The Blindboy Podcast - Donald Trump and the History of Hip Hop

Episode Date: August 15, 2018

How rebellion to the social conditions of early 70's New York created the most important artform of the late 20th century.. I also answer questions about alcohol and anxiety Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello you tremendous endas, how are ye this week? Welcome to podcast number 45, if you're a first time listener go back to the start. So last week, I got a great response off you from last week it was a good old fashioned fucking mad hot take conspiracy theory shit this week hold on I've got a queer

situation going on here I'm trying to smoke my vape right but the vape is simultaneously plugged into my laptop but the vape is simultaneously plugged into my laptop but the cord from the laptop to the vape isn't really long enough resulting in em

me having to go away from the microphone to smoke the vape hold on so last week's podcast was it was conspiracy theory shit it was good crack enjoyable this week I don't know why

I just one of my favourite podcasts that we've done is the one on the the two part podcast a couple of weeks back I think the name of the podcast

was DeVito's of weeks back I think the name of the podcast was DeVito's Teapot, I think but it was the one that it was the history of disco music part one and two that's one of the fucking issues I'm having these days lads is I love naming the podcasts

really silly fun names and not a name that relates to the content of the podcast. But now we're 45 podcasts in. We've spoken about a myriad of topics and there's people getting on to me on Twitter going, you know, which is the podcast where you spoke about disco? Which is the podcast where you spoke about the dog saint? Which is the podcast where you spoke about the dog saint which is the podcast where you spoke about the japanese monkey i can't fucking answer because i've called all the bloody episodes

funny names instead of names that relate to their content so i didn't predict that happening at all so i'm trying to find a solution some people have suggested making a wiki like an online resource for the podcast so if you want to find out what episode I spoke about a particular topic not just you but me I don't know what

this is all melding into one like fucking hell sometimes I can't tell the difference between what I spoke about in a podcast or what I spoke about in real life or what I had in a dream. It's all melding into one. So I don't know what we're going to do. But one of my favourite podcasts, I suppose it was one of my favourite because it was the disco one.

Because I love music. because it was the disco one because I love music you know that I not only love listening to music but I'm culturally obsessed with music, in particular what I love is the cultural

environment whereby specific styles of music evolve and why that just gets my brain tingling and I've always been fascinated with it, I've always been fascinated with it i've always been fascinated with how an environment can shape a sound organically i think that's beautiful do you know and disco was a fine example of that you know um for those who haven't listened to it, just a quick recap, disco came about in New York in the very late 60s

from the gay, lesbian and transgender movement for rights. Disco music came out of that. Disco was sped up kind of funk music being played in gay bars to a gay audience who were on speed and disco

and later house music came from that in Greenwich Village area of New York late 60s 70s what I want to speak about this week is the earliest incarnations of hip-hop music now I say the earliest because like I am fucking obsessive with hip-hop I adore hip-hop and rap

in all its different incarnations so because I'm so obsessive with it I wouldn't have the balls to go this is a podcast about the history of fucking hip hop I couldn't do that it's too big a subject so this podcast is going to be about the very earliest expressions of what

became known as hip hop do you know and interestingly and this is what's so fucking beautiful about it is it happens at the exact same time that disco becomes a king or becomes a thing

in a different community but in fucking New York you've got disco, like this is how mad it is if you think of New York in the early 70s musically, culturally you've got disco, the roots of disco happening in Greenwich Village

then around the corner from Greenwich Village in around Hell's Kitchen near there anyway where a venue called CBGB's you have the roots of punk music then you hop onto the subway for fucking 20 minutes go uptown to the bronx and at the same time you have the roots of hip-hop music and

to be honest stylistically how they came about disco and hip-hop very fucking similar the only difference is the crowd the environment is what's different but they're both DJ led they're not necessarily led by a band but by a DJ using their turntable as a musical instrument

so I'm searching for my hot take in all of this so for the disco for my hot take in all of this, so for the disco podcast, the hot take was, I tried to argue why disco was the real punk rock, okay, I think for this one, my hot take,

like my clickbait headline, alright, the thing that, I can't really stand behind, because it's such a sensational, inflammatory comment, but I'm going to say it this is how

Donald Trump created the environment for hip hop to come about and that's a big reach but I'll give it a lash I think we're going to find it

by kind of discussing the the environment of New York in the early fucking 70s I've said it before New York in the early 70s was an utter shithole it was an unsafe

poor place and kind of how this kind of comes about is like New York had an industrial boom just after the second world war right

you had all these new industries come about thriving fucking city and you had a huge amount of incredibly welcome immigrants flooding from eastern europe flooding from the the areas of europe that were destroyed and blown to bits by world war ii these people started coming to ellis island flooding into new york and taking up jobs in the industrial sector in the 1950s new york was very fucking wealthy not only was it wealthy in the 50s

and early 60s it was quite socially it was kind of liberal I'm not going to use the word socialism because it wasn't socialist but it certainly was by American standards

