The Bleeding of Two Cultures

There are elements of the West Coast (speaking mainly of Southern California), that differentiates itself from the rest of the world. As a matter of fact, the elements in question, are what makes east coast heads hate the West Coast and our contribution to the culture so much. One could easily argue the west was also, unknowingly,  creating hip-hop. More on that in a minute.

“I can’t believe they are CRIP WALKING at the Superbowl! This is the problem with hip-hop”! No. It’s not. It’s an innate element of OUR culture. Let me break it down:

While the east coast was doing their thing with the park jams, b-boying, and battles, on the west coast, we were creating our own thing with the locking, popping, low-riders, and transitioning from the Black Panthers to street gangs. However, it should be noted that, for a long time, poppers and lockers resisted the inclusion into hip-hop. People like Pop Master Fable has been trying to include the holdouts. New York, on the other hand, actually took it and placed it in b-boying, anyway.

The circumstances were almost completely different. We couldn’t have park jams because we needed permits. Although Disco Daddy was our first (official) emcee, who stumbled on to rapping almost by accident, we also have a group called The Watts Prophets, from Watts, CA. They were formed in 1967.  Like their contemporaries The Last Poets, the group combined elements of jazz music and spoken-word performance, making the trio one that is often seen as a forerunner of contemporary hip-hop music. They were also the first to actually use the word “rap” on an album; in 1971’s Rappin’ Black in a White World. As a matter of fact, they are probably who Ice Cube was referring to when he exclaimed “hip-hop started in the west”. But I digress….

Ice T, who I personally consider “the Godfather of the West Coast”, and our “New Jersey transplant”, is a shining example of our street culture bleeding into this new acquisition of the hip-hop culture. Our voices, our experiences are essentially….different.

We LOVED hip-hop when we first got it. We embraced it with both arms. We had a radio station (the first), that devoted 24 hours, 7 days a week to it. We were also the first to give it a colosseum stage. The respect we gave this new culture was endless. So….how would not using OUR voices and experiences repay this culture that prided itself on “keeping it real and original”? This is the same culture that cancelled Vanilla Ice for lying about where he was from and his resume he taunted upon entry. He was even lambasted by Arsenio Hall.

So to keep it true and real (like the rules demanded), we used OUR slang, OUR mannerisms, and described OUR scene out of OUR window. Like the east coast bases its roots in gang members and stick up kids, it was no different on our coast. The only difference is, our gangs were forming here as hip-hop was coming together there.

Serena Williams won the 2012 Summer Olympics tennis tournament against Maria Sharapova 6-0 6-1, she did a victory dance. But it was not just any victory dance; it was the Crip Walk.

Unsurprisingly, like Snoop and the half time show dancers, she was criticized for her celebratory move of choice, as the dance’s origins lie with the infamous Crips gang. Fox News wrote, “There was Serena — the tennis legend — Crip Walking all over the most lily-white place in the world.” Williams’ Crip Walk could be interpreted two ways, Fox wrote. “As a stupid and insensitive celebration that dampened the crowning moment, or as a joy-filled nod to her roots.”

Crip walking IS NOT what it use to be. Before, it was used as a way to celebrate ones set by spelling their neighborhood with their feet. Fast forward 20 years later, you can find kids in France doing it, as well as the rest of the world doing it on TikTok. So just like Serena, at the Superbowl, it was a “joy-filled nod to our Compton roots”. No different than the low riders, the Tam’s Burger, Eve After Dark, Compton Courthouse, or Dale’s Doughnuts replicas on the set of the performance. Dre brought Compton to the Superbowl with him, and it made all of us proud.

Hip-Hop was injected into a culture already beginning to culminate. A culture anyone outside of Southern California wouldn’t understand. A culture, which even the east coast borrowed from, yet many won’t admit it. The beautiful thing is, you don’t have to understand, but you do have to respect it. We have given so much to hip-hop, it is undeniable. Because it may not fit in the box you deem as “hip-hop”, doesn’t take away from our hip-hop culture and contribution to it on a whole.

So if you hate it, just say that. Don’t try to insert uneducated reasoning that doesn’t make sense. You needed us just as much as we needed you.

I will forever be hip-hop, and wherever I go, I will carry Compton on my back. In the words of Snoop Dogg, “Compton and Long Beach together, now you know you in trouble”. #ComptonOnMines #WattsUp