The Birth of Hip-Toc

So one day you find yourself at the ironing board at 7:00 in the morning. You notice the fully charged light on your cellphone while you stride across the apartment to make a selection out of your seamlessly juxtaposed R&B and rap collection. Your latte selection is etched into your mind and your signature is as pertinent a form of commerce as those Jackson’s in your money clip. If you find yourself in this crisp button-up psychographic, then you are a pioneer of Hip-Toc. You are a dual master of hip-hop bravado and office policy, as refined and polished as the face of your wristwatch that tic-tocks without leniency during your daily conquests. A fluent speaker of proper English and the slang that nurtured you, you are the puller of the first cab with a female counterpart and won’t accept anything less than the third cab when you hail solo.

This aspect of urban maturity took a quarter-century to refine, with many nation-influencing cultivations on its belt notch to date. However, Hip-Toc was incepted in the 90’s when the credo was to “get money” and to “not be a hater.” A percentage of folks took heed to the new message and forged a $5 billion plus sector out of hip-hop, making it a global force that commercial corporations acknowledged and suburban mannerism gravitated towards. But its real unearthing wasn’t until Jay-Z called forth the “Grown and Sexy,” and legitimized the mind-set of a more harmonized and professional Hip-Toc aspirant. Now the ingenuity and swagger of the streets have many anxious buyers waiting to receive the commodities of the cultivated hip-hop contender.

I posed the question of “what do you think Hip-Toc is?” to music executive Eric. He stated that “Any smart person changes with the times. Some of the most influential people in hip-hop dress in suits and ties everyday, but they can tell you more about hip-hop than the random brotha on the corner. If you’re an entertainment lawyer and I’m an artist, I don’t want my lawyer to dress the same as me. I want him to know about the music I make and I want him to appreciate it and know it and that makes him real. That’s hip-hop. As far as Hip-Toc. It comes to a matter of being a product of a culture. Someone in the age bracket of their early thirties would have grown up in the forefront of when this culture was just starting and booming, whereas someone else has something to learn. They still have a lot to learn about what it is that their admiring and the whole culture they are a part of.”

I consulted Roger, a physician in D.C. and a great example of a Hip-Toc prototype. He said “We owe the culture. We owe the youth, and they need to see these images of hip-hop that are the engineers, that are the dentists, that are the lawyers, the reverends, that are the doctors, the entrepreneurs. We owe our culture a complete view of ourselves and not to limit ourselves to merely a thug image.” He asserts after asking the question of whether the pioneers of hip-hop would want us to quote “keep it real” or “keep it gangsta” that “when you talk about the pioneers of hip-hop, you assume that I’m not one of them. I came up through hip-hop just like the next man came up through hip-hop. I can’t quote verbatim the lyrics of Rakim or LL, but I chose that when my pen hits the pad to write science equations, that when my pen hits the pad to write prescriptions or diagnoses’, but its all hip-hop. As far as the terms keepin it gully or keepin it gangsta, those are just metaphors. I keep it gully and keep it gangsta by the fact that I’m the only Black man in my residency. That’s keepin it gangsta.”

Hip-Toc is the evolution of the hip-hop aficionado. It is the message to the hip-hop enthusiasts that don’t necessarily want to be the artist, but instead live the culture through its many identities and personas. It is the mindframe of the brothers and sisters who can walk into any situation and have at least two options of action, they can either handle it like gentlemen, or they can get into some gangsta shit, all handled accordingly and with technique and bravado. Peace