Wild Style (1983) of course remains the ultimate Hip Hop movie, and what it lacks in plot and structure it makes up for in accuracy, authenticity and sincerity. It was made by the right people, at the right time, for all the right reasons.

Read about the making of the film here.

Watch the film here.

The Cold Crush Brothers, one of the contending crews in the basketball throwdown scene:

Cold Crush earlier this year, in a concert to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the film:

The Rock Steady Crew, also featured in the film, with a hit they had the same year:

Lady Pink (Rosie) is still making work. Check her out here.

So is Lee Quiñones (Zoro), pictured above with his wife.

And watch the trailer for a new documentary on Jean-Michel Basquiat (1961-1988), who was part of the street art scene:

(Geoffrey Holder as Baron Samedi in the James Bond film Live and Let Die, 1973.)

Note that the white journalist who goes uptown to get her story listens to (and looks like the lead singer of) Blondie. Blondie had a hit in 1981 called “Rapture,” in which Debbie Harry syncretized various current forms of black popular music, including disco and rap. The video contains various references to West African/Carribean religion, including Baron Samedi, the lord of the dead in Haitian voudou (and Basquiat has a cameo). What else is going on in this video? Is “Rapture” an homage to black culture, or a ripoff?

As a gallery owner says in the 1983 documentary “Style Wars,” which treats the same topics as “Wild Style,” Blondie was a popular meme in graffiti art. 

Watch it here.

On the other hand, in 1979, the conservative cultural critic Nathan Glazer declared about graffiti artists:

I have not interviewed the subway riders; but I am one myself, and while I do not find myself consciously making the connection between the graffiti-makers and the criminals who occasionally rob, rape, assault, and murder passengers, the sense that all are part of one world of uncontrollable predators seems inescapable. 

This is considered to be the first commercially-released rap single, the 1979 “King Tim III” by the Fatback Band — a live funk band playing instruments, not samples — with rapper Tim Washington.

The first commercially-released rap single to achieve mainstream success was “Rapper’s Delight” by the Sugar Hill Gang, also released in 1979.

“Rapper’s Delight” uses samples from the song “Good Times” by Nile Rodgers’s disco-funk band Chic. Note how different the sound is from a live band.

If rap was born in the cradle of struggle, what and who were those struggles against?

As rap began to reach a mainstream audience, how did the depiction of those struggles change?

How have the struggles embodied in hip hop changed over the past four decades?