New York um used to put a hell of a lot of its money back into the city in you know health care programs uh transit the schools sanitation there was a lot of you know there was a lot of tax revenue being generated by all the people who had jobs in the factories but that a lot of tax revenue being generated by all the people who had jobs in the factories but that a lot of that tax revenue was going back into public services so you had a thriving city with high employment and shit like fucking school and transport and health care and housing not really costing that much money not really costing that much money but then what happens

kind of in the mid 60's the initial post war economic boom starts to fade a little bit and what you also get is the European immigrants that would have come over in the 40's

and did well for themselves in the 50's they would have come over in the 40s and did well for themselves in the 50s they would have lived in inner city New York areas and they were white immigrants they start to get a little bit wealthier and they move on from being in the working class and start to become lower middle class

to middle class and what New York starts to experience in the mid 60s is what's known as white flight the white European immigrants leave New York starts to experience in the mid-60s, it's what's known as white flight. The white European immigrants leave the city centre for the suburbs. So you end up with, because of the racial discriminatory, economic discriminatory system of America,

you end up with the inner city areas by the mid to late 60s of New York being mostly, not exclusively, but mostly comprised of black people, Puerto Ricans, Chicanos I'm talking fucking the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens areas like that. Now as the economy worsens at the late 60s and gets really bad in the very early 70s

and not just the like the economy in new york i mean there's a few things happening like i said you know you've got the the white flight the industrial boom kind of ending a bit then you've got a kind of a globe the start of a global recession which is being brought about by i think it was the arab israeli war of the early 70s which saudi arabia for the first time ever put up the price of its oil it's the first time that the saudis held the west to ransom by going we've got all the oil all right you're helping out the israelis he fuck you the price of oil goes up i think that's what happened now I think that's about the gist of it, might be wrong

but the Saudis definitely said fuck you the price of oil is going up this caused a global recession because you've got industrial west reliant upon fucking oil from Saudi Arabia so it slowed down the American economy

the world economy but with New York what starts to happen is industrial jobs are leaving there was a very strong presence of unions too now i fucking love unions i think unions are fantastic you know i've mentioned before my dad was a union organiser unions are there to protect the rights of workers to make sure that workers are not exploited that they have access to healthcare that they have fair working conditions

but when public money is diminishing unions go on strike and this is what happens in New York in the early 70s we'll say transport fucking unions the teaching sanitize what do you call it

sanitization that's what it's called fucking collecting rubbish construction they all went on mad fucking strikes and when unions are on strike it means that

you know there's no fucking money being made from those particular industries too so it's not good for anybody now the other thing as well that like what was happening is that the white working class workers that were fighting for their jobs of course they start to blame

the blacks and the Chicanos and Puerto Ricans this also causes tensions which leads to union fucking strikes so by about 71 and 72 the city of New York was kind of

spending more than it was earning which led to a massive financial crisis New York City by 1972 was completely in debt okay which is a bad thing similar to Detroit at the

moment like Detroit is in a terrible situation at the moment that was New York in the 70s it was a city in debt so what do you do when your city is in debt you start to fucking lay off all the public sector workers to try and save money. So that's what they started doing.

So now you've got massive unemployment within the inner city working class. And a few other things start to happen. Like I mentioned, America itself is in a recession. So when New York appeals to the federal government for a bailout for assistance President Gerald Ford kind of gets freaked out that New York is in debt

and doesn't want to set an example he doesn't want to set a precedent by bailing out New York so Gerald Ford comes out and goes fuck New York let them go broke terrible terrible move so not at all looking good for New York in the early 1970s,

1972 we'll say. What you have as a result of this, incredibly high poverty, incredibly high unemployment, a huge amount of people on social welfare in a city that's broke. You then have a fucking housing crisis.

Massive levels of crime. What goes along with that? Drug use. Gangs. Prostitution. Fucking the mafia going nuts. Loving it. A toxic economic and social environment.

That is New York in the early 1970s. Now in a capitalist society. When this type of toxicity presents itself three things generally happen right racism flourishes okay the

kind of the lower middle class they started to blame the poorest classes which were people of colour for their over reliance on we'll say free public transport healthcare and those whites

they started to blame the people of colour for you know the fucking union strikes as opposed to looking at the actual reason which is the city being in debt they're like no no no it's those uh mochers scrounging mochers you see that today in ireland the scrounging mochers they would have called them start to blame your neighbor who's a different skin color because that's

easier than looking at the more complex real situation so racism will flourish in that situation then the second thing that tends to happen is neoliberal cunts do their neoliberal cunty thing we see this in ireland now uh you know ireland we've got a massive housing crisis but we had a recession 10 years ago like the rest of the world did loads of properties couldn't pay their mortgages the government bought all these mortgages bought the debt now the government is selling off these properties for cheap to incredibly rich vulture funds that's one thing that that's how you end up with um a great disparity between rich and poor when a crash happens the rich buy up the apocalyptic landscape and then you end up with a

massive transfer of wealth this too happened in new york in the 1970s vultures came in and bought up a lot of fucking property that was going dirt cheap because people couldn't pay their mortgages. The third thing that happens in a situation like this, and it's a good thing, creativity tends to flourish. Out of the boredom of a toxic kind of recession and poverty and unemployment, historically, creativity tends to flourish. And this is, I mean, it's one of the few reasons, like, the people, the young people in 1972 as well, they would have been, they'd be called baby boomers.

