The Sunday Story: Hip-Hop Verses That Changed Our Lives
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Hey, I mean isha haris, co host of n pires popcorn, happy yer. And i'm feeling in for I usha rosco who's on vacation this week. So over here at M P, R, we're celebrating the fifty year anniversary of hip hop with a lot of special coverage.

And today on the sunday story, we're featured an extra special episode of pocket ter. happier. That's all about hip hop. Hip hop is of course, a global phenomenon, but it's also deeply personal.

So we decided to reach out of some N, P, R, colleagues and a few hip hop stars and asked them, what's the hip first that changed your life, the one that you still remember all these years later. And we got some pretty amazing answers, from code switch to lower than a riot to the one and only big freeda. Let's here what they had to say and just a heads up, this episode has some explicit language.

I'm sydney. Man in one of the cold hose are louder than a riot cast so many hip hop songs, so many hip hop verses changed my life. But I went right back to college and I went right back to section eighty.

Section eighty is kellar mars David album before his major, the mixtape of T D E. So sectioned is dev. The album that Sparks something in me and on sectioned high power is really the song that turned me on and activated me to what IT means to struggle with all these complicated emotions.

As a black person living in america, for me personally, IT was my college eight years where you're literally learning to unlearn a lot of things. Hy power was just that constant, consistent soundtrack for that. And IT floats in so beautifully.

It's not like a dissertation is not like a lecture coming at you. Is kendric speaking from the bottom of his soul, like the souls of issues and the soul within his heart? You know, when I heard high power, IT felt him. No, IT felt personal. And I felt like I was really speaking directly to me in a way that other conscious rap out worms are conscious rapper songs hadn't quite thought before. So in the third verse, after the bridge, after large, o says, every day we fight the system to make our way we've been down to, he comes through and he just plans the image of your head and said, who said a black man was in the luminary?

Who said the black man with the. gg. And I. Want everybody .

is over the world. They play musical chairs at once.

Among that pedia.

he's a master builder of terms of phrases of zillions similes. And he going to make you run back the track a few times every single time.

I.

I am thank for thank you, the bankers. And one birds in the hip hop and changed me was I think IT was no score.

C, L, C. Hall, it's a galley, tic cloth and left that you just so everything slow down and SHE are praying hand and he was like, if you can especially explain my horizons and leave you a class school, I don't over these, that we give you something to think of that.

Just be Young and succeed someone so were both and so cool, modern and above their years and their their time with us. IT was incredible to see. You just always wanted to be there.

cool. You always wanted the right words. That was their dog. And I just remember present step and polls and stop and polls, trying to memorize the right and write IT down from the radio. You know, he was so hard because he was so, so bad, but watching, learn those lyrics, and he was able to recite them funny. Your friends at the next party, h worth every stop, record and play.

My name is gene bbi are one of the cohoes of M P S coast, which pakistan the that changed my life was the second birth of yassin bay formally notice most death mathematics from his open black on both sides.

The arms, like, really, that would like new york slaying. And like, if you didn't not know something about different brick, that might be hard exactly. Forget out, like from contact excludes what the hell a lot of the album was about.

But this last verse on mathematics, which is so do to produce by the genre manor, is just in bay, outlining mass and conservation. And this ARM came out when I was in college. And so like you're in that move, we like reading.

You take the society classes. You might be taking up for gender studies classes. You like having your brain is exploding with all these new ideas. And IT was the first time I ever heard anyone articulate this thing that I got knew to be true, which is like, there is this giant apple redis that is imprisoning, like there's drawing black people on mass behind bars, and is something we know to be true now.

But like, really important to contextualize, like what things look like in their early odds was like that was the period which mastic association was at as high and also no one was covering, is like to the extent we talk about recent policing in america, we were talking about what was happening to middle school by people, which is racial profiling, right? You go to blooming deal, somebody follows you around, know you driving a nice car in the coast, put you over that kind of thing. That was what our commercials about racing, policing, clock.

