Another Governors Ball is in the books and, except for Mother Nature taking over Sunday's headlining slot, the New York City summer-starting festival once again delivered a weekend of great music on Randall's Island.

The Recording Academy went On The Road and on-the-ground at Gov Ball 2019 with host Alina Vission, to bring you exclusive backstage interviews with an array of artists just before or after they hit the stage.

We shared in the excitement of the fest as we spoke with breakout pop songwriters Jessie Reyez and NJOMZA, Brooklyn's own Cautious Clay and emerging rapper Tyla Yaweh.

You can look forward for more exclusive conversations coming soon to GRAMMY.com, including with R&B future star Amber Mark and rising dance outfit Louis The Child, who we also caught up with at the fest.

More Fests: Your 2019 Guide To The Best Summer/Spring Music Festivals

Friday featured a trio of big hip-hop headliners—Tyler, The Creator, Lil' Wayne and BROCKHAMPTON—who relentlessly electrified the N.Y.C. crowd. Saturday's upbeat vibe was provided by top-billed acts Florence + The Machine, Major Lazer, The 1975 and 61st GRAMMY Awards Album Of The Year Winner Kacey Musgraves, plus the first ever Gov Ball Pride Parade. 

Sunday's show was cut short due to inclement weather, but not before N.Y.C. hometown hero Nas and Chicago DJ duo Louis The Child got the audience going underneath the New York rain. Graciously, Governors Ball is offering refunds to Sunday ticket holders. 

Stay tuned as we go On The Road all summer, bringing you exclusive coverage from the hottest music festivals everywhere.

What Makes Roots Picnic Different: Inside Philadelphia's Annual Musical Celebration That Feels Like "It's Just Family"

Nobody can deny Herbie Hancock is a jazz artist, but jazz cannot box him in. Ditto Quincy Jones; those bona fides are bone deep, but he's changed a dozen other genres.

Cautious Clay doesn't compare himself to those legends. But he readily cites them as lodestars — along with other genre-straddlers of Black American music, like Lionel Richie and Babyface.

Because this is a crucial lens through which to view him: he's jazz at his essence and not jazz at all, depending on how he wishes to express himself.

"I'm not really a jazz artist, but I feel like I have such a deep understanding of it as a songwriter and musician," the artist born Joshua Karpeh tells GRAMMY.com. "It's sort of inseparable from my approach to this album, and to this work with Blue Note."

Karpeh is talking about, well, KARPEH — his debut album for the illustrious label, which dropped in August. In three acts — "The Past Explained," "The Honeymoon of Exploration," and "A Bitter & Sweet Solitude," he casts his personal journey against the backdrop of his family saga.

As Cautious Clay explains, the title is a family name; his grandfather was of the Kru peoples in Liberia. "It's a family of immigrants. It's a family of, obviously, Black Americans," he notes. "I just wanted to give an experience that felt concrete and specific enough — to be able to live inside of something that was a part of my journey."

On KARPEH, Cautious Clay is joined by esteemed Blue Note colleagues: trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins, vibraphonist Joel Ross, guitarist Julian Lage, and others.

Vocalist Arooj Aftab and bassist Kai Eckhardt — Karpeh's uncle — also enhance the proceedings. The result is another inspired entry from Blue Note's recent resurgence — one lyrically personal and aurally inviting.

Read on for an interview with Cautious Clay about his signing to Blue Note, leveling up his recording approach, and his conception of what jazz is — and isn't.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Tell me about signing to Blue Note Records, and the overall road to KARPEH.

I kind of got connected to Don [Was, the president of Blue Note] through a relationship I had with John Mayer, who had, I guess, connected Don to my music.

Don reached out via email probably a year ago, and so we connected over email. And I had sort of been in a situation where I was like, OK, I want to do something different for this next project. We kind of met in the middle and it just made a lot of sense based on just what I wanted to do, and then what they could potentially kind of work with on my end. 

So, [I was] just recording the album in six days, and doing a lot of prep work beforehand and getting all these musicians that I really liked to be able to work on it. It was just a really cool process to be able to unpack that with Blue Note.

That's great that you and Mayer go back.

Yeah, man, we have a song. We worked on each other's music a little bit together. The song "Carry Me Away" on his [2021] album [Sob Rock] I actually worked on, and then we did a song together called "Swim Home" that I released back in 2019.

You said you wanted to "do something different." What was the germ of that something?

I felt like it could be interesting to do a more instrumental album, or something that felt a little bit more like a concept album, or more experimental. I wanted to be more experimental in my approach to the music that I love.

I wanted to call it a jazz album, but at the same time I didn't, because I felt like it wasn't; it was more of an experimental album.

But I felt like calling it jazz in my mind kind felt like a free way to express, because I think of jazz much more as a philosophy than necessarily a genre.

So, it was helpful for me in my mind to be able to like, OK, let me completely deconstruct my conception of the music I make and how I can translate that music.

And then it eventually evolved into a story about my family and about American history to a certain extent in the context of my family's journey, and then also just their interpersonal relationships. That sort of made itself clear as I continued to write and I continued to delve deeper into the process.

Not that KARPEH ended up being instrumental. But instrumental records are lodestars for you? I'm sure that blurs with the Blue Note canon.

There's a lot of different stuff. There was that red album that Herbie Hancock released [in 1978, titled Sunlight] that I really liked. "I Thought It Was You" was super inspirational — sonically how they arranged a lot of that record.

Seventies jazz fusion was an overall influence. I felt inspired by the perfect meld of analog synthesizers, and then also obviously organic instruments like horns and guitars of that nature. So I wanted to create something that felt like a contemporary version of what could be a fusion record to a certain extent.

