Hello my friends,

I hope you are well and ready for the big holiday celebrations that are approaching with big speed!

This latest Little Miss Sunshine show is a one hour mix of only Hip Hop music, and due to the fact that I have been having computer issues, I lost all my voice files, hence why Im not talking in this episode. However, there was a thought behind this all Hip Hop show, and I really wanted to share it with you, so here goes…

There has been some discussion over the internet on the subject of whether or not Hip Hop is dead. I haven’t followed it religiously, but I know there was some discussion about this article posted in the New Yorker in October, that later on was mention by Simon Reynolds in this article a month later in the Guardian, who then was tried to be proven wrong by fellow Guardian writer Alex Macpherson in this article. Now don’t get me wrong, my intention with the show, or in general, was not to say “this is wrong or this is right”, but all these articles and discussions around the subject of “the death of Hip Hop” kind of re-lighted my fire and my passion for the culture.

And I say culture because I feel like this is a very crucial aspect that so many people often forget when they talk about Hip Hop. Hip Hop is not rap music, and I can’t stress this enough. Even if rap music, or hip hop as a musical genre, is part of the Hip Hop culture, they are just building blocks that form a part of this cultural movement. Now, my aim with this post is not to educate you on the matter of Hip Hop, it is just a way for me to share my passion with you all.

(Video extract from 5 Sides Of a Coin)

I have been in love with Hip Hop for over a decade now. I remember hanging out with the b-boys after school in the area I grew up in watching them break, listening to the awesome music they were dancing to, discovering a whole new musical but also cultural, world. One of the older guys in this little group introduced me to the movie Beat Street, and I was hooked! I wanted to be a b-girl so badly I made my grandma give me her baby pink adidas tracksuit from the 80’s just so I could spin better on my back. Not that it improved my dancing a lot (I was never bendy enough haha) but it did make me feel mighty cool.

(Video extract from Beat Street with New York City Breakers vs Rock Steady Crew )

Then I got into my teens and I started doing some research on this phenomena that was Hip Hop. Seeing as I wasn’t really born when it first started out, and I was a bit too young to fully experience its golden era, I discovered so much of myself it this movement, not just from an artistic and musical perspective, but in the stories around it about struggle, about love, about passion. I discovered street art and graffiti, started hanging out with some kids that were painting trains and walls.

(Video extract from Style Wars)

It got me to rediscover my dad’s old record collection, and I mean, the satisfaction I got from recognizing breaks on old records and realizing that “Aaaaah, so that’s where A Tribe Called Quest (or whoever) got that break or sample from!” still puts a smile on my face this very day. Hip Hop made me an addict to buying records, because the more I discovered, the more music I wanted and the more I wanted to learn about the culture.

I was the first girl to perform a rap song at the music school I went to when I was 14 years old. I loved poetry and I loved music, and I loved the way a good emcee’s could play around with words and phrases, and their own flow as they rhymed. Man, Im not going to lie, I wanted to be the next Lauryn Hill so badly I used go to bed, listening to her songs over and over again, writing down the lyrics and trying to rap them on my way to school the next day.

I was the first girl to join a state funded Hip Hop project so I could learn how to DJ (mainly scratching, I could never master mixing for some reason). At high school I held a couple of small seminars about Hip Hop and the four elements, I wrote essays about the subject, I even managed to convince my grumpy old Swedish teacher who initially said she hated Hip Hop (of course she was referring to gangsta rap) that it was something positive.

I never did it to be cool, or because I wanted to be different. I did it because Hip Hop gave me something that I had such a hard time finding – it gave me a sense of belonging. Not just physically but mentally. My family had fled to Sweden when I was three, and up until a certain point in my life, we didn’t have it easy. Of course, I never had to go through the same struggles as my parents, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t experience them in one way or another. And I am definitely not saying that I grew up under the same harsh conditions as so many of the hip hop artists did that grew up in the slums or poor neighborhood’s in America (or wherever in the world really). But I could always relate to their everyday struggle, just like I could relate to their drive and their passion “to make it” (whatever that means, I guess “making it” differs from person to person).

When I went to Brussels the second time this year to attend the Anattitude Hip Hop party, I filled out one of those sheets that said “Hip Hop is…”. And for me, Hip Hop (as a culture) will always be Love. Because love is a struggle, love is passion, love drives us to want to become better, and when you find love it does give you a sense of belonging, because all of a sudden you’re not alone.

So for me, personally, this show was not about proclaiming the life or death of Hip Hop, but more a celebration of the love and creativity that surrounds it, worldwide.

Orsii

Picture by Daniel Rangel aka tacosnachosburritos