But what was happening to people that I know who right into the like the world is that I like within in the Jason, too, was this thing. But like this verse, like such a tight spot on elucidation of all of this stuff, like he started his verse talking about how low the minimum wages, and then he goes on to talk about the ways that black people are criminalize, the ways that black, or hit with harsher punishments for the same crowds, right? So he so different stipulations attached .

the east to the increase. police. Live in.

And go on the how black folks are, the people who get rounded up this way. This was basically felt like not exactly a policy paper. But I was like, this is what this is.

People commit low level crimes because they're poor. But even when they don't, they please hug them because they're poor. And there is a whole economy built around this.

And like, I remember for students to think about things definitely than I thought about them. I remember being like, oh, I felt like, I like this. Someone show this. You like, oh my god, this is obviously what going. And also IT was a really loose articulation of the thing that was happening in the world and that the rest of the world won't, even as our pay intention to for you know another half decade or right, like he's like actually knowing a kind of like a real service in this song. But you you know you can go bite over your head because it's just a dupe, powerful steam that still like as relevant today one to as IT was I drop at the end of the.

Y.

this is felix, as I am the cohoes of imperial music and cast. I'm going to be sixty five years old this year, so hip hop was not part of my youth. I came to this well after I already had my music taste, establish. And what stood out to me was how familiar IT sounded, because I grew up with girl's, got hearing the revolution will not be televised to that kind of stuff. So there was already spoken word.

And then when I heard the message from grandmaster flash in a few years, five, that was like a light going off, like i've understood not only the message behind music, but the idea of spoken word and introducing something new and IT felt fresh and new and revolutionary, and like an extension of what girls got here in was doing. I can still persist some of the lyrics I could just less sometimes that makes me wonder how I keep him going under broken glass everywhere people puts him on the street, you know, they just don't care all my children to date, time baLance at night. Can you get that kind of stuff just completely open the whole new world for me? And so i've been able to watch the genera growing, developing change, and more often go to struggles and things with me, arginine and all the other stuff, but then also always finding the artist that speak to the social issues that I associated with hip hop.

In this earliest, earliest days, I have had to pay more attention to hip hop once I started doing out lino in twenty ten, because of the spanish language hip hop and hip hop coming from late america. But how IT changed me has just been able to understand what a powerful tool hipp has become in later america. And I began to understand the power of hip hop for a honey generation to speak out against injustices, being out against things that are not right in the world, and also offering hope for the variety of artists, both in later america, in united states.

I always think of one of the first artists I met plan like two thousand, nine or so ante you, who is to land. But her parents were had to leave the country because of politics. They had to go exile. And he went back and started speaking out against things.

In her command .

of her fluent spanish because the CNN tax of spanish, of course, is different in english. So i'm always listening for how that is broken down into the speaking form, right? Like the almost spoken word version of that. Because IT doesn't always work, you can always take a spanish syntax and put IT over something that doesn't come from that america.

And I think that this is one of those songs where IT does IT fits perfectly the way he plays with the rhyme stops and starts, comes back and all that stuff just listening to like, wow, this is something new. This is something different with spanish language. And it's something that I could relate back to the power of the language of the message when I first heard that many, many years before.

My name is sheldon peers, i'm an enter or at npr music. And the verse to change my life is the laun hovers on fuji. How many mikes?

how?

Many you, yes. So my household was .

not a rapper household IT was a soul in RMB household only rapped my mom listen to was like highly political, like public enemy, that kind of think my dad must be listening to cris one and heavy d i'm a kid from the dmv born in the ninety. So I was in the first generation is usually born interpret. So I was seeking IT out in a way that just trying to make IT sort of crucial to my life, trying to understand IT.

And because IT wasn't in my household, the stuff on the outside at that moment in the late ninety years, early two thousands, that was dominating rap. Dmx m and M J Z wasn't sort of breaching the inside of my little suburban life. I was trying to seek IT out through what I could and went go through this stuff that my parents had.

They had this food jes record, and how many mikes you listen to IT and write off the bat. It's sake, I think, through Lawrence verse in particular, you understand, and everything that is great about rap. I love this verse for a lot of reasons, foremost because it's wrapping, about wrapping, but also, IT isn't just a gripe about what other rappers are doing wrong.