Any specific examples?

Songs like "Glass Face," for example, are pretty fusion-y, but also very just experimental in a way that doesn't feel like jazz, even.

My uncle [Kai Eckhardt] is a pretty big-time bass player, and he played on "Glass Face." I just was like, OK, dude, do your thing, and he just did this sort of chordal bass solo. Then, I did all these harmonies over top of the song.

And then, Arooj Aftab is a really good friend and musical artist; she was able to work off of that as well. So, it was an interesting journey to make a lot of these songs and sort of figure out how they all fit together.

How did you strike that balance between analog and synthesized sounds?

I recorded most of this album at a studio, which is very different for me.

I don't normally do that. I use a lot of found sounds like drums and stuff that I've either made or sampled, but I did all of the drums and bass and upright and electric guitars we'd recorded at a studio called Figure 8 in Brooklyn. That was the backbone for a lot of the music that I created for the album. 

Then, I took it back home to my home studio. After we had recorded all of the songs, I essentially had some different analog synths and things that I wanted to add into it either at the studio that I worked at or my own personal studio, which happens to also be eight blocks [away] on the same street away.

I struck a balance just mostly with it in the context of working at a very formal studio and then having an engineer and just getting sounds that I wanted that could be organic and more specific in that way. And also using some of the synths they had.

In terms of the approach, I kind of wanted it to be different. And so part of that was just being at more of a formal studio and having an engineer and overseeing the overall process outside of just being inside of my Ableton session.

Tell me more about the guests on KARPEH.

I knew Immanuel through a couple of mutual friends, and he has a certain sort of bite to his sax playing that I felt was so juxtaposed to my sax playing.

And same with Ambrose. I feel like his trumpet style couldn't be more esoteric and out, in the context of how he approaches melodies. It's almost in some ways like, Whoa, I would never play that way.

They're also soloists, and conceptually for me, the idea of being in isolation or being in bittersweet solitude was conceptually a part of the last part of the album. They as soloists have so much to offer that I feel like I can't do and I don't possess.

So, I wanted to have them a part of this album, to demonstrate that individuality within the context of what it takes to make a song.

Julian is just a beautiful and spirited man, a beautiful guitar player. I've liked his sound for a while. I think it was back in 2015 when I first heard him; he had a couple of videos on YouTube that I thought were just super gorgeous.

I feel like he just has this way of playing that's folky. Also, it's jazz in the context of his virtuosic playing style, but it's also not overbearing. I felt like as a writer and as a musician, it would be a really great connecting point for a few of the more personal songs on the record.

And then my uncle Kai as well, — he's not on Blue Note, but he used to play with John McLaughlin and run bass clinics with Victor Wooten and Marcus Miller back in the early 2000s. Dude is a real heavy hitter, and he happens to be my uncle, so it's just cool to be able to have him on the record.

Cautious Clay. Photo: Meron Menghistab

With KARPEH out, where do you want to go from here — perhaps through a Blue Note lens?

I really love a lot of the people there, and I feel like this could be the first of many. It's also a stepping stone for me as an artist.

I feel really connected to the relationship I have, and our ability to put this out. It's hard to say what exactly the future holds, but I am genuinely excited for this album. I feel excited to be able to put out something so personal and so connected to everything that sort of made me, in a very concrete way.

From what I understand, this is a one-time thing, but it could potentially be two. It depends, obviously. I'm very open-minded about it. I'd love to keep the good relationship open and see where things go.

I really have enjoyed the process and I feel like this next year is going to be something interesting. So, we'll see.

On Her New Album, Meshell Ndegeocello Reminds Us "Every Day Is Another Chance"

New York is indisputably the birthplace of hip-hop, but which of the city's five boroughs has dominated the genre continues to be a spirited debate among its scholars and natives. 

The "Boogie Down" Bronx is the origin point of hip-hop history. It’s here Clive Campbell a.k.a. DJ Kool Herc threw a rec room party in 1973 that put hip-hop as we know it in motion. The city's northernmost borough is the home of groundbreaking artists from OGs Grandmaster Flash and Slick Rick, to contemporary stars including Cardi B.

The case for Queens — home of Def Jam Records and a host of GRAMMY-winning and nominated rappers from  Run-D.M.C. and Salt-N-Pepa, to LL Cool J and Nicki Minaj — is often made. 

On her 2005 track "Lighters Up" Lil' Kim declares Brooklyn "Home of the Greatest Rappers." It’s hard to argue. Marcy Projects alone would give us Christopher Wallace a.k.a. Biggie Smalls and Jay-Z.

Manhattan also plays a role in hip-hop’s evolution as a playground where rappers intermingled with punks, rockers and the thriving art scene throughout the ‘70s and ‘80s. Elements of each of these developing artforms culminating in the music of the Beastie Boys. And because he is so often referred to as a West Coast rapper, it’s easy to forget Tupac Shakur was born in Manhattan.

Staten Island is, of course, home to the one and only Wu-Tang Clan and its diverse cosmology. Even the suburbs can boast major contributions — Long Island is the home of Public Enemy and Erik B & Rakim; head north of the Bronx to Westchester County, and you'll enter the home of the late rapper DMX.  

What’s clear when we look at each borough, is that the culture and art of hip-hop would not exist  if not for New York. Without the contributions,style and unique cultures of neighborhoods within Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan and Staten, the artform would not have developed into the juggernaut it is today.  Press play on the Amazon Music playlist below — or visit Spotify, Pandora and Apple Music — to take an auditory tour of the best of the boroughs.

