Like jazz before it, hip-hop started out as a wild form of self-expression situated distinctly on the outskirts of musical conventions. From its origins, hip-hop was about providing a voice and means of self-expression for the disenfranchised. Its forms and rhythms spread from the Bronx in the 1970s across the globe.
Although four decades have passed since its origins, that more transgressive and less commercialized brand of hip-hop is alive and well in all corners of the world. Aisha Fukushima, singer, speaker and activist, can attest to the unabated vitality and creativity of the contemporary hip-hop scene.
“To me there is a fiercely intellectual, critical aspect of hip-hop culture that also exists beyond the Top 40 and beyond what people often see when they scratch the surface,” she says from her houseboat home in Copenhagen.
Fukushima is a U.S.- and Denmark-based hip-hop artist who performs and writes her own lyrics and is a curator of other artistic talent. One of her major projects, RAPtivism, a global hip-hop project that she founded in 2009, is a collaboration among artists from across the world. She also has a foot in the academic and intellectual world, speaking and leading workshops at academic conferences.
These multiple identities are not at odds with each other, Fukushima says. After all, hip-hop is a form of social analysis and critique. “‘Hip-hop’ stands for highly intellectual people hovering over politics; the hyphen is the bridge that we walk across,” Fukushima says, attributing that analysis to the Narcicyst, an Iraqi-Canadian hip-hop MC.
Although music is now a fundamental part of her life, Fukushima says it took her a few years to realize she wanted to be a performer, even though she grew up enmeshed in the international music scene.
Her parents, who worked in the music industry, shuttled her back and forth from Japan to the United States, bringing her backstage with them during James Brown, Funkadelic, TLC and Ice Cube concerts.
