NEW YORK – JULY 23: Rapper Tupac Shakur performs onstage at the Palladium on July 23, 1993 in New York, New York. (Photo by Al Pereira/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
Hip-hop celebrates its 52nd anniversary today. It all started on August 11, 1973, in a small community space at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx. Cindy Campbell had organized a back-to-school party to raise money for clothes, and her brother, DJ Kool Herc, set up two turntables, discovering a way to extend the instrumental “break” so the dancers could keep moving in the process. It was a scrappy, DIY-style event at the time, but it ignited a culture that would go on to sort of define music, fashion, language, and politics across the world.
I wasn’t in that Bronx recreation room in 1973 (obviously), yet the events of that night continue to influence how I listen to music and tell stories.
I grew up far from New York, but hip-hop still found its way to me. The first rap songs I heard stood out because they spoke to me directly, with no pretense. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s “The Message” painted a vivid portrait of life in neglected inner-city neighborhoods—crumbling buildings, strained communities, and the daily struggle to get by—an environment I had never seen but could picture clearly. Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power,” Tupac’s “Brenda’s Got A Baby,” Lauryn Hill’s The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, Jay-Z’s The Blueprint, Missy Elliott’s Under Construction, and Kanye West’s The College Dropout each showed me different ways an artist could use their platform—to tell personal stories, reflect on the world, or flip the rules entirely.
I learned about the four elements—DJing, MCing, breaking, graffiti—and the fifth, “knowledge,” that ties them together. I read about the first Grammy for rap in 1989, awarded to DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, but kept off the televised broadcast because they were Black, prompting their boycott. I remember when Lauryn Hill became the first woman in hip-hop to win Album of the Year in 1999, when OutKast’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below took the prize in 2004, and when Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN. repeated the feat in 2018. These awards were signals that the culture’s influence was too big to ignore.
When I started working in music journalism in India, the scene was evolving rapidly. In the 90s, Baba Sehgal’s “Thanda Thanda Pani” introduced Hindi rap to a mass audience. In the 2000s, Bohemia built a global following for Punjabi rap. Honey Singh dominated the early 2010s with songs that mixed rap into Bollywood’s mainstream. The mid-2010s saw the rise of gully rap, with Divine and Naezy’s “Mere Gully Mein” becoming a national talking point.
Since then, there’s been an explosion of voices. Prabh Deep and Seedhe Maut’s “Class-Sikh Maut, Vol. 2” told stories from Delhi’s streets. MC Stan brought Pune slang and street culture to millions, even winning Bigg Boss. EPR Iyer used reality TV to push politically conscious rap into living rooms. Emiway Bantai built an independent empire without a label. KR$NA and Raftaar turned diss tracks into national events. Artists like Dhanji, RANJ, The Siege, and Reble have pushed for more representation for women in Indian hip-hop. Khasi Bloodz in Shillong, Vedan and Dabzee in the Southside, and Fotty Seven in Delhi showed that the scene isn’t limited to metropolitan cities—it’s in every corner of the country.
I’ve been lucky enough to see these moments up close. Covering Spotify’s Rap 91 events, watching cyphers where verses switched between Hindi, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil, and English, interviewing artists in small studios with egg cartons on the walls for soundproofing, or hearing a rapper explain the meaning behind one particular line that came from a conversation with their mother. Those details stick with me far more than press releases ever could.
Globally, the culture has continued to expand its reach. Dr. Dre’s 2022 Super Bowl halftime show with Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J. Blige, 50 Cent, and Kendrick Lamar was a generational celebration of West Coast, East Coast, and modern rap all in one set. Breakdancing made its Olympic debut in Paris in 2024. Drill from the UK crossed into New York; K-hip-hop artists like Jay Park and Epik High toured internationally; African rap movements in Ghana, Nigeria, and South Africa brought polyrhythmic beats, Afro-fusion influences, and storytelling styles that mixed traditional cadence with modern trap and boom bap. These shifts pushed global hip-hop to embrace more layered percussion, melodic hooks, and hybrid flows. Collaborations became the norm—Drake with Bad Bunny, Nicki Minaj with Ice Spice, Hanumankind with A$AP Rocky, and Kendrick Lamar with Mac Miller.
The business evolved as well. Indian rappers began securing deals with international labels, Bollywood started turning to hip-hop tracks for its most prominent moments, and streaming platforms helped artists from small towns become overnight sensations. By 2023, India had crossed a trillion streams, with hip-hop emerging as one of the fastest-growing genres. Brands, too, started placing rap at the centre of their campaigns rather than using it only as background music.
For me, hip-hop has been a steady influence. It’s shaped my instincts as a journalist—to listen more than I speak, to understand an artist’s perspective before writing about them, and to focus on the stories behind the songs rather than just the songs themselves.
That instinct started long before I became a music journalist. I remember being in a creative rut in my early twenties, unsure of what I wanted my writing voice to be. Around that time, I found myself playing Lauryn Hill’s MTV Unplugged No. 2.0 on repeat. Her stripped-down delivery and the way she spoke between songs about vulnerability, pressure, and staying true to yourself felt like a direct conversation. It reminded me that the most powerful stories are all about honesty, and that particular lesson carried over into every interview I’ve done since.
Some of my most formative professional moments have come from hip-hop stories. Interviewing Hanumankind for his first Rolling Stone cover, just as his music was gaining global traction, felt like documenting a turning point in real time. For the 2024 Rap91 cover, I spent days researching and speaking with artists from across the country—from Mumbai’s gullies to the Northeast—each conversation showing me how layered and multilingual India’s hip-hop identity has become.
Hip-hop has shown me that its story is never only about the music, but about the lives behind it, the chances taken, and the communities built. More than five decades after that night in the Bronx, it remains one of the most powerful ways to express and connect, in India and around the world. It can be found in verses recorded on inexpensive mics in bedroom studios, in schoolyard battles surrounded by tight circles of onlookers, and in arena shows where tens of thousands know every lyric. I’ve grown alongside hip-hop—first as a fan, now as someone chronicling its journey—and I’m certain its next chapter will be even greater.
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