It's inherently this display of how they should be doing IT. It's like a lesson within a lesson. Laun is such a singular performer, her flows are so tRicky, but they're also so conversational.

And there's these sublime displays of you. Think about even just the opener alone. I get mad, frustrated when I am thinking about the kids.

They try to do this for their .

see this change that things we arrange. But IT stays the same, like the love duck, strange, like the like a snapper.

You can feel the weight of disappointment in her voice as he gets through that. The second happen at bar, and SHE Carries off through the rest of IT, pointing out the flaws in their approach and master free dye cy everything that the other kids don't get about what's great about weapon and in that moment me listen to IT it's like, I understand and you say no, but I see what you're not too in the end, IT is a verse that is about more than the natural miracle, miracle elements of IT. IT is not just sort of empty technicality. There is a real story, a clear arc being displayed throughout this first SHE is really expressing something powerful, important, I mean, and spoke to me. And IT was that aspect of IT that ended up being more important to me then whether or not you, your bars .

were hard peace, i'm coming. And a verse that change my life is the verse the city from is album in in the song new york day, man.

I believe IT really change my life in ways, because he changed me as a writer, changed me as an odd song. When I heard that verse, I realized how beautiful rap could be, deep IT could be, how much I M you can use, which are words, and how just get into the essence of where you are in life and who you are in. What you're seeing is this powerful, and has always been for me.

What I loved about that was the expression to be in and say who I am. But nas had this expression network was brought down to earth, like IT was the thing. Sea had seen an experience.

But IT was elevated in a way he was saying in writing, which was something different for me because, you know, about of the raps, we were right. And we're like, kind of boston and gone. It's our visions of what we want to see ourselves and how we want to see ourselves.

But new york, state of mind, just describe things where we these are the things we see. And this is how I see you IT drops deep as IT doesn't my breath? I never sleep.

A sleep is the cousin of death. Beyond the walls of intelligence. Life is defined, I think, a crime, not in the yours state of mind.

That to meet talks a lot about is the things that we were seeing and experiencing. And he was, and he still wanted to go to higher places at other places. That is the verse that I would say, change my life and change the way I wrap. And that's why is so significant to me and said, this day is one of the greatest hip out songs and versus and albums ever. this.

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I want to summer.

as I am a cohoes of mps, all things considered. And the hip hop verse that changed my life is from ney's first single song, cold country grammar.

IT came out when I was twelve or thirteen years old, middle school, and I was really the first hip hop song that I ever related to. I didn't listen to a lot of hip hop growing up until that point, and I remember the first time I heard IT. IT was something totally different.

And I think one of the reasons I felt so attached to the song, and to mean really the entire album, is that IT was one of the first songs that really seemed to put simply as hip on the rap. Ei grew up in kinda city across the state, but at that time, being from missouri didn't feel like something that I had a whole lot of local pride, and I wanted to be from literally anywhere else. I wanted to move out of the state as fast as I could, but hearing a rapper on a global stage shout out, being from same Lewis and being proud, seeing the arch, the monument in that music video on national T.

V. I remembers seeing on T, R, L, is a kid was just nothing like anything i'd ever seen or heard before. And I think hearing that song when I was still kindly Young really is what got me turned on to hip.

p. This is one of those songs that even though it's been out for decades at this point, I probably, if I tried and I won't, because I D be embarrassed, could probably still seeing every line too. But I mean, it's first line of that. First, first, where he goes, you can find me insane. Lewis rolling on dubs.

And then he goes on to talk about later, remembers, he says, so fill me when I saing IT loud. What i'm from blue and i'm proud, run a mile for the cause. And that riff was just so cool to me at the time, like he is sending saint Lewis and pride.

Later on, there is part of the song where he's listing of all of these different neighborhoods in the city, like you, city, jennings, kingsland, all these places. I remember going when I was a kid, and we would go to visit family and friends and sane Lewis. And I think I could still probably, through every word of IT.

This song in this album was definitely a huge gateway for me. I think I started getting more curious about what else was out there, what hip hop was out there. And I think that was also one of the first time when I realized hip hop is a thing that people from the midwest could make. IT wasn't just a legendary story that you hear from the hipp that was coming from new york and from the west coast that you could come from a place like missouri, too.

