When I was first introduced to the culture of hip hop it was around 1985-1986. I remember some of my classmates telling me "Yea LL Cool J is BAD man!" The irony of that statement was that was the title to his follow up album.
I begged my mom to get me any LL Cool J album and on Christmas day I remember going to the stockings, while wearing my TRON sleepwear finding a brand new "Radio" cassette by the fireplace. Now this was at least '87 so I was at least one LL album behind. Then again who cares, I found my music
Now this part is crucial- I specifically remember mom telling me. "I don't get that rap stuff"
You know what...at the time I didn't know what I liked about it either. All I knew is that the beats were hard, the verses were catchy and my parents didn't get it. I was in love.
Enough reminiscing I'm sure you have your own hip hop story as well (Be sure to let me know what it was if you'd like in the comments)Now, fast forward to 2011. Mt. G crash to be precise, I'm following some news feeds and I hear about Bitcoin. Even with the bad news, I knew something was in this new technology! download.jpg
It seems cool- "Digital Money"
I've been hooked since.
Now here is my argument:
It took a while for Hip Hop to enter the mainstream. By my guess is it took at least twenty years for it to evolve from Sugar Hill Gang to Kendrick Lemar.
We still hear people echoing the same sentiments bout crypto that were being said by people back in 1989.
Lets look at the similarities:
- Both sectors were MASSIVELY underappreciated in their infancy, FEW expected them to LAST
- Both only were adopted by a small sector of their native cultures. With Hip Hop it was primarily the inner-city while Crypto was people who were either in technology already or, younger financially adept people with a high risk tolerance
- Both were marginalized by the 'older' generation because they didn't get 'it'. How many people have you tried to explain the whole concept of crypto or investments too and they still don't get 'it'
- I know you heard this before and this one is big- How much opportunity has this provided to people from ALL walks of life to increase their financial class to this degree? You can't tell me some of these garbage rappers would be holding as much money as they are right now akin to how some of these Sh*tcoins and ICO's are making so much money right now?
- You have choices outside of hiphop. You have #country, #rock and even classical. You have choices in your asset classes
- It has taken HipHop 20 years to cross over all genres and hitting all levels of culture while its is still taking crypto time to hit all these levels
- Both have hit strong levels of resistance and govt. interference. Just look what Luther Campbell had to go through.
Here's the difference:
- Everyone deals with #money. In one form or another we all buy things. You don't need hip hop but you do need money.
- Numbers can be appreciated by anyone regardless of language. While hiphop is more local to your region.
Crypto was felt lightly across the entire world in the beginning nd now has Billions of dollars of influence now. Moving between hip hop culture and Crypto requires a bit of a codeswitch in order to understand the languages between the two.
Now both have grown into something worldwide that everyone can feel it's influence directly or indirectly. While it does take some skill to learn both- the involvement and influence they have had is evident.