Hip hop is rightly recognised as having originated as a Black art form, but that does somewhat obscure other communities’ role in its development. Latinos, as just one notable example, were there from the very beginning.
Hip hop first emerged in the Bronx, a highly diverse New York borough with an especially large community of Black and Latino residents. It was on the streets of the Bronx that these people came together to rap and develop this new, exciting form, and it is this fascinating history that holds special resonance for Fat Joe. A Latino rapper, born to a Cuban father and a Puerto Rican mother, who was born and raised in the Bronx, Joe is a walking embodiment of much of hip hop’s source code.
Joe would have been a very young child when hip hop started to develop in the Bronx throughout the early ’70s, and he would have grown up alongside it from that point on. Given his age and background, he therefore has an especially fascinating perspective on how the culture formed and spread…