What’s good, Hip Hop History community- readers, lurkers, posters, enthusiasts, neophytes, and err’ybody! We took a look through the decades of hip hop history, and now we’re going through the spaces of hip hop history, an integral part of its mythology, culture, popularity, use of language, and aesthetic.

We’ll start with the undisputed birthplace of hip hop- the East Coast. Now, exactly where is not only still up for debate, it actually spawned a years-long beef (feud) between two well known rappers and their crews. One side contended that hip hop was born in Queensbridge, Queens, NYC, and the other argued that it was the South Bronx.

(If you’re curious about this and have some time, there was an episode of the AMC series ‘Songs that Shook America’ that covers The Bridge Wars. Okayplayer wrote about it here)

When we posted hip hop videos yesterday, one thread of thought to pick up is the way that so many of these clips show the artists in their native environments-in urban settings, along house-lined streets in segregated neighborhoods, in the club where everyone is dressed in their best. And the thing that’s fascinating is to not only see the evolution of these things over time in these videos, but to note the specificity of these settings-an urban setting in Philly doesn’t look like L.A.; what folks are wearing in Atlanta is not the same as someone in Dallas; houses in New Orleans look different than they do in Miami, etc. And this seems obvious, but it’s important, because an indelible aspect of hip hop has always been about representing where you’re from, with pride.

Now, East Coast rap is not a thing. What I mean is, while there are some distinctive styles that came up because they were part of an artist’s approach to the music and aesthetic, you can find equivalents all over the place. In other words, we can’t say East Coast rap is just gangster rap like Mobb Deep and Nas, because we have gangster rap from other places. We can’t say East Coast rap is about lyrical consciousness rap like De La Soul or Mos Def, because many artists worldwide have taken this approach to the music. And we can’t say East Coast rap is about club bangers even though we have classics like ‘Lean Back’ and ‘Rappers Delight’ out there, for the same reason.

So what we’re doing today is not necessarily trying to define East Coast rap, but instead celebrate its diversity, from NYC to Philly, Digable Planets to Rakim to The Roots to The Fugees, LL Cool J to Naughty by Nature (New Jersey represent!), let’s bring em out!

I got:

1.) The tricky/fun thing about this 30 day ‘challenge’ is that you get one choice (see, it’s a challenge!). It’d be nice to have a mix of some less well known folks and some canonical stuff for our new listeners/explorers! Imagine that you’re helping to build a ‘East Coast Rap’ playlist, for example.

2.) In order to keep the thread from borking, please limit yourself to one YouTube/media link per post. If someone ‘beats you to it’ and posts a song you would’ve posted, reply under their post saying why you like this song/why it was your pick as well, etc. Let’s not give Disqus a reason to make the thread hard to navigate for those of us listening to the songs!

3.) Let’s keep this as positive as we can. Don’t yuck anyone’s yum, don’t snark on someone who may not be as familiar as others, don’t ‘Um, actually’ people, etc. Ain’t nobody earning any Internet Points out here.