Because like I mentioned, there was an economic post-war boom in America. So this was the 1950s, we'll say. So those people who experienced the economic boom in the 50s, they felt very secure and they did lots of fucking. They had lots of children. very secure and they did lots of fucking they had lots of children and these children grew up uh in their early 20s in the in the early 1970s these were baby boomers children of the post-war economic boom so there's lots and lots of young people but you've got lots and lots of young people in a shithole new york and this is why I think because it's just nuts like I said 1973 New York you've got the birth of punk the birth of disco and the birth of hip-hop

in a small fucking area relatively small area like that's nuts how does that happen do you know and it has to be these a huge amount of young virile creative people coming about in a state of utter boredom where they have no fucking distractions they're not distracted by jobs they're not distracted by being able to buy shit stare at a wall or make your own fun

and make their own fucking fun they did so let's start getting to the hot takes we're gonna go up to the a neighbourhood called the South Bronx in 1973 like I said about 20 minutes on a fucking subway from

Greenwich Village where disco is happening and the South Bronx is a fucking incredibly poor neighbourhood, South Bronx in fairness it's it's like new york today is a very safe city um you won't find a hell of a lot of fucking poverty in the middle of new york it's been gentrified to fuck the bronx is still a little bit poor and a little bit a little bit

ghetto but it was exceptionally fucking bad in the early 1970s um mainly because i think they the bronx used to be a unified neighborhood of tenements and they built this giant fucking road like a freeway or a highway you'd call it right down the middle of the bronx and it split the community and really made fucking shit of it, the Bronx was on fire it was falling apart like, it was a rubble slum in 1973 and

this podcast is going out on Wednesday 15th of August and there's a reason I'm doing this hip hop podcast now because on the 11th of August 1973 the 11th of August 1973 the 11th of August 1973 that is officially

considered to be the birth of hip hop music hip hop music turned 45 years of age 3 days ago on the 11th of August in the South Bronx and this is why this is why they say

this was the fucking this is why they say this was the birth of hip hop and this is where I'm going to try and work in a boiling hot take so culturally around the South Bronx there was one or two nightclubs but nightclub culture

it wasn't really a thing you're dealing with an incredibly fucking impoverished community of black people or immigrants from the caribbean and a lot of puerto ricans so they're not necessarily going out and fucking spending their money in nightclubs one cultural uh gathering that was quite popular in the south bronx was a phenomenon known as rent parties now rent parties are something that you see throughout the years in african american culture it's basically where you can't really afford the rent so the people of a building would get together and they'd throw a party with a band or whatever everyone would throw what little bit of money they had into the hat and that would help the people of that

building pay their rent for that week and there'd be loads of rent parties going on so the rent party scene was a big deal now one thing to consider about the south bronx this incredibly poor area if you look at 1973 at the exact same time, I'm going to go back to, I think it's a few months later, October, same time, in black areas such as Queens and Brooklyn, there was an attempt to push black people out of their neighbourhoods okay and I was doing a bit of research for this particular episode and I've changed up my research methods

I've started to try and look for original sources like if I'm researching something now I'll actually go online and try and find actual newspaper fucking cuttings from the day so i can get original sources rather than just reading about it right and i came across this newspaper article from

1973 it's october which would be two months after the official birth of hip hop this article appears in the New York Times and this article says major landlord accused of anti-black bias in city and the article reads basically there was a charge of discrimination against blacks in apartment rentals in Brooklyn in Queens and in Staten Island

and this rental or this fucking landlord basically owned 39 buildings and had 14,000 apartments in Brooklyn and Queens, this huge developer in 1973 accused of anti-black bias, basically

charging rents that are too high for black people in Queens and whatever like that and also kind of going fuck you you're not renting the building you're black so i was reading this article guess who the fucking landlord was lads the landlord was 27 years of age and his name was donald fucking trump donald trump in 1973 was a young fella his dad was a real estate developer and a landlord too young donald trump was taking his dad's money owned a shit ton of apartments in traditionally black areas and was trying to force black people out so a lot of these black people went up to the bronx because of fucking

donald trump so the hot take i'm kind of trying to go for is the current president of the united states was a fucking slumlord in new york and his racist housing policies lead to the creation of hip hop with these rent parties okay that's a boiling, boiling hot take and I fucking jumped with joy when I came across that article

and that I looked into it further that's the first time Donald Trump was ever fucking, first time Donald Trump, his name ever appeared in a newspaper, the New York Times, being accused of being an anti-black landlord, so Trump is doing this in Queens and in Brooklyn, meanwhile people are moving out of Queens and Brooklyn to go to the much fucking poorer South Bronx. And on the 11th of October, 1973, a party happens. And this party, it's a rent party.

It's like, you know, there's hundreds of rent parties, but this one is special. This one is considered the birth of fucking hip hop. And it was called Cool hark's summer jam and it happened in the recreational room of cool hark's uh apartment block in sedgwick avenue south bronx now cool hark before i kind of tell you why why is this party considered the birth of hip-hop, before I get into that, I'll give you a bit of background to Kool Herc. Kool Herc at the time, I think he would have been about 18 or 19, his name was Clive Campbell and he was from Jamaica. He wasn't born in America, he was born in Jamaica.