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of hip-hop, hop on the train and travel from borough to borough for its unique history and sounds.

As you examine the breadth of NYC hip-hop, you’ll find artists with a deep and complex relationship with the city. Biz Markie, for example, was born in one area of the city, raised in another, and claimed membership to a crew for a whole other borough. His story, and that of others who deserve many flowers, demonstrate that while hip-hop can be dissected by region and subway line, it’s the Big Apple's density, multiculturalism, an urban innovation that has made it arguably one of America's greatest art forms. 

Mass immigration from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic in the 1950s made the Bronx the first majority Black and Latino borough in NYC by the mid-'70s. It’s not a coincidence that the Bronx was also woefully unserved by the city government, resulting in bleak economic conditions.

"Kids with little or no resources created something out of nothing," the Funky Four Plus One’s MC Sha Rock told ABC News said of hip-hop's origins. "No matter what was going on around us in New York City at the time, we looked forward to the park jams." 

These jams featured breakdancing, DJs mixing, and MCing — all key elements of hip-hop that emerged from house parties and underground venues into a city-wide consciousness. "Hip-hop wasn't called hip-hop in the ‘70s, was called 'going to the jams,'" Sha Rock continued. 

A few years before the park jams took off, DJ Kool Herc’s August 1973 rec room party put hip-hop as we know it on the map. Herc took classic records and popular hits, broke down the beats, and invited MCs to chime in over them invoking the Jamaican style of delivery, talking or chanting, usually in a monotone melody, over a rhythm known as "toasting" in reggae.

In 1975, the Bronx Boys Rocking Crew (or TBB) fostered another element of hip-hop when they organized late night tagging sessions. These young graffiti artists brought the color and life of their borough to the rest of the city, as painted subway trains provided moving canvases and controversy. 

By the time the park jams were happening, some graffiti crews had expanded into competitive dance. With moves drawn from martial arts, gymnastics, and modern dance, "breaking, popping, and locking" would see b-boys and b-girls become as important as music to hip-hop as an art form. Breaking as an art has continued to flourish and will soon be an Olympic sport.

Bronx-born artists such as the Funky Four Plus One, Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambaataa, Melle Mel and Kurtis Blow became pioneers of the genre in the 1970s, and helped define hip-hop in the '80s. 

The borough would go on to boast Kool Keith, KRS One, Big Pun, Fat Joe, and Cardi B, among many others, as acts who have innovated the Bronx’s place in hip-hop culture. The borough is now home to the Universal Hip-Hop Museum and will host events at Sedgwick and a 50 Years of Hip-Hop concert at Yankee Stadium.

In 1990, Brooklyn was New York’s Blackest neighborhood, with 73.1 percent of its Black residents native born. The previous decade had seen Brooklyn rappers rise to prominence in hip-hop, by the end of the 1990s the world’s ear was tuned into Brooklyn.  

Known for his use of three turntables, Cutmaster DC's early tracks "Brooklyn's in the House" and "Brooklyn Rocks the Best" were the first to mention Brooklyn as a force in hip-hop music. These early '80s tracks also featured DC's pioneering technique of cutting breaks over Roland TR-909 beats, a marked moment for hip-hop's technical advancement.

Combining speed, style and humor, few would influence hip-hop's syncopation and cadence like Big Daddy Kane. In their 2012 list of The Greatest Hip-Hop Songs of All Time Rolling Stone called Kane "a master wordsmith of rap's late-golden age and a huge influence on a generation of MCs." Within a few years Brooklyn flow would be redefined by the slow deliberative annunciation of the Notorious B.I.G., whose delivery would become one of the most interpolated in rap history. 

The styles of both would be emulated and refined by a young Brooklyn rapper named Shawn Carter. The artist later known as Jay-Z attended George Westinghouse High School in downtown Brooklyn, where his classmates included Busta Rhymes, Biggie and DMX — all of whom would play a critical part in the evolution of rap’s delivery styles. 

The borough wasn’t only a boys club. MC Lyte, Foxy Brown, and new rappers like Young MA continue to put Brooklyn on the musical map.

On Aug. 11, 2023, Brooklyn locals (and GRAMMY winners) Digable Planets will headline Celebrate Brooklyn! festival's 50th anniversary of hip-hop event. 

The largest Borough by area, Queens boasts the Guiness World Record for most languages spoken and gained the nickname "The World’s Borough" for its diverse population. Whereas Bronx hip-hop was derived from Black American and Caribbean cultures, Queen’s hip-hop samples the world. While the 1970s saw the Bronx give birth to hip-hop, the 1980s saw the eastern borough of Queens mature the art form.

Queen’s hip-hop history has roots in two specific areas: the Queenborough Projects and Hollis. The Queensboro Projects, a.k.a. "The Bridge," were one of the few unsegregated projects in New York. It was also home to Marley Marl, who accidentally discovered sampling while working on a Captain Rock record as a studio intern in the early ‘80s. 

"I was actually trying to get a riff off of a record. I made a mistake and got the snare in there before the sound came," he recounted to NPR. "The snare sounded better than the snare that I had from the drum machine when I was popping it…I was like, "Hold up!" This will enable me to take any kick and a snare from any record that people love and make my own beat." Marls’ use of the 808 pulse to trigger different samplers was revolutionary, and he would become a pioneer for his ability to blend sampled and 808 drum sounds. 

Marl’s contribution would extend beyond the technical. As a member of the Juice Crew, he brought the voice of 14-year-old Roxanne Shanté to the world. She created a new lane for women in rap as well as the blueprint for the diss track on the seminal "Roxanne's Revenge." 

