Fight the Power: How Hip Hop Changed the World (PBS) is a four-part docuseries executive produced by Chuck D of Public Enemy and featuring interviews with a wealth of musicians, artists, scholars, and political thinkers, who trace the history and life cycle of the genre as it grew out of the Bronx in the 1970s and became a global force, and how rappers have made highlighting injustice an integral part of the artform since the moment it all began.
Opening Shot: “2020,” Chuck D says over the underlying crackle of vinyl and footage of the public outcry that occurred in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. “The Black Lives Matter protests wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for hip hop. The culture informed and brought together generations of different people, from different backgrounds, for this moment.”
The Gist: Before it can explore the cultural climate of the 1980s, and the rise of artists like NWA and Chuck D’s own Public Enemy; before it delves into the 1990s, and the era of Bill Clinton and hip hop’s ever-growing popularity; and before it can analyze the genre in a contemporary sense, with its global reach and established creative and financial might, Fight the Power: How Hip Hop Changed the World has to go all the way back to the beginning, and trace the arc of history and social context that became the artform’s engine. “I was privy to all those things that were going on in the 1960s,” Chuck D says in part one of the doc, entitled “The Foundation.” The slayings of Malcom X, of Martin Luther King, Jr, of John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy, “they had a profound effect not only on me, but our community that we lived in.” And as riots, social injustice, the rise of the Black Power movement, and the voices of Black political and religious leaders raised consciousness, so too did music pick up the narrative.
Fight the Power includes commentary from observers including Chuck D and KRS-One, author Nelson George, and political historian Leah Wright Rigueur to explore how the tumult of the 60s fed into the adversity and decay of New York City in the early 1970s, when poverty became entrenched and the policies of the Nixon administration established a pattern of “benign neglect” that forced entire communities to fend for themselves. But within that adversity, there was also creativity. As clips of white reporters and newscasters intone stuff like “there is a crime of violence committed in New York City every 4 minutes” and “they and their families inherited this devastated piece of the earth,” creators like DJ Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flash fuse the fervor of disco to innovative break beats and the spirit of impromptu house parties and gatherings in city parks to build what becomes hip hop in its earliest form. And once it’s there, the beat doesn’t stop for anything.
“We saw the Bronx not according to the environment, but according to who we were in it,” KRS-One says in part one of Fight the Power, and even as Nixon and, later, the rise of Ronald Reagan actively worked against the vitality of Black people and their communities, hip hop became a refuge, a force of creativity, and a source of empowerment that inspired the ensuing generations.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not be Televised) is important to mention here, though it’s a standalone doc and not a series. The Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson-directed film captures the performances and unifying environment surrounding the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, within the same New York City climate that became the incubator for hip hop, and how the legendary fest was largely overshadowed by Woodstock, which took place the same summer.
Our Take: “The system started cracking at the school level, because the resources that normally would go into schools, were stripped, were taken away. The city didn’t have it in the budget. Our music programs in schools went by the wayside. We didn’t have instruments to practice in schools anymore. So to quote Lord Jamar from Brand Nubian, we took the only thing in our house that made music – a turntable.” In Fight the Power: How Hip Hop Changed the World, Grandmaster Caz of the Cold Crush Brothers offers this singular moment as a kernel of creativity born from necessity, as a piece of available technology was accessed by individuals who were clamoring for expression in a city that had left them behind. But it also becomes one of the many connective moments in this revealing, powerful documentary series, where peoples’ inevitable drive to make art met swirling, churning cultural forces head-on and refused to be silenced.
Much of that swirl is damning. As Leah Wright Rigueur puts it, “The policies that come out of the Nixon administration, particularly those policies that are focused on the War on Drugs, on crime, are actually designed to punish Black people. We have an accounting of this.” (On screen transcripts from Nixon advisors admit as much.) And it’s this reality that becomes the crux of Fight the Power, as the persecution experienced by Black and brown people finds reaction in the populace, echoes in the music, and manifestation in new forms of context, which for the purposes of this doc are represented best in hip hop’s voracious growth from party music and a motor for everything from graffiti to breakdancing to its embrace of rap lyricism and its evolving but consistent stance as the communicator of a culture. Or, as Chuck D has famously characterized the genre, “the Black CNN.”
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: “The Message,” Fat Joe says of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s pioneering groundswell 1982 single, “is like going viral now. Every floor you went down in the projects, it was playing. When you went outside, every single car was playing ‘The Message.’ You would go to the party, they would play that record 30, 40 times.”
Sleeper Star: “It was the most important thing in my life,” LL Cool J says of hip hop in its earliest spark. “It was the first time that I heard Black men sound empowered, express their imagination, express their creativity in a way that made us all dream more.” Darryl McDaniels of Run-DMC agrees about those early, organic, and tremendously exciting summer gatherings and house parties. “I was a shy, nerdy, geeky kid,” McDaniels says. “But hip hop empowered me. ‘Oh, I can use this to not not be afraid to tell the world who I am.’”
Most Pilot-y Line: In a beautiful piece of archival footage, DJ Kool Herc is seen driving his white convertible through the streets of the borough, speaker cabinets propped up in the back seat. He was an innovator, Chuck D says. “A Caribbean immigrant like so many of the communities in the Bronx at that time. He revolutionized how the music was played. And that inventiveness comes out of being able to have that sound system and play that for the people.”
Our Call: STREAM IT. From hip hop’s inception and its emergence and growth, Fight the Power: How Hip Hop Changed the World offers a powerful message that connects influence, innovation, and a unifying beat to how we continue to think and speak about the artform today.
Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges
