronx, New York November 1982. 1982

Joel Sternfeld’s photo The Bronx, New York (1982), from his American Prospects series, captures a dreary November cityscape enlivened by an array of vivid sculptures by John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres fixed to the side of a Bronx building. Between 1978 and 1987, Sternfeld traveled across the United States capturing the relationship between landscapes and people. Ahearn and Torres spent decades collaborating with people around the borough, sculpting plaster portraits of community members and installing them in public spaces. These sculptures depict a Bronx street scene made up of a range of ages, expressions, and complexions. Besides the sculptures, clotheslines and colorful curtains stand out from the otherwise drab setting, providing us insight into the lives inside this building. The sculptures look over an empty lot; these lots often served as playgrounds and gathering spaces amid the turbulence of the times. Sternfeld captured Ahearn and Torres transforming and archiving local life. A number of their sculptures remain intact on the facades of buildings throughout the Bronx.

Gordon Matta-Clark. Bronx Floors. 1972–73

In the early 1970s, Gordon Matta-Clark carved large, intricate shapes and patterns from abandoned buildings in the South Bronx. With scores of apartments decaying and vacant, Matta-Clark extracted segments of plaster, linoleum, and wood and transformed them into sculpture. Bronx Floors shone a light on the neglect and disuse happening in urban centers. This series also serves as a document of the interior lives of Bronx residents. Matta-Clark’s cuts feel like a memory, providing a glimpse into the histories and lives of the people who once inhabited the now-demolished buildings. With its various colors, patterns, spilled paint, and scratches, each layer of linoleum holds the lives and memories of the apartments’ occupants. Though demolition is an act of erasure, through Matta-Clark’s intervention these fragments transcend destruction.

Stations of the Elevated. 1981. USA. Directed by Manfred Kirchheimer

Stations of the Elevated is a visual ode to graffiti and its subversive role in the New York City landscape of the late ‘70s. Stations is the earliest film document of graffiti: Kirchheimer shot 16mm film of graffiti-covered subway trains as they moved through the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan during a time when the art form was seen as vandalism. Graffiti emerged as an element of hip-hop that provided a visual language for the movement’s spirit and energy. Through vibrant murals and tags, it allowed young Black and Latino artists to transform their surroundings and claim ownership of public space. Stations weaves footage of tagged trains with eerie painted advertisements of burgers, cowboys, and women in bikinis. The graffiti-covered trains bear unapologetic symbols of free expression and messages like “Earth is Hell,” “Heaven is Life,” and “For the People of this City,” which stand in stark contrast to the dull consumerist advertisements. Along with a jazz score featuring Charles Mingus and Aretha Franklin, Kirchheimer’s film invites us to witness an urban symphony.

Danny Lyon. IRT 2, South Bronx, New York City. 1979

Danny Lyon’s photograph IRT 2, South Bronx, New York City (1979) looks like it could have been taken yesterday. It demonstrates just how many aspects of the city’s subway system remain unchanged: sharing confined space, seeing someone head-down in a book, taking in views of the city from the car window. There are also stark differences—the various newspapers, the Newport Lights cigarette ads, and graffiti covering the walls. Lyon returned to New York after documenting the Civil Rights movement in the South and began photographing subway passengers during their commutes. IRT 2 portrays subway cars as spaces where people from various walks of life intersect. In the photo’s seemingly still moment, every person offers subtle glimpses into their individuality and private lives. Lyon took the photo during what seems to be a morning work commute, capturing a metropolis on the brink of change.

Listen to a playlist inspired by these works and the legacy of hip-hop...