Hey, is looking to the queen diva. And as I sit back in romanist, about fifty years, a pip hop IT was a beat that changed my life. And this particular beat was drag rapped by the shower boy.

story. the.

Reason that is be changed my life is because IT was so essential. You know, what was happening in new orleans with the bounce culture. And this beat will be the start of every party, every club show, everywhere, every black point that we had this particular beat that would played a trigger man, and everything was thought to go down.

IT was real. Get so. So this song, in particular, be changed my life. IT made me realized that that I wants to be a rapper. IT made me realized that the valence has so much potential with the bounce culture, and i'm grateful for this beat and grateful for the shower boys for making this beat, because rag re. Definitely changed my life and is essential and very essential for the culture of hipp.

Hi, i'm britain. Lose hoof. It's been a minute in the hip hop verse that changed my life is the third verse of trick dies. I'm a third. I think it's just the most fine verse of the song, but also has like a deeper kind of emotional core to IT that makes me want to believe in and trust myself. And now like also the older I get, like the meaning has deepened over time.

But I don't know when I look back and reflect, I more deeply understand trick dad's commentary about the hip hop establishment and about the music industry establishment that he was making. And the third verse, it's kind of notable because IT has the guitar and like strings sample that like on loop that has like a nice kind of a beat feld IT. Also, there's like these kids that are seeing, like I don't know.

I have the kids in the course like this has all the elements of a hit, and southern rap was not popular in the same way IT is now. Or like southern wrapped IT necessarily set the sound for the nation, like the national hip hop landscape. So like IT was the specific sound of trick daddy.

Like his twin, the man in which he wrapped was so different to me, at least coming from like house. I'm from suburban mission in during the height of and m. And like detweiler.

I have a whole different .

like understanding what hipp could sound like at that time. So I don't know. Just everything about the song in the video caught my attention and felt so different than what I was used to sing at the time.

The last few lines of this verse where essentially trick daddy has just been like, you can say what you want. You can do what you want. You want to talk, big talk.

You might pretend like you want to a walk back walk. But me myself, personally, i'm just gonna x because a lot of you are putting out music that shouldn't even be beyond anybody. Y's rater, it's is White. The last four lines, though, really of that birth are something that i've taken up to be sort of like a version of a personal monitor for me. So he says, I don't care who hears .

where he from.

That line. I interpret that as basically like i'm not looking for the rewards of a given lifestyle. I'm not looking for the rewards of the music establishment.

I'm not looking for grandma's. I don't need your source of words. I don't need these things you don't have to give me my props.

More important, I don't need them from you. I'm an authentic person. I'll care who you is, where you from. OK, here you are.

I'm going to be authentically me if I am honing my authenticity and i'm being me and i'm enjoying what i'm doing. I'm not hurting anybody was a problem, you know, like i've already one and I just love that I do. I think it's like the health est way that you can go about in life.

I know how many level I cannot identify with trick that I for lot loads of obvious reasons i'm not fug, but I think it's really emotionally healthy. And that verse has always struck something within me. And like I said, I kind of Carry IT for the last twenty years and I can recite that entire verse from memory. It's like its soothing.

What up on bobbi Carter, singer producer for the tiny desk in the verse that changed my life was hundred fifty thousands. Final verse on our cas, eighty aliens.

Every time I heard diverse IT takes me .

back to the first time that I heard IT in ninety six. IT is the same feeling. Every time I was a freshman at Jackson state university, I was very home sick.

My rome have been robed at gunpoint, walking to grab lunch over the weekend. I was broke, and a day later my mom sent me to C. D.

And A C. D changed my life. But this verse in particular just totally spoke to me. A call me down and IT reminded me that I wasn't alone in this new journey into independence. And a man heard and like, even before he started a rappid, he goes like, like, calm down. And he goes softly as if I like .

piano in the door, softly as if .

I like piano in the door.

Each line is like he was talking specifically to me, but the line that really struck me as when he said, no drugs or alcohol, so I can get the signal clear as a day. Now in my peer group, i'm probably, at the time, especially, I was wanted only people who didn't smoke or in drink, and I thought that I was the complete pillar of that were out cares. But when he said no drugs or alcohol, I can get the signal clear today.

