Hip-hop has become the culture, permeating every aspect from pop to politics to fashion and beauty. Considering its huge global impact, it’s wild to think the genre only emerged 50 years ago, created by Jamaican DJ Kool Herc in New York’s South Bronx.
It’s even harder to believe that the first hip-hop track to come out of Aotearoa was in 1988. When Upper Hutt Posse released E Tū, the song bridged the gap between American hip-hop and Māoridom, proudly asserting their identity and referencing leaders like Te Rauparaha and Hōne Heke.
As a genre, hip-hop has always been used by POC and marginalised communities as a vehicle for expression, so it makes sense that Aotearoa’s hip-hop history has so many Māori and Polynesian musicians at the forefront: Che Fu, Savage, Brotha D and the Dawn Raid Entertainment crew, Scribe, Ladi6, to name just a few.
Thanks to early shows like RadioActive’s Uncut Funk, 95bFM’s True School Hip Hop and RDU’s Beats 'n' Pieces, Max TV (and later, MTV), hip-hop music blew up across the motu and had everyone hooked.
As history has taught us, it only takes one song to have a hip-hop awakening. So to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the genre (officially on August 11), we revisited our favourite life-affirming tracks, and asked some cool people to do the same.
Aroha Harawira, producer and DJ
My favourite hip hop song is also my favourite song of all time: Spottieottiedopalicious by Outkast, from their 1998 album Aquemeni.
When I first heard this it was like being struck by lightning. It was everything that I didn’t know I needed in a song, but once I heard it, I was enchanted for life. At the time I was hosting a weekly daytime radio show on RadioActive in Wellington, and a regular listener recommended that I check it out. I found the album in the station’s CD library and played it.
The combination of Big Boi’s distinctive Southern drawl, Andre 3000’s soulful voice, the storytelling lyrics, a plodding reggae bassline and hypnotic guitar licks cast its spell on me, and also fellow Radio Active DJs Mu (aka DJ Fitchie, now of Fat Freddy’s Drop fame) and DJ Lemon who both ran into the studio when they heard it wanting to know what it was.
It has worked its magic on so many and I was told many years later that Fat Freddy’s Drop were hugely inspired by the song when they were first developing their sound.
Spottieottiedopalicious is more than a hip hop song, it’s an example of how music can change lives.
Diggy Dupé, musician
Mobb Deep’s Shook Ones, Pt. II always reminds me of my first car! This was a lifetime ago when Bluetooth wasn’t a thing so I dubbed a cassette tape with nothing but this song on repeat. I’m pretty sure [partner] Kama got sick of it real quick.
Ngarino Ellis, associate professor art history
I would go with Boujee Natives by Snotty Nose Rez Kids (2020). I love listening to hip hop, especially Indigenous when I prepare my classes. I teach art history, and museum studies, almost exclusively focused on Indigenous and Māori art.
Listening to these kinds of hip hop songs gets me in the mood to try and make a difference in my classrooms to help my students feel impassioned about learning and how fab Indigenous music is as a whole as a way of just getting up and dancing (I am yet to set an interpretive dance assignment for one, but the year is not finished yet!). Sometimes I’ll play songs like this, or DJ Poroufessor’s Gifted & Māori mixtape on Sound Cloud or Sten Joddi’s Greasy Frybread, or show Kid Pharoah’s British Museum (my new fave). Indigenous hip hop represent!
Steve Dunstan, brand director and founder of Huffer
Hip-hop had a huge influence on me from the late 80s and into the 90s. I grew up skateboarding and hip-hop was a massive influence on skate culture as it was progressive, courageous and had flow and style.
The mindset and sense of freedom of hip-hop was inspiring and became a lifestyle that ultimately helped shape values in that period of my life and then to the start of Huffer in 1997.
A Tribe Called Quest was more ‘conscious’ styled hip-hop, being open and lightly spiritual to some degree. I can rap Check the Rhime word for word… in my car by myself lol…
Mike Hall, Arcade owner and radio host
It's always the songs that get to you during your developmental years that end up sticking for life. I'm not sure how it happens now, but when I was forming my relationships with hip-hop I got the Jay Z song Dead Presidents II on a tape from my cousin and listened to it hundreds of times.
The sample from Peace Garden made such a unique little cinematic universe for Jay Z to exist in. I was obsessed with the wordplay, and of course the Nas vocal took on a whole new meaning once their feud became the central story in rap. I'm a fan of a billion different versions of hip-hop by now, but all these years later it's still impossible to fault this one.
