'Ode to Hip-Hop' is out now on Running Press. Here's how Kiana Fitzgerald wrote it, and where she thinks the genre is heading.
This is something that I care very deeply about. I’m not flippant about it. I don’t want anybody to think that I didn’t take this seriously. But in terms of the selection process, it is all on me. In the introduction of the book, I talk about how I went about selecting these albums.
I think we’re in a period where we’re trying to get our bearings again. There’s so much going on. There’s so many tools and it’s easier to hop in hip-hop than it was in the beginning. There are different issues that impacted how many projects were included from the early stages and the later stages. But I do feel like it does come down to the fact that…I was going to say niggas, but I don’t know if I can say that.Well, yeah, niggas were trying to get it together.
I feel like Ada helped me to take a step back and identify, “All right, yes, some of these albums may have been more commercially successful, for example, but does that mean that it’s a more influential or impactful album than another one?” I tried hard with her assistance to get to a place where I was, again, looking from an aerial perspective.
I would also say that hip-hop doesn’t give a damn about stagnancy. It’s been beautiful to do so much research around this genre and realize that this shit don’t ever stay the same. It moves very quickly. I feel like that’s reflective of where we are today. It’s probably tenfold right now, because we have social media and a quick news cycle. Even thinking about from Nicki’s [rise] to Cardi’s [rise], from 2010 to 2018, how much changed in that short amount of time, relatively speaking.
It felt natural for me to put this information out there. I’m very open about mental health as someone who lives with bipolar type one. I wanted people to know not only did the genre save my life, it’s also like damn near prophetic that I ended up in the Bronx when I went missing. As somebody who’s from a small town in the middle of the south in Texas, as someone who grew up in poverty who didn’t have a lot of opportunities, I never would’ve thought that I would end up in this position.
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