Stevie G: Modest roots remain integral to music

I wrote last week about hip-hop’s rise from modest beginnings to its now huge global commercial impact that can be seen and heard everywhere. From Just Eat ads to Hollywood movies, from fashion to the visibility of its well-known stars, hip-hop is everywhere, but it wasn’t always that way.

I want to follow last week’s piece with a call for us all to remember that despite these advancements, the real spirit of hip-hop remains humble and often far from view. It exists in the minds of our young people who continue to experiment with the music and culture and push it forward. It’s the b-boys and b-girls dancing on the streets, the graffiti writers tagging walls and hoardings, the DJs working routines behind closed doors, the MCs spitting bars.

It’s now in more than New York that hip-hop remains the voice of the marginalised and the oppressed, and even though we see a glitzy view in the media, much of the best of hip-hop remains far from the public glare.

You don’t need expensive equipment or a million followers on social media to change the game in hip-hop, and its DIY spirit will continue to help it evolve as an artform in the years to come. It’s not just hip-hop, but electronic music as a whole that has seen this evolution.

We can now go to places that would never have accepted hip-hop and find string sections playing hip-hop classics; the same has happened for house, jungle and rave too. This is good in some ways and shows that the music has now been accepted as a legitimate source of artistic merit rather than just a throwaway novelty but, in truth, the music never needed this acceptance.

Lots of the greatest hip-hop and house was created in tiny bedrooms on limited equipment in less technologically advanced times. The music was performed on street corners, at block parties, and in tiny makeshift venues when the same gatekeeping venues that now host these string sections interpretations were locking it out. We don’t now need validation by looking at it through the lens of classical music or other more established artforms, and we should always remember that the grit of the streets is what made it essential in the first place.

At a time when many of hip-hop’s biggest names have been backing Donald Trump, it has been strange watching anti-establishment figures such as Snoop and Ice Cube become parodies of what they once represented. High-profile hip-hop figures such as DJ Khaled, who is of Palestinian heritage, have remained silent on the situation in Gaza, while his peers have largely ignored it too. On the surface of things, hip-hop, the music which once played a key role in making us aware of social injustice, is now just another cog in the mainstream machine. Are rappers too busy making money to care? Perhaps, but dig deeper and there is plenty of rap providing an alternative view.

Rappers from Sudan, Palestine and the Congo are providing a truer insight into what is happening there than some media. A lot of the most captivating hip-hop comes from the voices outside the US mainstream, from smaller regions and marginialised communities in America, or from outside the USA itself. It might be Brazil or India, or South Africa or Ireland, but there are rappers out there saying something of substance in 2025. The spirit is still there. Jay Z and Ice Cube and others started with this spirit but in 2025 they are part of the establishment they once resented. The big brands are working arm in arm with Pharrell, Dre and of course Kanye, whose controversial opinions are helping push him out too.

But away from the glamour and glitz there are local scenes and small modest operations maintaining the spirit of the music and the culture.

Record labels, crews, shops and events are still commonplace, there’s even a breaking jam this Saturday in the Kino. There will probably be 100 people at it. It won’t be getting national coverage and it won’t be noticed by all but the most dedicated of hip-hop fans in Cork. But it’s there and it’s relevant.

In 2025 jazz bands cover rap, a music that still samples jazz. It’s all come full circle, but hip-hop doesn’t need mainstream validation or string sections to prove its worth.