Porsche celebrates hip-hop anniversary with film documentary
On 11th August 1973, DJ Kool Herc hosted a party in the Bronx that would go down in history. With two turntables connected together, he created beats for his friends to accompany with raps and acrobatic breakdancing. This New York evening fifty years ago is considered a key moment in the formation of hip-hop.
Half a century later, German music journalist, Niko Hüls, has embarked on a journey through the US, taking in stops to talk with many artists involved in the genre. In New York, Los Angeles and Atlanta, he speaks to Xzibit, DJ Muggs (Cypress Hill), Tony Touch, L’il Fame (M.O.P.) and Speech (Arrested Development), plus many more, about the impact hip-hop has had on their lives. In partnership with Porsche, the result is an almost two-hour documentary, which you can view for free on the YouTube channel of Hüls’ Backspin hip-hop magazine.
In addition to the four hip-hop elements of breakdance, graffiti, rap and DJing, the documentary focuses on a value system characterised by respect, tolerance and creative self-realisation. Artists reveal how hip-hop helped them to break free from the barriers of their social backgrounds and to realise their dreams in a self-determined way. The social worker, JC Hall, follows the same approach with his Hip-Hop Therapy project, which features in the film. He uses the tools of hip-hop culture to therapeutically reintegrate disadvantaged youths from the Bronx district of New York into everyday school life, and to show them ways to positively shape their lives.
“Respect, tolerance and integration are values the hiphop movement has exemplified for fifty years,” says Hüls. “It has therefore shaped several generations and decades, certainly in terms of language, music and fashion. Hip-hop is much more, though. It is a unifying system with common codes all over the world. The beauty is there are so many ways to celebrate it.”
Since 2018, Backspin and Porsche have been jointly committed to giving space to the values of hip-hop as a youth culture. The first Back to Tape film reported on the history of hip-hop in Germany. The production was awarded numerous industry awards, including the German Prize for Online Communication. Back to Tape 2 followed in 2020 and saw Hüls travel in a Porsche to European cities, including Barcelona, Paris and London, to explore hip-hop culture beyond Germany’s borders. Then, in 2021, a 212-page culture and travel guide named Hip-Hop Culture was published by Backspin and Porsche. The book portrays seventeen artists from Germany, Holland, the UK, France, Spain and Denmark, all of whom have made a significant contribution to the development of hip-hop in recent years. Now, the newly released Back to Tape 3 documentary takes viewers to the USA as Hüls traces the origins of the movement. While the content is being played out digitally via YouTube, as well as through photos on Instagram and by way of a dedicated playlist published on Spotify, a special exhibition dedicated to Porsche and hip-hop will feature at the Porsche Brand Store in Stuttgart.
View all instalments of the series and access all Back to Tape Spotify playlists by visiting the dedicated project page on the Porsche website: bit.ly/porschebacktotape.
NUMEROUS INDUSTRY AWARDS, INCLUDING THE GERMAN PRIZE FOR ONLINE COMMUNICATION