He moved to America at about 11 or 12, 13, moved to New York. to America at about 11 or 12, 13, moved to New York. And why that's incredibly important is DJ culture comes from fucking Jamaica, right? I haven't figured out why exactly, but in Jamaica throughout the 50s and 60s, there was a very strong preference for playing records rather than just going to a dance and there's a band playing. And in the 50s and 60s in Jamaica, you had what was known as sound systems, which were, a sound system was basically just a giant set of speakers and a turntable that you played records on. And sound systems were made up of different crews that would compete with each other in Jamaica so you had one lad going you know I've got the biggest loudest set of speakers in Jamaica come to my party listen to my records and they'd all compete with each other and cool hark Clive Campbell he says himself he grew up in Jamaica

watching from the outside these massive sound systems and the people queuing and going to these dances and in the jamaican sound systems too they mainly played reggae music calypso and the odd bit of funk the odd bit of fucking james brown but mainly reggae and calypso caribbean music so cool hark goes to the south bronx decides to throw a rent party and he'd been doing it for a couple of years these little rent parties and playing records and as well what he was doing is he started off playing reggae and he found that the south bronx crowd were like what the fuck is this shit like this is before bob marley became a thing so they were like what shit are you playing this Jamaican shit turn it

off because the people of the South Bronx were African American or Puerto Rican so they wanted either James Brown or Latin music not far off what was being played down in Greenwich Village in the gay nightclubs

you know again you have a huge Latin influence with this. So, Kool Hark decides, right, I'm going to start playing funk. So he's arsing around playing his funk records. But on the 11th of August, something special happened. Within South Bronx culture, you also had

b-boy crews and I don't even think they were called b-boys at that stage but there were groups of people who they would dance they would do extravagant fucking mad dances and they would compete with each other dancing and this is

you know you go back 20 years before that they weren't dancing you would have had doo-wop crews when you have a a neighborhood comprised of different tower blocks and whatever you get little rivalries between neighborhoods and the way of expressing it was creatively it's was true you know doo-wop or dancing or the more toxic way. Through gang culture. But the lads who weren't violent. They wanted to do their rivalries via art. So.

Cool Hark is playing his set. In the recreational room. And what he's noticing. Through all his gigs. There's a certain section. In funk music. In James Brown's music um and this section is known as the break it's where the song and we remember this too from disco because disco had a

break as well the break is the bit in the song where the band chills out a bit and it's just the drummer on his own for a couple of bars doing his thing i'll play an example of a break this is a song called impeach the president by the honey drippers and it's from 1973 and it would have been an example of what the likes of cool hark was playing at this party in 1973 So that was a break, and specifically that was a break beat. That beat is known as a break beat. It's part of an overall song, right? Like the rest of the song has got lyrics bass chords melody the

whole shebang but that one little segment which is actually the intro of that song impeach the president that's just the break it's just a drum beat and what makes this so crucial is you know cool horks a DJ okay, he's becoming aware of that he's got a set of tools with him that his decks are a set of tools and it's the same thing that's happening with the Disco Lads a few blocks down south

he notices after a lot of parties, right, now here's the thing too, with these with the summer jam the back to school summer jam and the rent parties that cool hark would have been doing the audience was quite young and they were very poor so unlike with the the disco audience there wasn't really any drug taking there might have been the odd bit of beer and the odd joint but drugs did not feature in these parties as well you're talking about people between

the ages of 14 and maybe 20 um the drugs weren't a thing dancing was the thing they wanted the fucking dance and what cool hark started to notice through his parties was the b-boys they when the song went to the break that's when everyone fucking got up and danced essentially the crowd was bopping along but they were all waiting for the bit in the funk songs where it's just the drum and that's when everyone would gather around and have the most intense dancing so on the night of august 11th cool hark had been kind of figuring out fuck it if they just want to dance when the break is there what can i do to make the break longer so he does for the first time ever a technique that he called the merry-go-round and this is fucking revolutionary this moment right

here this is the mutation in the memetic dna of funk music where it turned into hip-hop cool hark has got two turntables two of the exact same record so he's got two exact copies of impeach the president and what he does is when the song plays the just the break on one side with his left hand he immediately switches over to the same record playing on the right hand and back and forth, back and

forth, back and forth in perfect fucking timing an unbelievable musical level of skill being displayed but essentially what K hark is doing on the 11th of september 1973 is playing just the break looping it for maybe a minute two minutes three minutes and while he's doing this the crowd are just like what the fuck is going on this isn't the song this is just the drum beat this is the bit that we want we don't

give a fuck about the rest of it it's just the beat and cool hark plays this then all the all the crews start dancing and right there that is the birth of hip-hop the 11th of september 1973 the birth of hip-hop at that party sedgwick avenue in the bronx when Cool Hark fucking looped the break to make the break beat and the dancers became known as break dancers they dance on the break and when now he starts doing more and more fucking parties with just this shit obviously then the dancers are going well this fucking this break is going to go on for two three minutes we got to figure out you know what are we going to do how am i going to outdo you so they start spinning on their fucking heads and an entire new culture of break dancing dancing on the break is born and in order to dance on the break you need a dj with two records who can do it