About a half hour east on the F Train in Hollis, Queens, brothers Joseph and Russel Simmons (a DJ and promoter respectively) founded Run-D.M.C. with friends Darryl Mc Daniels and Jason Mizell. Run-D.M.C.'s sound featured a synchronized, aggressive delivery over simple but memorable rock hooks and beats. Later, the group established Def Jam Records, the label that would prove rap could sell millions of records to Top 40 audiences and bring rap to the mainstream as the first rappers to be featured on MTV.

As valuable as the musical contributions of Run-D.M.C are, they are equally vital to the development of fashion as an element of hip-hop. Street style, as it would come to be known, is born in Queens: Kangol hats, unlaced Addias, Carzal frames, and thick gold chains are now as synonymous with hip-hop as beats and samples. Today, fashion is so central to hip-hop, and vice versa, that New York's FIT Museum recently held an expansive exhibit on hip-hop style.” 

Complex proclaimed Nas’ Illmatic "set off a seismic shift in rap geopolitics" and added that the 1994 record "galvanized Queensbridge hip-hop and by extension East Coast rap as a whole." His introspective and poetic approach to writing is credited for bringing the best out of his contemporaries and inspiring next generation rappers like Killer Mike and Kendrick Lamar, challenging them to meet his lyrical bar.

Though "The Fly Borough" is the most densely populated, the majority of its hip-hop history is concentrated in the northern Manhattan neighborhood of Harlem. 

Home of the legendary Apollo Theater, the neighborhood was well rooted in Black music when World War II vet Bobby Robinson opened Bobby’s Records in 1946 — one of Harlems’ few Black owned businesses at the time. The record store would evolve as would Robinson’s involvement in music. He would become a producer and label head whose 1970 imprint Enjoy Records released music by hip-hop's earliest innovators, including Grandmaster Flash, the Treacherous Three, and Doug E. Fresh. The label would also feature Master Don, whose signature use of a "Funk Box" percussion synthesizer and its crispy digital hi hat is still heard in trap music today.  

Harlem was also home to Dapper Dan, the first designer to "borrow" designer goods and modify them with hip-hop flair. His boutique operated from 1982-1992 and was essential to the merging of luxury brands and hip-hop culture. Although brands like Gucci first sued for copyright infringement, they eventually saw the value of hip-hop's branding power on high end fashion sales. In 2018, Dapper Dan and Gucci collaborated on a capsule collection.

Also during this ‘80s culture boom, three high schoolers from Manhattan applied the ethos of punk rock to the emerging street sounds of hip-hop. 

The Beastie Boys began by pirating rap, self-admittingly "Rhyming and Stealing" for their 1986 Def Jam debut License to Ill, and went on to forge a new lane for the medium. They broke  all the rules of sampling and production with their seminal Paul’s Boutique, which Rolling Stone noted is often dubbed "The Sargent Pepper of hip-hop" and lauded for its layer sampling technique. In their ranking of Paul’s Boutique Consequence of Sound wrote, "Paul’s Boutique sat at a finish line waiting for the rest of the world to catch up." 

While the outer Boroughs would enjoy most of the attention musically throughout the '90s and 2000s, the 2010s would see Harlem again centered in hip-hop with the arrival of young rappers like Azealia Banks and the ASAP Mob collective. 

RZA, GZA, Method Man, Raekwon, Ghostface Killah, Inspectah Deck, U-God, Masta Killa, and Ol’ Dirty Bastard and later Cappadonna would find success as both a group and  as solo artists. infiltrating the "big six" 1990s major record labels by design. You can also hear the influence of RZA on modern acts like El Michels Affair, which draws inspiration from Wu-Tang's melodic take on instrumentation and released two albums of instrumental soul covers of Wu-Tang Clan songs.

Their impact would go far beyond music however. Hip-hop biographer Will Ashon recounted Wu’s influence on fashion, noting that the group were part of a trend of simplification.

"Their whole modus operandi was to present themselves as real and unmanufactured, so their clothing choices had to reflect this. The rawness and directness of the music was supposed to be echoed in the rawness and directness of their clothing. They were a big part of the early 1990s move towards baggy and oversized clothes. Huge combat trousers or sweatpants, Timberland boots, hoodies, puffas, do-rags, gold fronts and so on. A ‘street soldier’ look." 

As you’d expect, Wu’s presence looms large over future  Staten Island artists, including G4 Boys and Killarmy. New artists like Cleotrapa, a spicy, no-holds-barred femme rapper, also counts Wu-Tang as an influence and is helping define Staten’s next chapter.

The history of the intersection of New York City and hip-hop culture is as big and diverse as the city itself. We could only touch on a handful of artists and creators in this piece, but the topic has been explored at length in books like Cant Stop Wont Stop by Jeff Chang and The Come Up: An Oral History of the Rise of Hip-Hop. Documentaries on hip-hop can be found on almost all streaming platforms Netflix’s notable Hip-Hop Evolution and Ladies First: The Story of Women in Hip-Hop. 

Listen To GRAMMY.com's 50th Anniversary Of Hip-Hop Playlist: 50 Songs That Show The Genre's Evolution

In its 50th year, hip-hop is in a remarkable place of leadership. Despite the mainstream forces that long sidelined hip-hop its rightful impact for decades, what began as a cultural expression now has significantly impacted business, music and culture on a global scale. 

Beginning in the 1990s, hip-hop music and culture emerged as a key pedagogical tool in education at all levels. From dancing and rhyming in K-12 classrooms to university-level classes and archives, artist-centric studies and fellowships, the use of hip-hop in education has evolved significantly over the decades.