Anjali Burnett, designer and co-founder of Twenty-seven Names
My brother Jason and my mum Sandhya turned me onto hip-hop in the mid 90s. Mum twisting her hands up to Mistadobalina and singing "Boy! You are a stupid! Mr Bob Dobalina!" is by far one of the sweetest memories from my childhood. What can I say, we're all big fans of the come-up.
In my ongoing efforts to seem cool to my big brother as a 10-year-old I memorised Regulate by Warren G feat. Nate Dogg, which I can still recite to this day. "It was a clear black night, a clear white moon..." This song, and plenty others from Outkast, Salt-N-Pepper and Gang Starr have instilled a deep love of dynamic duos in me. Hence this photo of me and [co-founder] Ray-Ray from 2012:
Duncan Greive, founder and publisher of The Spinoff
It seems a dangerously stupid thing to pick a Kanye song, given the mess he's making of his reputation, but I can't lie – no artist, hip-hop or otherwise, has ever affected me more than Kanye during his astounding, decade-plus long prime. For all his sonic and formal innovation in the '10s, I will never be able to go past the shock of the fully formed new talent that was his debut.
Never Let Me Down (feat Jay-Z, Ivy) is The College Dropout's heart to me, as well as the most ambitious vision of his orchestral era, with Jay-Z blessing it with a verse worthy of that soaring beat. I remember seeing Kanye lay it all out at the St James, part of a run of amazing hip-hop shows at the venue (see also: RZA, Gang Starr), and feeling like this was the start of something so huge and pure. That he has now become a diffident shadow of his intellect doesn't take away from the scale of what he achieved, and Never Let Me Down illustrates that as well as any of his early music.
Tyson Beckett, Ensemble style reporter
I think I would have been introduced to They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.) by Pete Rock & CL Smooth on Mark Ronson's short-lived (but very formative in my musical taste) show Authentic Shit, which was aired on East Village Radio, an online only station that was run out of a storefront in New York. Talk about niche...
The track itself is beautifully upbeat, jazzy and soulful, quite the feat considering it's actually a heartbreakingly melancholic tribute to Heavy D and the Boyz dancer Trouble T Roy who died in a freak accident in 1990.
Lara Daly, Ensemble publishing coordinator
Bucktown by Smiff-N-Wessun is a song that reminds me of being a young buck at the Cuba St gallery Manky Chops (RIP), where my friends and I would wag school to go hang out on Friday afternoons. I had been into hip-hop dancing for years at this point, but my friend Jules, a graffiti writer, introduced me to a whole new world of old school hip hop (and my love for jazzy samples). He would always play this song while 'working' at the gallery after a few Woodies. Swag.
Zoe Walker Ahwa, Ensemble editor and co-founder
My first brush with the power of hip hop had nothing to do with the music. We were split into sports groups at primary, and the seniors wanted to name ours Naughty by Nature. I had no idea what that was (some of the standard fours explained it was a rap group) but the teachers were not happy and so, the name was rejected. I was immediately intrigued by this unknown thing called rap unsettling those in positions of power; I needed to know, and hear, more.
I have no cool deep-cut hip hop references, but it has influenced my life a lot: I knew my now husband was The One when he could do the C-Walk one night out; I knew fashion industry acquaintances would be real friends after bonding over a shared love.
My pick would have to be anything by Lil' Kim. She has always been unapologetically sexual, with lyrics so rude that still make me blush. Her fashion is iconic. She has dealt with some real bullshit and a lot of judgement. She also has a memoir coming out soon that I will be devouring immediately. Lighters up for a true queen.
Her track Not Tonight (Ladies Night Remix), with Missy Elliott, Left Eye, Angie Martinez and Da Brat, will get me on the dance floor anytime it's played. The original is great (and rude) but the remix, and its accompanying music video, is a party of hip hop icons and 1997 fashion.
This is cheating, but my other choice: Miss Dynamite’s It Takes More (2002). Maybe it’s more garage, but I was and still am obsessed with this song and the album it’s on.
Rebecca Wadey, Ensemble partnerships director and co-founder
I’m that basic bitch who would listen to Salt N Pepa any day of the week, especially Push It. It has nostalgic childhood memories for me and anytime I hear it I have to dance. I also love all the sex positive female rappers and hip hop stars and have made sure my sons were exposed to them from an inappropriately young age. Lots of long car trips relieving my youth educating my children on Get Yer Freak On and How Many Licks. Okay, as I type this I realise this probably isn’t great parenting. But surely a welcome counterpoint to all the insidious misogyny out there.
