Fight the Power: How Hip Hop Changed the World

When rap and hip hop first emerged in the late 1970s, many people were quick to dismiss it as a fad. Even now, you may get the occasional cynic who claims it’s not ‘real music’, but they are firmly in the minority – and they don’t have history or record sales on their side.

Hip hop has proved hugely enduring and commercially successful, perhaps because it is constantly evolving, but its impact isn’t restricted to the charts or streaming services.

That’s why the BBC has joined forces with PBS to make Fight the Power: How Hip Hop Changed the World, which explores the relationship between the genre and politics, and charts the ways in which this revolutionary artform has been informed by social changes in the US.

Of course, the BBC aren’t the first to make this observation. Rapper Chuck D, whose group Public Enemy’s anthem gave this series its title, famous labelled hip hop ‘the Black CNN’ due to its ability to address the issues that mattered to its audience.

So, he’s the perfect person to present the series – and he’s only too pleased to take the job.

Chuck D says: “The hip hop community has, from the start, been doing what the rest of media is only now catching up to. Long before any conglomerate realised it was time to wake up, hip hop had been speaking out and telling truths. Working with PBS and the BBC is an opportunity to deliver these messages through new ways and help explain hip hop’s place in history and hopefully inspire us all to take it further.”

He’ll be joined throughout the series by a host of other luminaries and pioneers, who in the first episode include Melle Mel, KRS-One, Fat Joe, John Forte and Grandmaster Caz.

They offer their thoughts on the genre’s deep roots, which reach back to the tumultuous changes of the 1960s and the social breakdown of 1970s New York, as well as the influence of figures like DJ Kool Herc.

Although the Sugar Hill Gang’s 1979 track Rapper’s Delight is often cited as the first rap hit, the programme argues that it was the 1982 single The Message by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five which really pointed to hip-hop’s future with its hard-hitting depiction of life in the Bronx.

The second episode in the opening double bill picks up the story in the mid-1980s, when a crack epidemic hit the US, leading to the emergence of more socially conscious rap – and police clampdowns.

Chuck D responded to crack’s impact on his community with the track Night of the Living Baseheads, but on the West Coast there was an even fiercer reaction to the resultant police brutality as NWA and Ice-T responded with lyrical rage.

And in May 1992, the LA riots made it clear that it wasn’t just the rappers who were angry…

If you can’t wait, the remaining episodes are available on iPlayer, but the hip-hop theme continues on BBC2 with Behind the Beat Special: Public Enemy and Hip Hop at the BBC, which features the Sugarhill Gang, Run-DMC, Eric B & Rakim, LL Cool J, Jay-Z, Dizzee Rascal, Ice-T, Monie Love, the Roots, Dr Dre and Eminem.