Teaching Hip-Hop As History

What hip-hop artists have been expressing about race, violence, economic class and beyond for the past 50 years is used as a powerful education tool in the present. Dan Charnas, Associate Arts Professor at New York University, suggests that hip-hop is crucial in overall education. His popular course on the late producer and composer J. Dilla — who produced for artists including A Tribe Called Quest, Common and Janet Jackson — inspired Charnas to write the New York Times bestseller Dilla Time. 

"Hip-hop is just part of a longer popular music tradition which sits very squarely in any history — cultural, music or otherwise. So teaching hip-hop is just teaching history," Charnas tells GRAMMY.com, adding that not incorporating hip-hop into his curriculum would "be an incomplete education of our world.

"It’s funny," he continues, citing an episode of [Rick Rubin's] podcast. "When I was on last year, he’s like, ‘So you teach hip-hop, what’s that like?’ It was such a weird question! He says when he was a student at Tisch, where I teach, hip-hop was the thing you did instead of school. He comes from a generation that had no context for it being somewhat academic."

Charnas certainly isn't the first academic to study hip-hop. He cites Brown University professor Tricia Rose’s 1994 book Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America as a key breakthrough to pave the way for hip-hop scholarship.

The study of hip-hop has also experienced significant development — from history-focused socio-cultural studies, to deep dives on specific artists. Decades after Howard University began talking about hip-hop studies in 1991 and the University of California, Berkeley created a course to study the late rapper Tupac Shakur in 1997, 17-time GRAMMY winner Kendrick Lamar is now the subject of dedicated college courses around the country. Lamar is among the artists who exemplify the way hip-hop culture transcends genre and form, whose work is a living document of society.

Good kid, m.A.A.d city has themes of "gang violence, you’ve got child-family development in the inner city, you’ve got drug use and the war on drugs, you’ve got sex slavery, human trafficking — a lot of the things that are hot-button issues for today are just inherent in the world of Compton, California," Georgia Regents University instructor Adam Diehl told *USA Today. 

Diehl introduced a course on Lamar in 2014, and today lectures on hip-hop at Augusta University. What if people had said, ‘we shouldn’t study Toni Morrison or Hemingway or Emily Dickinson because they’re too new?" he continued to USA Today. "Everything was new or too popular or too risqué at the time, but I just think that great stories last and the story of good kid, m.A.A.d city, is lasting."

"In my literature courses, music is considered a critical text," said Dr. Regina N. Bradley, an assistant professor of English and African Diaspora Studies at Kennesaw State University in Georgia. In one class, her students delve into Black protest songs. In another, they examine the music of Southern rap trailblazers like Outkast. Both help students connect the past to the present.

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"Music is pedagogy. It’s an archive and so real," she explained. "When you can show and prove to students that the history of civil rights for Black folks is not linear but cyclical, they understand and value that their experiences and what they are witnessing on a daily basis are reflections of the past in the present. History lives in the music; it lives in the culture… As a professor, it is my job to show students the dots, connect them a little bit and set them on their own journeys of discovery."

Hip-hop is also used as a tool for teaching K-12 students in a wide variety of ways, whether it’s learning and performing rhymes in math classes or analyzing current issues like police brutality and social justice. Nonprofits such as Oakland’s Hip Hop For Change work with local schools to teach foundational elements such as MCing, DJing, graffiti and breakdancing. Like colleagues around the country, their instructors also use the culture to share practical knowledge about the world.

Hip-Hop Archives And Fellowships Advance Studies Of The Form

The creation of hip-hop archives and fellowships at universities have been a significant educational development over the past 15 years, beginning when Cornell University opened The Cornell Hip-Hop Collection in 2007. The CHHC features over a quarter million digital and physical artifacts, including recordings, party flyers, graffiti art, magazines, books and personal archives. Media from artists and documentarians such as MC Grandmaster Caz, photographers Joe Conzo and Ernie Paniccioli, film director Charlie Ahearn (best known for the seminal hip-hop movie Wild Style) and former Def Jam publicist and author Bill Adler are all at CHHC.

A first for the West Coast, UCLA’s Hip-Hop Initiative followed the CHHC in 2022. The university’s Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies  is creating a digital archive and offering postdoctoral fellowships, among other missions. Public Enemy’s Chuck D is the Hip-Hop Initiative’s first artist-in-residence.

"It’s been incredible to witness and mentor so many students as they reach into the histories and experiences of the communities that gave rise to hip-hop," UCLA professor and advisory board member Cheryl Keyes said in a statement. "There's a richness and depth and context that are yet to be discovered and revealed, and this initiative will support much more of that."

"As we celebrate 50 years of hip-hop music and cultural history, the rigorous study of the culture offers us a wealth of intellectual insight into the massive social and political impact of Black music, Black history and Black people on global culture — from language, dance, visual art and fashion to electoral politics, political activism and more," added Associate Director and Initiative Leader H. Samy Alim.

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One of the most prominent universities in the United States offers resident fellowships for the advanced study of hip-hop music and culture. In 2013, The Hiphop Archive and Research Institute (HARI) and the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University launched the Nasir Jones Hiphop Fellowship. Named after GRAMMY-winning hip-hop artist Nas, the fellowship is funded by an anonymous donor. Past recipients include Dr. Bradley of Kennesaw State. (Harvard’s HARI also offers an additional resident fellowship.)

"Hip-hop is important like computer science," Nas said in a press conference announcing the Jones fellowship. "The world is changing. If you want to understand the youth, listen to the music. This is what’s happening right underneath your nose." 

Having fellowships and archives help ensure the continued study of hip-hop and offer hope to solidify its legacy for the next 50 years and beyond.

