By Village Preservation
To celebrate hip-hop and its profound cultural impact, we explore the seminal places of hip-hop’s early days in Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo, and introduce some of the instrumental figures in the downtown world of hip-hop.
While the birthplace of hip-hop is recognized as 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx …
Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo can boast of being where all four hip-hop elements were presented together for the first time and becoming its second birthplace. During a pivotal five-year period in hip-hop history (1979-1984), nightlife venues, art galleries, walls, and parks throughout Greenwich Village and the East Village functioned as a secondary incubator and stage for b-boys and b-girls, graffiti artists, emcees, DJs, and designers creating what we now call hip-hop culture. Hip-hop culture bearers, pioneering artists, and early adopters connected with the existing punk, new wave, and no wave artists who were already living and creating in Greenwich Village and the East Village. Those neighborhoods as well as NoHo served as a nexus where African-American and Latino artists from the Bronx and uptown connected with transplant, ex-pat, and suburban white artists, scenesters, and tastemakers who were also creating art with a similar ethos.
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