lads start copying cool hark then obviously because everyone starts coming to cool hark's parties this dj who can do the merry-go-round and play two fucking records at the same time for an elongated break people start copying him and local heads you know what they start to do you have to remember these these young fellas and these young boys and girls very very poor so they start raiding their parents record collections their parents is you know funk records from the 60s and start doing their own gigs and something that's quite crucial here you know i mentioned in the 1960s of new y York 10 years previously it was a city that quite socialistically believed in investing heavily

in it's public fucking public amenities the Bronx like a lot of famous fucking jazz musicians came from the fucking Bronx like Herbie Hancock, Donald Bird

like proper fucking legends in jazz music so the Bronx had a tradition of jazz there used to be a there was a music program in schools going on from the 50s and 60s in New York where young black creative teenagers had

access to jazz instruments to horns and trumpets and whatever this was caught in the late 60s this was caught in the late 60s early 70s as part of the you know the downsizing of public sector spending so now you have all these fucking kids in the south bronx who come from a highly musical culture african-american culture and latin american culture all of a sudden not even in fucking school can they get their hands on a trumpet so what are they going to do with their creative expression if you're dirt fucking poor and can't get an instrument or maybe your dad had a trumpet and had to sell it for rent but records were not expensive records were relatively cheap they took the

musical creativity and applied it to the turntable they made the fucking decks the record decks itself an instrument in particular a young fella called grandmaster flash he was um a young fella that would have gone to cool harks parties, would have watched what he was doing, and just thought this is the fucking coolest shit ever. Grandmaster Flash, his name is Joseph Sadler, he was from Barbados, another young fella from the Caribbean. And what Flash did is, about two years after, around 1975, Flash invented scratching.

from 1975 Flash invented scratching he would take a record and incredibly skillfully scratch it so that the record itself became an instrument, so you've got two turntables

going now, you've got one on the left that's looping a breakbeat and then your turntable on the right is scratching in rhythmic timing with what's happening on the left that is hip hop music

it wasn't called hip hop and for the first kind of wasn't really until about 1978 79 that anyone decided to actually record this onto a tape it didn't have a name it was just it was the culture at the time

and there was elements to it like there was scratching there was merry-go-round on the turntable there was break dancing graffiti was the visual expression of what became hip-hop at the time. Because think of it. South Bronx falling to fucking shit. Actually burning with dilapidated buildings and these empty spaces. A good way to creatively express yourself is to paint over these ugly buildings with colorful, amazing amazing artwork and that's what graffiti was graffiti came about at the same time on top of that too you've got i mentioned that defunded the transit uh system so you've got a transit system where there's no more security guards

because there's security guards all lost their jobs you've got the odd few lads driving trains. So they began to tag and do these amazing graffiti pieces on trains, knowing that they would travel all around the five boroughs of New York. Again, this competitive thing that you see within African-American culture, where there's a kind of a good spirit of competitiveness that you have a rivalry expressed in either graffiti or through breakdancing or through rival DJs what you also get is

when the DJs were doing these long loops of a breakbeat and the lads were dancing the DJ would take the microphone and would announce okay we've got this crew we're going to dance to this beat we've got another crew over there uh let's see who wins and the crowd have to come in and decide who wins the

the break dancing battle during the elongated break beat there's a tradition within jamaican culture within sound system culture from the 50s and 60s Jamaican culture within sound system culture from the 50s and 60s which called toasting now toasting it was the Jamaican musical tradition

of kind of talking or chanting in a monotone fashion a very rhythmic strict monotone fashion over a beat by a DJ.

And this is the 50s and 60s. And if you want to go fucking further, now here's the thing with the Caribbean. The Caribbean, the first slaves from Africa, chattel slaves from Africa, arrived in the Caribbean. So you see with the Caribbean, it tends to preserve the most African culture of all the colonies.

If you want to go back a couple of hundred years and go to West Africa, where a lot of African slaves came from, you see a tradition in West Africa known as lads called griots. And what griots were, they were like bards or poets in west africa and they would tell stories or be like town criers but they would do it over the beat of a drum so jamaican toasting the rhythmic monotone chanting of something over a beat you can trace right back to West Africa to these griots these storytellers doing shit over a drum but back to

the South Bronx they were announcing the fucking this breakdancer is coming up he's gonna breakdance with him and the DJ is announcing it like I said the likes of fucking Cool Hark and Grandmaster Flash they have that Caribbean blood in them they're thinking back to the toasting that they saw back in Jamaica

and Barbados and they naturally start to rhyme when they are talking over these break beats they're starting to rhyme as they announce that's rap that is the origins of fucking rapping the beat came first then inspired by toasting which you can trace right back to africa you have this new rapping so now a fucking a true musical form is being born it's no longer like just playing records a certain way now we're seeing the emergence of an actual fucking new form of music. It is now the most dominant. Cultural form in the world today. Hip hop is as important as rock and roll.