Teaching The Elements

As hip-hop education broadens and deepens at every academic level, there may also be the formation of more dedicated schools and increased educational attention to the original elements of hip-hop: DJing, MCing, beatboxing, graffiti art and breakdancing.

The foundational history and practice of DJing is now taught in courses at major institutions, including Stanford University and New School in New York City, and incorporated into curricula at music production schools such as Berklee College of Music in Boston and Pyramind in San Francisco. One-off workshops and day classes are also sometimes offered at select record stores such as Superior Elevation in Brooklyn.

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Dedicated technical DJ schools are training future stars on and offline. After teaching DJ skills to private and college students for years, Queens, N.Y.-based DJ Rob Swift started his own Brolic Army DJ School to teach advanced skills, host masterclasses with other legends and host student challenges online.

Another excelling technical DJ school is Beat Junkie Institute of Sound (BJIOS), which trains students in DJing and production both online and at a brick and mortar location in Glendale, California. Like their friend and colleague Swift and his X-Ecutioners crew, the Beat Junkies DJs came to international prominence in the '90s as champions on the world battle DJ circuit. 

As with MCing, graffiti and breakdancing, women DJs have been both influential and underrepresented in rap culture, but that may be changing. BJIOS has a supportive division for women and girls called Ladies of Sound to serve over half of the student body and offers a yearly scholarship for women in honor of the late Pam The Funkstress, the DJ of choice for Prince on his final tour, in conjunction with Pyramind and the Purple Pam Foundation. 

A Future In Physical Education

The world is at the precipice of a new frontier in hip-hop influenced physical education thanks to breakdancing, which will be an official Olympic sport beginning with the Paris 2024 Games. This official recognition could foster the need for new learning opportunities all across the globe at K-12 schools, universities, dance studios and specialized sports schools. 

This is already starting to happen on the academic front on the East Coast. Philadelphia’s Hip-Hop Fundamentals brings professional breakdancing workshops into K-12 schools, using movement alongside academic and social teaching. 

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Princeton University lecturer and Hearst Choreographer-in-Residence Raphael Xavier offers a college course called Introduction to Breaking: Deciphering its Power that "gives equal weight to scholarly study and embodied practice, using both approaches to explore the flow, power and cultural contexts of Breaking."

Hip-hop has grown from being dismissed as a short-term fad to becoming a vital lens for studying the world. The acceleration of the latter over the past 15 years alone suggests much more to come for hip-hop and education.

The most important teacher of this culture is hip-hop music, and it will continue to evolve intellectually, spiritually and physically over time and all across the planet. In that respect, the educational potential has only just begun to be understood.

Working For Students: How Music Industry Professionals Find Fulfillment In Education

When 12-year-old Clive Campbell, a.k.a. DJ Kool Herc, migrated with his family from Kingston, Jamaica to the Bronx in 1967, he brought with him a love of his island’s music and an understanding of the best way to experience that music: at a sound system dance. 

The Jamaican sound system began quite humbly with a single turntable and a hand-built amplifier in the late 1940s, then expanded to include two turntables, a crossfader mixer, massive assemblages of speakers, a selector who chooses the records and an emcee that hypes up the crowd with rhymes. As the popularity of sound system dances expanded, the selectors’ need for exclusive music to attract large crowds and trump their opponents in heated clashes gave birth to Jamaica’s prolific recording industry, as well as the development of ska, rocksteady and reggae music.

In New York Herc experimented with audio equipment purchased by his father in an attempt to maximize their sound. Playing records in between the band’s sets, Herc noticed dancers were most responsive to the songs’ instrumental breaks. In a technique he called the merry-go-round, Herc utilized two turntables and a mixer to alternate between dual copies of the same record to prolong the instrumental grooves. 

On Aug. 11, 1973, Herc’s sister Cindy held a back-to-school jam in the recreation room of their Bronx apartment building at 1560 Sedgewick Ave.; Cindy charged a modest admission to raise funds to buy new clothes. Herc played the music and his good friend, Bronx native Coke La Rock, took up the mic to shout out his friends and catchy rhythmic slogans over the records’ instrumental breaks — just like Jamaican emcees or deejays had done on Kingston’s sound systems in the previous decade. 

Word of the party, and Herc’s groundbreaking techniques spread quickly. Soon, others began imitating what Herc and Coke La Rock were doing, adding their own flourishes, which ushered in a new musical movement. Hip-hop wouldn’t have developed as it did without Herc’s pioneering efforts, or the adaptations he made to the Jamaican sound system template.

From their shared sound system roots, rap and reggae, took divergent paths. Fifty years after hip-hop’s birth, it’s one of the most streamed genres in the world; reggae has yet to attain commercial recognition commensurate with its widespread influence (notwithstanding Bob Marley’s global acclaim). Nonetheless, ongoing hip-hop and reggae conversations on record have yielded some great moments in popular music.

Whether its rappers chatting Jamaican Patois, dancehall deejays spitting bars with "Yankee" inflections or American and Jamaican artists collaborations, the connection between hip-hop and reggae runs deep. Click on the Amazon Music playlist above, visit the Recording Academy’s Spotify, Pandora, and Apple Music pages, and read on for a chronological look at 10 songs that have brought together hip-hop and reggae. 

 The Fat Boys - "Hardcore Reggae" (1985)

"Hardcore Reggae" is a lighthearted yet sincere tribute to reggae and one of the earliest reggae/rap fusions by Brooklyn’s Fat Boys, Prince Markie Dee, Buff Love and (the sole surviving member) Kool Rock-Ski.  Taken from their 1985 album The Fat Boys are Back "Hardcore Reggae" reached No. 52 on the Billboard R&B/Hip-Hop chart.