When so many people, we used to always ask me, like, why would you do what you? I finally got in, my answer from then on was, is so I can get the signal clear as day. So that verse, just like IT, made me feel so Normal in that moment. And I always walk with that. I mean, I walk with the on the album me so much to me completely shape who I am, but specifically for our cast that that album ever submitted at them as my favorite hip hop group of all time.

Hi, i'm ana media sair. I'm one of the host of N, P, R music outlets. Know in the verse that changed my life is the first, first of crc, mars, mad city .

and down. Where you from? What do you know?

I cover hip hop all the time, specifically mostly light hip hop, but came to hip hop later in, like, I would say, like the middle school, early high school. He was not something that I grow listening to, is not something that my family listening to a lot. I was more listening to, more traditional, like, and then living.

So I remember hearing kendra lamar's mad city for the first time and being like, wow, this is poetry. I was really amazed, by the way, that you could structure a hip hop song or hip hop sound and be so over in what you are talking about with this track. It's like he lays everything out.

He channels all that on his heart, that in his soul, and he puts IT into lyrical. And I was just blown away. There's one line in particular that I just think is so beautiful.

And it's like, true, true, amazing word smith, that country is so capable of hope you can slow ety. And then there's a later part in the verse that I love, kind of a whole section of IT where he talks about. That was back when I was nine, till we packed the nine.

Pakistan, every report is fine. We adapt. A crime pack of him at four comes at a time.

我就是 and he basically .

goes through our landing， his experience throwing up with experiencing a lot of violence first hand as a child, that he ends that kind of section by saying, that's all mama said when .

we was eaten that free life that line has stuck .

in my head for years and years and years and years, that something I have revisited so many times is like, it's so visual and it's so just like that hearing with A K A R A R duck. Like that's the time you get before, and then you have the contrast of that's what ama said. Like there are a few things that are so visual. And I think he does such a beautiful job of painting daring imaging in his flare ic sense. But just the mastery of can rik.

I would have this quite like as hip hop is just always been a key core, I guess, of my life. Every voice and every side of her changes me in some way. Then i'd say, like tie between O D B broke in zoo, which is, you know, essentially just one law varies in the course.

Want to be with .

the James.

We the age get between when your even two years is like a whole lifetime. But we have you know a good hair for the years between us and those moments when we would listen to like brookland zoo in the car, I listen to song village, I don't know, in the car, I wrapped the voices together. The way those songs are, those voices brought us together, is one of those moments in life that I still like call back on as like, whenever down.

I'm like that's what joy feels like, the way that that could bring us, bring us together and always like, strikes me and when I and still host day to me as a testament to the power of a verse and how just one verse, not even, not even to hold the song, just how how much one voice can bring worlds of people that possibly, you know, hate each other. I never taught to each other how one voice can bring so many people together. I mean, they're so much power in advice. So those voices, just from my past experience, really hold a lot of way to me in anyway, I love you peace that's .

IT for our show. We want to know what's the hipp first that changed your life? You can find this at facebook dot coms lash P C H H. And a huge thing to everyone who shared their personal stories for this episode.

If you like to hear more of npr coverage on the fifty than versy of hip hop head over to npr music in the cosmic podcast feed. This segnor from popular heavy hour was produced by shervinton ent, Robin Hilton and my cat, and IT was edited by Jason wei. This episode of the sunday story was produced by Andrew mumbo and edited by liana symptom.

The team includes jenie mt. Jian, Henry hot and Emily silver, our engineer for this episodes matte luster and iran. The gucci is our executive producer.

I'm A A Harris in for I E osc. O, up first is back tomorrow with all the news, you need to start your week. Till then.

enjoy your day.

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In thousand nine hundred and eighty seven, a Young black man and been spor was convicted of a brutal murder in taxes, but there was no physical evidence linking him to the crime and he had an ally, but that did matter. It's hard to overcome A D White, who was killed by two black men for thirty, fight for justice. Listen now to the sunday story on the up first podcast.