It’s been 50 years since the emergence of hip-hop, a music genre that’s become a cultural phenomenon with impacts that go far beyond its modest beginnings.Lucky for me, growing up in Virginia, I was close to New York, where the origins of hip-hop got noticed. My family went on trips to New York. As soon as we hit the city line, I would tune into the radio, armed with a tape recorder just to record mixes by DJs like Kool DJ Red Alert.
But all creativity has an influence, and all artists have influences, whether we admit it or not. My childhood friends and my parents’ wallets remember the various iterations of Shamroc’s clothing, hair and music choices inspired by hip-hop. That’s the beauty of it, it’s infectious.