Hip Hop Is Not A Fountain Of Youth: Reflections On The Big Daddy Kane/KRS-ONE Verzuz Battle

By Kevin Coval | October 18, 2021 | Originally posted at medium.com

hip hop is not a fountain of youth, though prior to last night’s Verzuz battle between Big Daddy Kane and KRS-ONE i certainly imagined it to be. i think of hip-hop as a deep reservoir or time machine to connect not only to my youth but youth culture. hip hop as a continual regenerative portal of sorts.

but last night, i was reminded of age, my own and the culture’s. KRS rhymed on “I’m Still #1”: No-one’s from the old school ’cause rap on a whole /Isn’t even twenty years old / Fifty years down the line, you can start this / ’Cause we’ll be the old school artists. And here we are, less than 50 years from the first time he said it and although the crowd was, with a doubt, rocked and moved, hip -hop and it’s larger-than-life, poet-superheroes are aging.

hip hop certainly felt celebratory last night. i mos def stood up off my couch rhyming along to Set it Off and Step into A World. i’m still thinking about Kane’s fly outfit, his glowing, red Versace sneakers, and KRS’s presence and booming voice able to turn The Barclay’s Center into a dancehall. i was amped to see Das EFX, Nice & Smooth, Craig G, Masta Ace, Roxanne Shanté and Mad Lion’s jacket. so yes, last night, was a W for hip hop.

but i felt something unexpected in an evening of triumph, hip-hop made me sad. it might’ve been the growth on the side of Skoob from Das EFX’s neck, Eric B’s girth, or BDK awkwardly making his way into the crowd, like he needed assistance, like eventually we’ll all need. it might’ve been that KRS’s “freestyles” were much sharper three decades ago and though he stayed away from most of his recent material there was an impending dread he might share from a newer, inferior body of work.

when DJ Scratch antagonized Kid Capri it felt like drunk uncles warring over an age-old beef, talking shit at a party no one wanted to be at. i felt for Pop Master Fable’s back as he half stepped into the cipher. All of these men legends, juggernauts and pioneers, but also human and sadly mortal.

hip-hop’s lost a step, lost its breath. i think of health and wellness inequity and systemic racism and classism that calls upon a community to help pay for the health care of one of its pioneers, Kool Herc. but hip hop also seemed a bit out of touch, like parents trying talk to their kids… about anything. there’s a certainly a place for nostalgia, for what once was. memory a powerful and beautiful tool, emotionally and mentally. but nostalgia for two hours can be exhausting and exhaustive. last night could’ve as easily happened in ’96. and in a culture predicated upon the moment, the now, nostalgia feels like pathos or a kind of aesthetic disease.

so how do we revere and honor, turn out and up for, but not cling to the past like a blanket or pacifier. it’s scary and sad to consider the truth of the present as the culture, our heroes, our own selves, are aging, moving closer toward a finality or mortality.

but hip-hop also insists upon and teaches a Buddhist-like presence, to be here. As KRS lectures on KRS-ONE Attacks: We will be here forever. Do you understand that? Forever. Forever and ever and ever and ever and ever, we will be here. The Verzuz battle felt a bit like we were elsewhere, like we were over there, in a land of baggy-clothed blunt wars, but not HERE in 2021, in the now, wrestling with meaning in a (post)pandemic world of racism, sickness and socio-economic instability and adversity.

for hip-hop to be HERE, it also has to be inter-generational, in order to speak to the NOW. the moment we are in. KRS did mention Trump and Obama, but most of the night felt to be in a vacuum or basement, where we dusted off old records to walk down memory lane.

the culture’s elders could/should play a larger role in our now. maybe we have done a disservice to ourselves to segregate the generations, to praise and worship youth and all of its genius and idiotic innovations. and maybe also, the elders have done the culture and themselves a disservice by shunning the iterations and innovations of newcomers. we can all listen closer, humble ourselves and be open to continual learning in order to remain limber and elastic, in order to grow and remain generative and up-to-date.

and maybe i’m just lamenting because Biz Markie and Scott La Rock should’ve been in the building and were in many ways. and maybe, certainly i’m afraid of the inevitable day we won’t be at all. but hip-hop is and will remain, it’s lasting ability to move the crowd, to dig into the fabric of our past and present and tell us about ourselves, a mirror and provocation of who we are and where we can go. hip hop is and will remain a vehicle for young people, five decades later, to be themselves, without apology, to be here, fully, freely experiencing the now, using this genius tool of the African Diaspora to shed light and levity into all the corners and crevices of what it means to be alive.