Hip-hop historian explores aging within the genre in its sixth decade

On Aug. 11, 1973, 18-year-old high school student Clive Campbell – better known by his musical moniker DJ Kool Herc – set up turntables, speakers and a mixer inside his family’s apartment in New York City’s Bronx borough. During the house party, thrown by his sister Cindy, Campbell played a fast blend of funk and soul breaks as a friend shouted rhymes to energize the crowd.

Fifty-three years later, their performance – many music historians say – is regarded as a critical inception point of hip-hop , a genre that in the decades since has evolved into a powerful and global cultural force that surpasses just music. Hip-hop today is a wellspring of art, expression, language, politics, community and a source of both personal and collective identity, according to Murray Forman , hip-hop historian and Northeastern University professor emeritus.

Now, as hip-hop enters its sixth decade, how does a culture that was once thought to be exclusively created by and for the youth grapple with the fact of its aging? And how do hip-hop pioneers and early listeners, many of whom are now in their later years, confront their own relevance and legacy?

These questions sent Forman, 67, into an archival rabbit hole in which he excavated magazines, newspapers, websites, critical analyses and interviews from hip-hop’s nascence to the present. It also led him to initiate new conversations with aging hip-hop legends, such as Grandmaster Caz, Ice-T, LL Cool J and Sha-Rock, in which Forman asked them to reflect on the ever-changing cultural context in which their art and identities have resided for most of their lives.

Forman’s findings coalesced into his latest scholarly book : “Old in the Game: Aging in and with Hip-Hop.” Woven with first-hand interviews, historic anecdotes and Forman’s academic dissections of hip-hop culture informed by his own lifelong connection to it, the book reveals in exhaustive detail the ways that age consciousness has been utilized throughout hip-hop history, both in positive and negative contexts.

Murray Forman said he hopes scholarly work like “Old in the Game” prevents hip-hop archives from being lost to time. Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University “While it is titled ‘Old in the Game,’ this book is not explicitly about being old,” Forman writes. “Rather, it probes the beliefs, values, ideals, and lived experiences and expressions that accompany the processes of aging within hip-hop culture.” As a nascent hip-hop head at 20 years old, it never dawned on Forman to think about the ages of the musicians, dancers or graffiti artists whose creativity he embraced, the historian said in a recent interview.

“I accepted the prevailing view that hip-hop was a youth thing, and as I moved through the scene, this was largely confirmed by the people who gathered around me,” he said. “Race, class, gender, location all rose as prominent factors for discussion and analysis, but age seemed to fall outside of hip-hop’s critical self-assessment.” In the later 1970s and early 1980s, if age was addressed at all, it was often related to elderly “haters” who decried and dismissed the youths who lived with and loved the genre, Forman said.

It was only later – when Forman was roughly the same age as, or older than, hip-hop’s founders and iconic figures – that he recognized age’s inseparable relevance to the culture. For instance, Curtis Brown, a member of hip-hop group The Cold Crush Brothers and one of the genre’s foremost pioneers, touched on the idea of age and legacy as early as the 1980s, when he was in his twenties.

“No number can place me, time can’t erase me. Those who wanna replace me, they won’t face me,” he rapped in “I’m Caz,” released in 1987. “The rumors, the coolest, the true Grandmaster has died, been retired, or put out to pasture.

I’m a ten plus ten, ten makes thirty. And if I’m washed up, you got to be dirty.” But in an interview with Forman in 2015, as part of his research for the book, Brown – better known as Grandmaster Caz – admitted that despite the braggadocious, age-related lyrics from his past, his biological age is not what defines his identity within hip-hop.

“Inside, none of us feels 60 or 55, you know. It’s like it was just yesterday that we were playing out in the park,” Brown told Forman. “The reality is that we are 60 and the things outside of hip-hop are really what identify our age more than hip-hop does.” Even as Forman largely uses the voices of aging hip-hop icons to guide his analysis of the culture, he said he does not want to throw today’s young generation of fans under the bus.

Times may have changed since his own entrance to hip-hop, with the youth of today seeming to prefer muddier vocals, extreme energy in live show environments and different styles of beat production, he said. “But I hope they’re having a blast with it, and I believe it’s hip-hop,” Forman said.

“It’s changed so much over these 50 years or so. That means it’s alive, that it’s vital.” Forman said he hopes scholarly work like “Old in the Game” and the research material he drew from prevents hip-hop archives from being lost. Gathering oral histories from hip-hop pioneers as they and the culture continue to age means future generations will have resources to explore.

“In the same way that these pioneers and veterans didn’t quit, I hold myself to that standard as well,” Forman said. “If I can do anything to contribute to hip-hop knowledge, that helps build or sustain the culture, then I feel like I’m doing the right thing.”