It has taken over rock and roll. It is musical culture today. And this is where it started. From the utter. Poverty and the. Great collapse and failure of fucking New York City brought about by pricks like Donald Trump who now run the fucking United States so I think that's as far as I'm willing to go

because like I said I'm too fucking obsessive about hip hop to be going far like I touched up to 1978 too fucking obsessive about hip-hop to be going far. Like, I touched up to 1978, but I haven't gone as far as when this new culture starts to have a name and be recorded as a piece of music. I haven't gone that far because

I'm going to save that for another fucking day. I did 1973. 73 to 75 basically with a little tip on to 78 but you know

I mean hot takes aside Donald Trump didn't invent fucking hip hop will you stop that's just clickbait but he

not him solely but he was part of a a vulturistic attitude that but he not him solely but he was part of a a a vulturistic attitude that truly racial economics truly bled

a people based on skin colour but what's so beautiful about hip hop is it's how art will prevail no matter what the fuck you throw at a culture art will somehow find a way and the more kind of restrictive it is the more creative that art will be and it's quite interesting you know that's pure and utter genetic or mimetic mutation right there incredibly important mimetic mutation that shaped culture

beyond it and as well what I find so beautiful about hip hop it's the first real post modern music form in that

it comes about with the collapse of the optimism of post of you know the post World War I boom that's pure modernist that's faith in technology

optimism then that all comes crashing and from the remnants of it comes this new yeah the interesting thing about like hip hop was not considered fucking art it was not considered music that's what you have to fucking realise

music was something that was created by people with musical instruments and the idea that taking something a piece of art that belongs to someone else and sticking it you know looping it or sticking it with another piece or anything like that that is pure post-modern pastiche and irony and you know it's

the first post-modern form and it was not recognized as art it was novelty if if disco was fucking if disco was novelty hip-hop sure as fuck was and when i do another podcast about it and i get i get into sampling which is more of an 80s phenomena when i get into sampling then you really start to be able to explain how it's truly post-modern another thing worth noting too is the lyrical content of 1970s hip-hop it wouldn't have been wouldn't have been about anything really i mean it would have there's another african-american tradition called the dozens which is just it's a way of slagging your friend you know your mother is so fat and then your friend goes well your mother is so fat. And then your friend goes, well, your mother is so fat. And you keep this back and forth. That would have been what early 1970s rapping would have been like.

But close to the... I've gone too far now as well, and I promised I wouldn't. But close to the end of the 70s, you see a song, Grandmaster Flass, The Message, 1979. What you see in the lyrics, you see emerging out of this new art form of rap a desire to realistically reflect the bleakness of the reality that's being faced by the people making it and I think

Grandmaster Flash 1979 it happens the same year that disco collapses remember I mentioned that disco the disco derby happened in 1979 disco had also managed to piss off the hip-hop community because disco by 1979 was completely saturated but it was also an incredibly unrealistically optimistic art form. Listen to the lyrics of bands like Chic.

Chic released the song good times in 1977 this is a new york a black band talking about good times in 1977 there was no good times for black people in 1977 in new york their neighborhoods were going on fire the fire brigades weren't coming to put out the fires the fucking rubbish wasn't being collected they were living in slums really really bad slums falling apart so you see an anger against that in early hip-hop this desire to no no no this art form is from the streets it must actually represent what's happening in the streets it's it's an anger towards the unrealistic optimism of disco, which tried to patch things up because disco was party music. You know, it was forget-about-your-troubles party music.

Hip-hop is party music too, but it's a party music of solidarity and community. It doesn't mean whitewashing what's happening. You can still have crack, but let's be real about it. We're in a fucking shitty apartment in the Bronx, and there's a fire next door, and there's fucking junkies two blocks over, do you get me? Now, I don't like the word junkies, I'm paraphrasing the song, the message, the lyric is rats in the front room, roaches in the bank, junkies in the alley with a baseball bat,

that's why I'm using that word i wouldn't normally use it but it's mad too with the fucking you know the donald trump connection and like i said you know he he was only one of many destroying the fucking city and targeting the black communities but before donald trump became president when i was growing up, I only ever heard of Donald Trump through rap music. He was seen as an aspirational figure of wealth for a lot of rappers. You know, if you, in the 90s in rap, if you wanted to talk about how wealthy you were, how wealthy you planned to be, Donald Trump was the fucking, he was the gold standard.

It's quite ironic that it was him and his father's racist housing policies that created so much shit for the fucking black community in New York so I hope you enjoyed that hot take we're gonna go now to our

ocarina pause which is our weekly pause where I play an ocarina which is is our weekly pause where I play an ocarina which is a Spanish clay whistle and during this ocarina pause you may or may not

hear an advert for some bullshit you're invited to an immersive listening party led by Rishikesh Herway, the visionary behind the groundbreaking Song Exploder podcast and Netflix series. This unmissable evening features Herway and Toronto Symphony Orchestra music director Gustavo Jimeno in conversation. Together, they dissect the mesmerizing layers of Stravinsky's the right of spring followed by a complete soul stirring rendition of the famously unnerving piece symphony exploder,

