Abstract
It was sometime in the early 1970s. Ray Abrahante, a golden-skinned, freckle-faced Puerto Rican boy with a big afro, was riding around the Bronx on his banana seat bicycle. He saw a chubby black kid, a little older than himself, writing his tag up on a bridge. Ray stopped to talk to him and they immediately clicked; tagging was a passion for both.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
See Nicholas Lemann “The Other Underclass,” The Atlantic Monthly (December 1991): 96–110; Clara E. Rodríguez, Puerto Ricans: Born in the U.S.A (Boulder, CO: Westview Press), p. 109; Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá, El entierro de Cortijo (Rio Piedras: Ediciones Huracán, 1988), p. 29.
See Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (New York: Methuen Books, 1988);
Deborah Wallace and Rodrick Wallace, A Plague on Your Houses: How New York Was Burned Down and National Public Health Crumbled (New York: Verso, 1998).
Steve Hager, Hip Hop: The Illustrated History of Breakdancing, Rap Music and Graffiti (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984).
Blanca Vazquez, Juan Flores and Juan Figueroa, “KMX-Assault: The Puerto Rican Roots of Rap,” Centro 5, no. 1 (Winter 1992–93): 41.
The disproportionate negative impact of “urban renewal” projects on poor African Americans and Puerto Ricans was not only felt in the South Bronx, but in many other areas of the city. Critics of the city government’s approach to “urban renewal” dubbed it “urban removal” and-more explicitly indicative of the racial underpinnings of the policies-as “Negro removal.” See Berman, All That ls Solid Melts into Air; Fredrick M. Binder and David M. Reimers, All Nations Under Heaven: An Ethnic and Racial History of New York City (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995);
Vicky Muniz, Resisting Gentrification and Displacement: Voices of Puerto Rican Women of the Barrio (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998).
See Andrés Torres, Between Melting Pot and Mosaic: African Americans and Puerto Ricans in the New York Political Economy (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995);
William J. Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner-City, the Underclass, and Public Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).
See Tricia Rose, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1994), p. 28.
See Nelson George, Hip Hop America (New York: Viking, 1998); Hager, Hip Hop; Rose, Black Noise, p. 34.
Juan Flores, “Wild Style and Filming Hip Hop,” Areito 10, no. 37 (1984): 36–39.
See Cheryl Keyes, “At the Crossroads: Rap Music and Its African Nexus,” Ethnomusicology 40, no. 2 (Spring/Summer): 227; Rose, Black Noise, p. 47; David Toop, Rap Attack 2: African Rap to Global Hip Hop (London: Serpent’s Tail, 1991), p. 60.
Juan Flores, “It’s a Street Thing!,” Callaloo 15, no. 4 (1992): 999–1021.
Ana Celia Zentella, Growing Up Bilingual: Puerto Rican Children in New York (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1997).
See Juan Flores, “Writin’, Rappin’ & Breakin’,” Centro 2, no. 3 (1988): 39.
See Nancy Foner, New Immigrants in New York (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), p. 248. She argues the existence of a difference between the experience of black Puerto Ricans who tend to identify in terms of their national origins group and not racially versus recent West Indian immigrants who develop a consciousness of themselves as black and of their placement as black people within the racial hierarchies of U.S. society.
See Foner, New Immigrants in New York; Phillip Kasinitz, Caribbean New York: Black Immigrants and the Politics of Race (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992);
Mary Waters, “Ethnic and Racial Identities of Second Generation Black Immigrants in New York City,” in The New Second Generation, ed. Alejandro Portes (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1996), pp. 171–196.
George Lipsitz, Dangerous Crossroads: Popular Music, Postmodernism and the Poetics of Place (New York: Verso, 1997).
Juan Flores, Divided Borders: Essays on Puerto Rican Identity ( Houston: Arte Público Press, 1993), p. 192.
The Fearless Four was the first rap group, after Kurtis Blow, signed to a major label. Nelson and Gonzales dub the Fearless Four, along with the Furious Five and Soul Sonic Force, as the groups at the “cutting edge of this new Black Noize” in 1983 and 1984. I wonder how Puerto Ricanness and Blackness relate to each other in Nelson and Gonzales’s eyes considering the contribution of Puerto Rican artists to “this new Black Noize.” See Havelock Nelson and Michael A. Gonzales, Bring the Noise: A Guide to Rap Music and Hip Hop Culture (New York: Harmony Books, 1991), p. 206.
See Bryan Cross, It’s Not about a Salary: Rap, Race and Resistance in Los Angeles (New York: Verso Books, 1993), p. 69;
Mandalit del Barco, “Rap’s Latino Sabor,” in William Eric Perkins, Droppin’ Science: Critical Essays on Rap Music and Hip Hop Culture (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996), p. 66; Toop, Rap Attack 2, p. 122.
See Peter Rosenwald, “Breaking Away 80’s Style,” Dance Magazine 58, no. 4 (April 1984): p. 74;
Robin D. G. Kelley, Yo Mama’s Disfunktional: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America (Boston: Beacon Press, 1997), p. 68.
See Kevin Grubb, “‘Hip-hoppin’ in the South Bronx: Lester Wilson’s Beat Street,” Dance Magazine 58, no. 4 (April 1984): 75–78;
Margaret Pierpont, “Breaking in the Studio,” Dance Magazine 58, no. 4 (April 1984): 82;
Peter J. Rosenwald, “Breaking Away 80’s Style,” Dance Magazine 58, no. 4 (April 1984): 70–74.
See Nancy Guevara, “Women Rappin’, Writin’, Breakin’,” in The Year Left, ed. Mike Davis (London: Verso Books, 1987), pp. 160–175; Rose, Black Noise.
See Juan Flores, “Wild Style and Filming Hip Hop,” Areito 10, no. 37 (1984): 36–39; Guevara, “Rappin’, Writin’, Breakin’.”
Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Warrior for Gringostroika: Essays, Performance Texts and Poetry (St. Paul, MN: Graywolf Press, 1993), p. 51.
See Flores “Writin’, Rappin’, Breakin’”; Katrina Hazzard-Donald, “Dance in Hip Hop Culture” in Droppin’ Science: Critical Essays on Rap Music and Hip Hop Culture, ed. William Eric Perkins (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996); Rose, Black Noise.
Cristina Verán, “That’s the Breaks,” Rap Pages 5, no. 8 (September 1996): 6.
See Lola Ogunnaike, “Breakdancing Regains Its Footing,” New York Times, June 7, 1998, p. 1 (Section 9);
Frank Owen, “Breaking’s New Ground: Generation Next Spins on Its Head,” Village Voice, May 20, 1998, pp. 61–62.
Copyright information
© 2003 Raquel Z. Rivera
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Rivera, R.Z. (2003). “It’s Just Begun”. In: New York Ricans from the Hip Hop Zone. New Directions in Latino American Cultures. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403981677_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403981677_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-4039-6044-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-4039-8167-7
eBook Packages: Palgrave Social & Cultural Studies CollectionSocial Sciences (R0)