Over a bass-heavy reggae rhythm, the Fat Boys shout out a litany of reggae artists including Bob Marley (who died in 1981) and Peter Tosh, who was fatally shot two years after this song’s release. The song’s video features the Fat Boys starring in a western The Good, The Fat and the Hungry that also includes New York based reggae greats the late Denroy Morgan, (father of the sibling reggae band Morgan Heritage) Sammy Dread, Welton Irie and Mikey Jarrett. 

Buff Love captures the essence of 1980s dancehall toasting (rolling ad libbed syllables, punctuated by shouts of "right" and/or "ribit") and concludes the homage to Jamaican music with the simple rhyme, "the people is fresh/ the music is ok/ we rapping to the beat called hardcore reggae."  

Shinehead - "Who The Cap Fit" (1986)

Any list of hip-hop/reggae songs would be incomplete without Shinehead, a pioneer in blending the genres. Born in England, raised in Jamaica and living in the Bronx for many years, Shinehead’s impressive roster of reggae-rap mashups throughout the 1980s and 1990s undoubtedly inspired many Jamaican deejays forays into rapping and rappers attempts at reggae. 

Bronx rapper KRS-One introduced many hip-hop heads to dancehall with the classic diss track "The Bridge Is Over" (which featured Jamaican-accented delivery and a rhythmic interpolation of Super Cat’s 1984 dancehall hit "Boops") — but the legendary artist said he was influenced by Shinehead. 

Over the bassline taken from an early digital dancehall riddim called Tempo, Shinehead uses the hook from Bob Marley’s 1974 track "Who The Cap Fit" to address everything from "political chess games and bureaucratic red tape/worldwide genocide all the things we hate," to "terrorism, racism and all sorts of schisms/not enough work and overcrowded in prisons." There are American emcees who deejay and Jamaicans that rap, but few can vacillate between vocal styles with the astonishing skill Shinehead possesses.

Super Cat and Heavy D - "Dem No Worry We" (1992)

The 1990s were a significant decade for dancehall’s breakthrough beyond the Caribbean diaspora. Several Jamaican artists were signed to major labels, and hip-hop collaborations and remixes became essential tools in marketing the music in America and expanding the popularity of Jamaican hits. 

Jamaican rapper Heavy D had already released three platinum selling albums by 1992, so his collaboration with Super Cat undoubtedly brought greater attention to the Jamaican dancehall "don dada" who had recently signed to Columbia Records. 

Heavy D listened to Jamaican deejays toasting in Patois before he moved to New York and started rapping, so there’s a natural chemistry between Heavy and Cat as they trade playful Patois boasts that are crowned by Heavy’s barrage of mesmerizing, scatted improvisations. Essentially a dancehall party record, "Dem No Worry We" stands as one of the era’s very best. 

Ini Kamoze - "Here Comes the Hotstepper" (1994)

Producer Salaam Remi, who excelled in fusing hip-hop breakbeats with dancehall’s syncopated rhythmic patterns, remixed several hit songs for reggae stars including Shabba Ranks ("Twice My Age") and Super Cat ("Ghetto Red Hot"); his most successful, a remix of sing-jay Ini Kamoze’s "Here Comes the Hotstepper," topped the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks in December 1994. 

Remi chops up an eclectic range of samples into an irresistible hip-hop pulse that’s dominated by the drum and funky bassline from Taana Gardner’s 1981 dance/R&B hit single "Heartbeat." Kamoze, the self-proclaimed "lyrical gangster," lays down a swaggering Jamaican accented rap. As "Here Comes the Hotstepper" ascended to No. 1 in the U.S. (and several other countries) a bidding war ensued and Kamoze signed to Elektra Records. Disillusioned with the lack of remuneration, he walked away from that deal after releasing just one album. 

In 2022, videos posted on TikTok with the hashtags #hotstepper and #herecomesthehotstepper featuring people dancing to the song earned millions of views and "Here Comes the Hotstepper" entered the R&B/Hip-Hop Digital Song Sales chart, nearly 30 years after its initial release.

Foxy Brown feat. Spragga Benz - "Oh Yeah"  (2001)

From the "most critically acclaimed rap bitch in the game," Brooklyn’s Foxy Brown asserts her supremacy in the male dominated rap world and dares "one of y'all rappin' chicks" to mention her name. 

Teaming up with her then-boyfriend Jamaica’s Spragga Benz on this 2001 rap reggae nugget, the intro to "Oh Yeah" samples Toots Hibbert’s classic "54-46 Was My Number" and Bob Marley’s "Punky Reggae Party." A booming bassline underscores each of Foxy’s tough edged rhymes as she reps for the streets: "I respect the rap game, but I don't f— with rap bitches, I'm speakin’ from my heart/It's not that I'm too good, I'm just hood."

Spragga punctuates Foxy’s lines with the resounding, catchy chorus, "oh yo yo yo" as heard in the live versions of Bob Marley’s "Get Up Stand Up," which the reggae icon co-wrote with fellow original Wailer Peter Tosh.

Damian Marley & Nas - "Strong Will Continue" (2010)

Several tracks on Damian Marley and Nas’ Distant Relatives — a sprawling musical odyssey that explores the genres’ shared African ancestry beyond their sound system roots — merit ranking on a best of reggae/hip-hop list, but the motivational "Strong Will Continue" has a slight edge. 