April 5th at Roy Thompson hall for tickets, visit TSO.ca. On April 5th, you must be very careful. Margaret, it's a girl witness the birth. Bad things will start to happen. Evil things of evil it's all

no no don't the first omen i believe girl is to be the mother mother of what is the most terrifying six six six it's the mark of the devil hey movie of the year it's not real it's not real it's not real who said that the real. Who said that? The First Omen. Only in theaters April 5th. That was the Ocarina Pause. I hope you enjoyed that, you cunts. Also, gotta do my weekly begging. This podcast is

supported by you the listener via the Patreon page I make about 5 hours of podcast a month and I nearly said a week a year before I said I'm just so shit with fucking units of time

fucking hell the podcast is supported by you I make 5 hours of podcast Before I said that. I'm just so shit with fucking units of time. Fucking hell. The podcast is supported by you. I make five hours of podcast. A month. With a fair amount of research and work goes into them. I fucking love doing it. But I do it for free. I don't charge for anyone to listen to the podcast.

It is completely free. For ye lads to listen to. So. What I kind of of what I wager is some of ye like if ye like listening to the podcast is five hours a month is that worth buying me the equivalent of a cup of coffee

or a pint of delicious lager once a month and if you would like to give me a cup of coffee or a pint of delicious lager once a month and if you would like to give me a cup of coffee or a pint once a month go to patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast and become a patron of this podcast and if you can't afford it

if you're like nah fuck that I don't have that money or I like the podcast but I'm not sure yet absolutely fine you keep listening for free this is a model that's based on fairness and it's socialistic it's a socialistic model I think so so patreon.com

forward slash the blind boy podcast if you would like that em a few weeks ago I mentioned that I was going to have a guest on the podcast soon who is just so stupidly fucking famous I don't know how or why and that's going to be next week

through an utterly bizarre set of fucking circumstances I'm getting on a plane next week and I'm going to be interviewing the legendary director Spike Lee I'm fucking interviewing

Spike Lee next week on this podcast don't ask me how it happened it's mad just mad shit happens to me Spike Lee wants me to fucking interview him he's got a new film out called Black Klansman

I saw a preview of it it's fucking amazing and that's what next week's podcast is going to be I'm going to be interviewing Spike Lee and talking about that film and not only that Spike Lee is sponsoring the podcast

for the next week or two with his new film, Black Klansman. So, there you go. I don't know what the fuck is happening either. Madness. Alright, I'll get on to a couple of your questions, you delicious boys and girls. Also, one last thing.

In my experience, when you're dealing with someone who's that famous and it's on their time shit can go wrong at the last minute that's just my experience so I'm 99.9% interviewing Spike Lee next week but because it's

on his time shit can just go wrong something can happen in incredibly, shit can just go wrong, something can happen, in incredibly famous people, that can go wrong, so don't kill me next week, if it doesn't happen, but 99.9%, like flights are booked, this thing is happening, okay, so Anonymous asks, on alcohol for this i usually drink too much and black out but those moments of feeling free almost seem worth it i would love to reach the level of confidence and free will i have after a drink when sober any advice on how to do that is there a difference between anxiety and shyness how do you know if you're just a boring person or anxiety blocks you um jesus fucking christ man first off and i'm not gonna bullshit you right i'm not gonna fucking bullshit you you need to you you you need to really consider

whether alcohol is a thing for you i've said this many times before on this podcast like i don't necessarily have a thing. A problem with substances. And I don't like telling adults what to do. But. Whatever the fucking substance. We all need to appraise our relationship with that substance. Okay.

And if you're using alcohol. As an actual crutch for anxiety. That is really fucking. that's not good. It's not only increasing your dependency on a substance, but it's making the underlying issue of anxiety more than likely worse. It's a safety behaviour. And within cognitive psychology and the treatment of something like social anxiety, safety behaviours are, they're not great, do you know?

So, you need to go and get help for your drinking. I'm preserving your anonymity, but I know by your profile photo that you're quite young, you're in your 20s, that's a good thing. Sort it out now, the other thing, drinking so much that you black out, that's a massive red flag for alcohol problem, okay, that's a huge fucking red flag, um, you need to stop drinking, man, you need to stop drinking man 100% and I don't know how some people feel about fucking AA right but you know people can be a bit iffy about it if quitting drinking is something that's going to be actually difficult for you if you think you can do it just stop fucking drinking then do that but if you can't I would advise

search out an AA meeting because regardless of anyone's opinions and their philosophy the group nature of it and that solidarity it does work for a lot of people and I just I know friends who have been through it and

it has saved them sort that fucking shit out man that is my 100% I just, I know friends who have been through it and it has saved them. Sort that fucking shit out, man. That is my 100% and I'm, I wouldn't even say to be cautious around it. You are a person who, from what you've told me, your relationship with alcohol is very toxic and I don't think it's even worth fixing just fucking get it out of the way the other thing too like I'm shit in fucking social situations you know I hate being a group at a party and having to talk to people I I'm quiet on my own in the fucking corner you know get comfortable with being quiet it's okay right and here's the thing like first off as well here's the other thing that's happening i i would wager

