1520 Sedgwick

In the past, I’ve made a distinction between what I’ve called "hip hip-hop" and "square hip-hop", which I find to be a much more useful and accurate way of addressing the issues I’m concerned with than, say, "mainstream vs. underground", "major label vs. independent" or "authentic vs. inauthentic".

Basically, "hip hip-hop" would be hip-hop that, in any given situation, chooses the less obvious option, in order to be more creative, daring, stylish, crazy, witty, funny, rebellious, critical or some combination thereof. And being able to make that choice in the first place also necessarily requires that the individual in question actually understand what the available options are, which is the true essence of hipness. In other words, a hip person is someone that understands all the possibilities in a given situation, and "hip hip-hop" is hip-hop made by such a person.

"Square hip-hop", by contrast, is hip-hop made by people who do not understand their options, or who choose to ignore them. That is, they accept the conventional wisdom, don’t take real risks, don’t seek insight, don’t provide insight, and have no particular desire to change things because they don’t really understand or care that things could be changed.

I mention all that because the New York Times reported this morning on a really interesting example of "hip hip-hop". Apparently, residents of 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx – the building where Kool Herc invented hip-hop - are trying to have it declared a historic landmark. But they’re not doing it just to do it, they’re doing it so that the building – and specifically its status as low-income housing – cannot be altered. Now I have no idea whether or not there’s any legal validity at all to that approach, but it’s very hip.

Here are the first few paragraphs...for some reason, it won't let me link to the whole thing, but if you cut and paste the title into google, you should have no problem...

Will Gentrification Spoil the Birthplace of Hip-Hop?

By DAVID GONZALEZ
Published: May 21, 2007

Hip-hop was born in the west Bronx. Not the South Bronx, not Harlem and most definitely not Queens. Just ask anybody at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue — an otherwise unremarkable high-rise just north of the Cross Bronx and hard along the Major Deegan.

The community room, where Kool Herc presided over turntables at parties in the 1970s, has been closed for renovations since last year. Across the city, owners of buildings like the one at 1520 Sedgwick are leaving subsidy programs.

"This is where it came from," said Clive Campbell, pointing to the building’s first-floor community room. "This is it. The culture started here and went around the world. But this is where it came from. Not anyplace else."

O.K., Mr. Campbell is not just anybody — he is the alpha D.J. of hip-hop. As D.J. Kool Herc, he presided over the turntables at parties in that community room in 1973 that spilled into nearby parks before turning into a global assault. Playing snippets of the choicest beats from James Brown, Jimmy Castor, Babe Ruth and anything else that piqued his considerable musical curiosity, he provided the soundtrack savored by loose-limbed b-boys (a term he takes credit for creating, too).

Mr. Campbell thinks the building should be declared a landmark in recognition of its role in American popular culture. Its residents agree, but for more practical reasons. They want to have the building placed on the National Register of Historic Places so that it might be protected from any change that would affect its character — in this case, a building for poor and working-class families.

Throughout the city, housing advocates said, buildings like 1520 Sedgwick are becoming harder to find as owners opt out of subsidy programs so they can eventually charge higher rents on the open market.

The Sedgwick building is part of the state’s Mitchell-Lama program, in which private landlords who receive tax breaks and subsidized mortgages agree to limit their return on equity and rent to people who meet modest income limits. The contracts allow owners to leave the program and prepay their mortgage loan after 20 years. Rent regulations can protect tenants from increases, but not always.

While Mitchell-Lama buildings in parts of Manhattan, like the Lower East Side, were among the first to leave the program, housing experts say that the trend has spread far beyond, from the Rockaways to the west Bronx.

Tom Waters, a housing policy analyst at the Community Service Society of New York, said there are about 40,000 Mitchell-Lama units in the city, down from 66,000 in 1990. The rate of buildings leaving the program has accelerated since 2001, he said, as landlords find they can do better on the open market.