New York City was not a fun place in July of 1977. For the past decade, the city had been experiencing a sharp economic downturn which resulted in ridiculous levels of poverty, the shuttering of thousands of businesses, and the near collapse of many city services. Crime rates were climbing every year and many business owners were turning to arson in order to collect insurance benefits. New York was a graffiti covered burnt out shell of its former glory. To make matters worse, the city was mired in a record heatwave, with temperatures remaining over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius for the rest of the world) for two weeks. Oh yeah, a serial killer was also on the loose. The Son of Sam, acting on directions given to him by his neighbor’s dog, was shooting random people and sending taunting letters to the police and newspapers. So yeah, things weren’t exactly all that great in the Big Apple, by which I mean things were ready to fucking explode.
On the night of July 13, lightning struck an electric power substation near the Hudson River. Now of course, people who design such things plan for such eventualities, so of course the power just flickered a bit and stayed on, at least until a second lighting strike hit the exact same sub-station and a third lighting strike hit another sub-station, causing a cascading overload that within half an hour cut power to the entire area. New York City descended into chaos. People just went insane. Looters started going from store to store, breaking down doors, shattering windows, and tearing away protective metal grates by tying them to cars with ropes. At one car lot, looters made off with fifty new Pontiacs. Insurance fraudsters and random firebugs began lighting cars and buildings on fire. People who dared to venture outside faced muggings and other random acts of violence. With the underfunded police completely overwhelmed, neighbors and business owners formed impromptu militias armed with baseball bats, handguns, chains, and anything else that could be used as a weapon. By the time the power came back on the following evening, some 1,600 stores had been looted, 1,000 fires started, 4,000 people arrested for looting, and 550 police officers injured. Damages totaled some $1.3 billion in today’s cash.
While New York City rotted away during the 1970’s, one of the most negatively affected was its African-American population. Already faced with the long-term negative effects of systemic racism, the economic downturn turned predominantly Black neighborhoods in New York into veritable ghettos. With the power of the Civil Rights movement collapsing into infighting due to a lack of a unifying message following the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965, not to mention the assassination of Martin Luther King Junior in 1968, there was little hope of significant change via politics. Desperate people began turning to crime, gangs, and drugs to get by, things got worse, and nobody in power gave two shits aside from trying to keep such things contained to poor neighborhoods.
It was during this period in the early 1970’s, that a new music genre known as hip hop first began to appear in the Bronx. Early practitioners utilized DJ equipment and two record players to extend the percussion breaks of funk music, the easiest parts to dance to, speeding up and slowing down the beat to pump up the crowd. At first only seen at house parties, this new genre became more popular, with aspiring DJ’s carting around their equipment to block parties and impromptu get togethers in parks, wiring into streetlights to use the electricity. Over time an entire culture began to form around this scene, with DJ’s attempts to rev up the crowd evolving into rapping and energetic dancers creating breakdancing. However, by 1977, the hip hop craze was still largely limited to the Bronx. DJing equipment was expensive, and not easy to obtain. You can probably see where this is going.
Following the 1977 New York City Black Out, DJing equipment suddenly became much more available to many aspiring DJ’s. With many new DJ’s hitting the scene, hip hop took off, shifting from something barely heard of outside of the Bronx to a music craze across the city, then the country, and finally the world. By the early 1980’s, hip hop music and culture was fully ingrained into the urban landscape. In addition, with many rappers mainly focusing on social issues, it became a primary avenue for mainstream America to learn about the hardships faced in the ghettos. Over time, an established hip hop record industry coalesced, allowing the more successful artists to begin making millions off of their art. This really took off in the mainstream in the 1990’s with the development of gangsta rap, which was marketed heavily to white males. As they say, the rest is history.