that when you're in a social situation i would imagine that, you're naturally quiet, but I would imagine that you're also very conscious and thinking about the fact that you're quiet quite a bit. And what that does is it takes your energy away from being natural. So you're policing every word that comes out of your mouth. Are you worried about saying something stupid? Are you worried about embarrassing yourself look at these things if it's not enjoyable and you're like

policing your words or going fuck it what will I say next I can well imagine how anxious that situation is sit with sit with the anxiety you know go out with your buddies and maybe avoid a situation where they're all

fucking shit-faced right that's tough going start off with situations where maybe it's a house and there's one or two cans and people it's not a nightclub like put yourself into the social situation get comfortable with being quiet okay being quiet you know fucking develop your skill of listening there's great value in being a good listener huge value and

to kind of take it selfish to kind of go selfish on it people and this sounds silly but someone who's a good listener To kind of go selfish on it. People. And this sounds silly but. Someone who's a good listener. People actually end up thinking that good listeners are interesting people. Because you're willing to listen to another person.

Talk out of their arse about themselves. Sit back and listen. And get comfortable in that role. Because that might be. The cards you've been dealt. You know that's me. Like I'm fine here talking on my fucking podcast talking into a sock to all of you but if i'm at a party and i'm surrounded by several people i'm quite anxious you know that's not my energy i'm an introverted quiet person my energy is sitting listening being with my own thoughts and interjecting when appropriate but if i get anxious in a social situation i just shout facts at people

until they walk away which isn't great either you know that's my safety fucking behavior become comfortable and sit with being quiet and listening and try and seek some type of help i don't know what your financial situation is but try and seek help for the anxiety and if necessary help for the fucking drinking if you feel you can't stop just man if you fucking do that now you're're going to thank yourself in 10 years, I promise you. Because I know lads in their mid-30s with fucking drink problems, and they're misery. They're really, really unhappy people.

Okay, stop it now. God bless. Another anonymous asks, Hi Blind Boy, I did something I usually never do today, and I called in sick to work. Another anonymous asks, but why do we feel that mental health reasons aren't valid excuses for missing a day of work unlike physical symptoms such as vomiting or the flu do you think places of work need to open up a dialogue about this if they haven't already um yeah that's a good point i suppose like you you can't really see mental health issues but if if some people call them self-care days you're not taking a day off for self-care to recharge which i would be fully in support of um but as well personally if i was in your situation also be cautious around your reasons like do you if you really felt fuck it i i needed that day off

then take it if the next day you feel regenerated but just be cautious that it's also not a safety behavior and i say this from someone with experience of um anxiety that turned into full-blown agoraphobia where when I was experiencing anxiety and I didn't want to get anxiety attacks in public places like going to the shop or going into class in school

or going out going out with the lads you know when I was fucking 18, 19 I should have been going out with the lads having crack, I wasn't I was staying in my bedroom listening to Bob Dylan I was telling myself it's because I you know oh I'm an artist I need to focus on my art I can't um allow myself to be out drinking and wasting all this time when I could become a better artist and I used that time appropriately but to be honest what I was doing is it was a safety behavior I was creating excuses

because I was too afraid to that I might have an anxiety attack in a public place and the more I lied to myself and said no I'm staying in because I don't want to go out and I need to listen to music or whatever the worse the anxiety became and the more frightening the triggering space became until i had to gradually re-expose myself to it to beat the anxiety so i'm not saying that's your case maybe you made the right choice and you actually needed a day of self-care but just question yourself around it because It can be a safety behaviour. You might find yourself next week. Saying I'm going to take a day off.

I can't face the anxiety inside. And then you're taking two days off. The next week after that. It gets worse and worse. Until you cannot face the office. I could be wrong. But if I'm on to something. Just check in with yourself around it.

That's me projecting a lot of my shit. On your problem. So just check in with yourself around it. That's me projecting a lot of my shit on your problem. So you check in with yourself around it. You're the architect of your own destiny, you cunt. Alright, what are we up to here? Are we... Yeah, we're gone over the hour mark. So, join me again next week. Please. I hope you enjoyed this podcast it wasn't necessarily a barrel of laughs there was quite a lot of information in there you know but um i enjoyed

it and i'll pick it up again some point in the future because i love doing the musical podcast for you because it is something i'm very passionate about, you know, and there's so much for fucking hip-hop, you know, Christ, West Coast, East Coast, fucking down South, like, you know, I want to do, I want to trace,

I want to trace the use of 808 drums in 1987 in Miami. And how lads used to have cars in 1987 in Miami. And they used to use a specific bass drum in the hip hop. And what they would do is they'd get the license plates on their cars and loosen them. So when the bass drum would play, the license plate would vibrate.

I want to start with that and end with today's trap music that's a hip hop podcast I want to do like I've got a lot of hip hop podcasts to come throughout the fucking the coming months or whatever so forgive me today for only doing

1973 to 75 and I look forward to next week with my guest Spike fucking Lee what the fuck is happening Jesus Christ alright go in peace have a lovely week be compassionate to yourself be compassionate to your friends

and yeah don't be too harsh on yourself go to bed look into the mirror did you hurt anyone's feelings no you didn't ok grand you're a good person yart Thank you. Thank you.