‘More than music’: Stars and trailblazers reflect on hip-hop’s evolving legacy 50 years later

For the past 50 years, hip-hop has solidified its position in the United States and on the international front as a multibillion-dollar music industry and a dynamic and evolving movement for change that gives a voice to the people.

And as the hip-hop community celebrates the 50th anniversary of the genre, ABC News Studios is honoring Juneteenth and Black Music Month through “Hip-Hop @ 50: Rhythms, Rhymes & Reflections”– a one-hour “Soul of a Nation” special hosted by hip-hop radio icon Angie Martinez that explores hip-hop’s origins, its evolution and where things stand today.

“You’re seeing the same things that were being talked about in the late ’80s by N.W.A. still happening, still capturing headlines right now in 2023,” said pop culture journalist and ABC News Contributor Kelley Carter as she reflected on hip-hop speaking out against police brutality.

“We’re talking about hip-hop turns 50, but I think that hip-hop is a living and breathing thing that we are constantly creating.”

The special, which airs on Monday at 10:00 p.m. ET on ABC and is available later on Hulu, features roundtable discussions on hip-hop’s evolving legacy, and includes conversations with artists and industry trailblazers like Master P, The Lox, E-40, Lola Brooke, Coi Leray, Joey Bada$$, Fat Joe and MC Lyte, and Charlamagne tha God.

‘More than music’

Asked when he knew that hip-hop was “more than music,” Bronx rapper Fat Joe told Martinez it was when he heard the 1982 song “The Message,” by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, which was named in 2017 by Rolling Stone as the best hip-hop record of all time and has been archived by the Library of Congress.

“That was the first conscious hit record,” he said.

Hip-hop was born in the Bronx, New York, in the early 1970s and in its early days poverty and brutality plagued Black communities. Martinez said that hip-hop broadcasted the living conditions of Black Americans who were living in poverty at a time when social media didn’t exist and when those issues were largely ignored in mainstream media.

“What was dope, too, is the way that we would learn about different places,” she said.

“It was like social media, right? It was like a news network in some type of way. I feel like hip-hop educated us.”

“The Message,” which features Duke Bootee and Melle Mel from the group, was the most prominent hip-hop song at the time to feature social commentary. In the last verse, Melle tells a gut-wrenching story about a young man who drops out of school, ends up in jail and dies by suicide after getting repeatedly raped behind bars.

At the end of the video, Duke Bootee and Melle Mel get arrested for no clear reason.

Martinez said that “The Message” was the “first time” she remembered seeing a video or a song where someone is talking about what “the real struggle looks like.”

For Fat Joe, who watched the genre evolve and take on new fights in every generation, hip-hop has been his own vessel for speaking out on the issues that he’s passionate about.

In just the last year the New York-based rapper has loaned his voice to the “Protect Black Art” movement, fighting against the use of rap lyrics in criminal proceedings, and met with lawmakers on Capitol Hill in May to advocate for equitable health care.

“Hip-hop let me go to Capitol Hill and represent [the] American people,” he said.

“They know what I came from. And I told ’em, ‘Listen, I gotta speak for the voiceless.'”

‘My therapy was music’

Hip-hop broke barriers by addressing controversial topics in society, but over the decades it has also developed as a medium for artists to address their own mental health struggles and provide support for their fans and other artists to open up and seek help.

“The story of hip-hop is the storytelling of culture and of community. For so long [we] didn’t talk about mental health … particularly in the Black community,” said hip-hop music executive and radio host Mike Muse.

“​​I think my therapy was music because I got a chance to tell my story,” said rapper and record executive Master P, who reflected on coping with his daughter’s death, during the special’s roundtable discussion on mental health.

“These kinda things were shunned,” he added. “… I don’t even think we knew how to cry back then.”

But over the years artists and leaders in the industry have been using their music and their public platforms to encourage conversations about mental health and to connect with their fans about the importance of seeking help.

From Chicago rapper G Herbo launching his “Swervin’ Through Stress” nonprofit, to Megan Thee Stallion launching a mental health resource site, artists are candidly sharing their own struggles and letting their fans know that they are not alone.

“It’s beautiful that we’re at a point in the culture where you can have these conversations,” Martinez said.

“That’s probably why we all fell in love initially with hip-hop,” she added. “It gave voice to people who were dealing with trauma, broke, starving.”

Muse said that even in hip-hop’s early days, songs like “The Message” “really did talk about mental health, but not in a direct way.”

“We saw artists within that era of hip-hop having to use these metaphors to really address systems of PTSD, depression,” Muse said. “These are words that we have now.”

Brooklyn rapper Joey Bada$$, who grew up in the 1990s, said that for him, hip-hop artists were “essentially, like, our shrinks. They were our therapists.”

Asked when he first felt that way, he told Martinez that it was when he heard Tupac’s 1992 song, “Keep Ya Head Up.”

Muse said that Tupac’s music was “very vulnerable” without directly mentioning mental health.

Joey Bada$$ reflected in the roundtable discussion on losing his friend to suicide when he was 17 years old and how his own journey led him to seek therapy.

“For us young Black men, there’s less outlets for us to get help and receive help … with therapy bein’ such a taboo thing,” he said. “Now I do therapy and I love it.”

Joey Bada$$ also reflects on the topic of mental health in his own music.

“Rappers are becoming more comfortable with taking the same level of authenticity and applying it to their real lives and also using their public platforms to talk about it,” Carter said.

“I have so much hope that that’s gonna continue and that they’re gonna continue not only making music that addresses it, but talking about it in the very large platforms that they have.”

If you are struggling with thoughts of suicide or worried about a friend or loved one, help is available. Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 [TALK] for free, confidential emotional support 24 hours a day, seven days a week.