The track begins with a stark, rhythmic pulse akin to a heartbeat, building to a soldierly cadence overlaid with strings, keys and other flourishes. Damian’s emphatic vocals then offer persuasive encouragement: "When the Armageddon start get dread/a lot of weak heart go weep and moan/only the strong will continue, do you have it in you/‘cause we’ve got a journey to go." Throughout, their incisive lyrics and distinctive blistering vocals consistently complement one another but Nas asserts his dominance on the song’s final verse. 

Shifting from generally inspirational lyrics to musings on his own life (including his acrimonious, costly divorce from singer Kelis), the Queensbridge rapper wonders if Kelis cheated on him, complains about the monthly alimony payments and fears his life has "taken a turn to the Louis XIII life, twisted and mangled sort of Bruce Lee life." It’s a riveting passage and the music returns to a heartbeat that sparsely frames Nas’ astounding flow.

Snoop Lion feat. Mavado & Popcaan - "Lighters Up" (2013)

Snoop Dogg's Rasta guise, Snoop Lion, generated understandable skepticism when he announced his reggae project Reincarnated. He earned outright ridicule after proclaiming that he was Bob Marley incarnate. Just before the album’s release, Bunny Wailer, then the only surviving member of the original Wailers and prominently featured in the Reincarnated documentary, "excommunicated" Snoop from Rastafari, citing "fraudulent use of Rastafari personalities and symbolism."

Despite the surrounding mayhem, Reincarnated is a solid pop reggae effort. One of its best tracks is the catchy hip-hop jam "Lighters Up," featuring the innovative brass embellishments of Jamaica’s Tivoli Gardens Drum Corp, with dancehall artists Mavado and Popcaan each taking a verse. Their presence on the track is significant, and belies a complicated history. 

Popcaan was a protégé of now incarcerated dancehall superstar Vybz Kartel who was in a bitter feud with Mavado. Their dispute initially played out on an exchange of diss tracks, then escalated into violence between the respective artists’ camps and their fans, which eventually warranted intervention by Jamaica’s prime minister. Despite Mavado’s words on the first verse "Link up with me, all enemies" and Popcaan proclaiming "unity is the strength" on the third, the two Jamaican artists don’t acknowledge each other (or their battle) within the song’s lyrics or video. The dancehall artists’ icy exchanges thawed somewhat the following year and Mavado was featured on the remix of Popcaan’s "Everything Nice." However that truce was short-lived and the feud, which accelerated again in early 2016, continues today. 

Kendrick Lamar feat. Agent Sasco - "The Blacker the Berry" (2015)

"The Blacker the Berry" is Kendrick Lamar’s remarkable, complex expression of outrage towards racist white America and his own hypocrisy for crying over the death of Trayvon Martin then gangbanging and killing a man "blacker than me." 

Kendrick angrily poses profound societal questions over a track that’s an impeccable blend of hip-hop, rock and soul with a jazzy outro. Jamaica’s Agent Sasco — considered among dancehall’s most astute lyricists — underscores Kendrick’s sentiments with his raspy, thunderous, Patois-tinged vocal hook, providing a historical context that resonates whether you’re from the Caribbean or America: "I said they treat me like a slave, cah' me Black, woi, we feel a whole heap of pain, cah' we Black… imagine now, big gold chains full of rocks/How you no see the whip, left scars pon' me back/ But now we have a big whip parked pon' the block."

Kabaka Pyramid -"Kabaka vs Pyramid" (2016)

Kabaka Pyramid’s hip-hop influences run as deep as his reggae/dancehall inspirations. Prior to making his name as a reggae sing-jay, the 2023 GRAMMY winner pursued a career as a rapper. His ability to easily shift between rapped verses and Patois-chanted lyrics with optimal dexterity is highlighted on the clever "Kabaka vs. Pyramid," a battle track from his 2016 Accurate mixtape, produced by Major Lazer’s Walshy Fire.

In this skirmish, Kabaka is the Jamaican deejay and Pyramid is his hip-hop alter ego. Over the beat from the Notorious B.I.G.’s classic "Gimme The Loot" (where Biggie rapped in two voices, as himself and his younger self) each persona makes their case for vocal preeminence: Pyramid tells Kabaka "you realize your whole style is rap, posing as a reggae artist, hiding the fact." Kabaka retorts, "you only vex because when me deejay mi badda dan any flippin’ rapper ‘pon the planet where mi stand upon." 

Who won the battle? That’s hard to say, "but we the same person so pull it up and replay." 

Runkus - "Taxi: Zion" (2022)

The current generation of young Jamaican music makers have transformed decades of hip-hop/reggae blends, collabs and samples into innovative, genre-less sonics. An outstanding example from that progressive soundscape is "Taxi: Zion," by Jamaican sing-jay/songwriter/musician/producer Runkus. 

Produced by British radio host Toddla T, "Taxi: Zion" is a heartfelt tribute to Runkus’ close friend, aspiring artist France Nooks, who was fatally stabbed by a taxi driver (Nooks’ voice is sampled on the track). Fluidly crisscrossing a six-minute kaleidoscopic collage of boom bap hip-hop, pulsing reggae basslines, sleek R&B and crackling dancehall beats, Runkus raps, sings and deejays with dizzying speed, asking Nooks about reggae heroes in heaven ("do you see Garnet in garments of Silk sing by the fireplace?") offers complicated considerations on seeking revenge ("we used to walk with patience now we walk with a slug") and doubting his convictions ("I lost my faith the day you met your fate"). The song is the impressive result of tradition meeting revolutionary ideas, which parallels the creation of reggae and hip-hop.

How 'The Harder They Come' Brought Reggae To The World: A Song By Song Soundtrack Breakdown