Has hip-hop grown up? Duh. It always has because we always do. Every time the ex-kids who feel like they reinvented it get a little older, the new kids behind them start turning it into something else. How do the older ones react? They holler about "Hip-hop is dead"—the first time someone said hip-hop was dead was in 1979, the year "Rapper's Delight" came out. Meanwhile, the shorties have new clothes, new slang, new dances, new styles, new art, new music. Hip-hop still ages gracefully—we see you Erykah, Ghostface—and remains indecipherable to 30+somethings—whose knees never jerk the way they're supposed to. The rest is just a small, if hot, argument across a mini-generation gap.But I guess I wonder whether it's relevant to fight about whether hip-hop's grown up, or come of age, or however you want to term the question. I mean, people do, of course, and these generational riffs on questions of style happen. But to me it seems that for any art form, there's really only one relevant transition: when the form passes from its first generation to the next, and demonstrates that it's going to stick around. Painting's come a long way since folks first started smudging stuff on cave walls and stretching canvasses. And while there are hot debates about schools or individual artists, no one worries anymore about whether painting's grown up, or whether the next generation's going to ruin it for everyone else. The Dutch masters rock, but that doesn't mean that painting itself was better back in the day. I like me some Elizabeth Peyton, too.
If any observance of hip-hop's accumulating birthdays is going to happen, my celebration is grounded along these lines: despite deaths, and drugs, and drama, hip-hop has survived. It's going to be around for a very long time. And as such, it's going to be shaped by many, many hands. I'm hard-pressed to complain about the impact of any of those hands. I'm just excited about seeing what hip-hop looks like when I'm 80, and when the form is even older.