THANK YOU,
HIP-HOP.

Some music becomes part of the autobiography.

There are forms of art that become so closely associated with particular periods of our lives that we stop thinking of them as entertainment alone. They become the atmosphere in which we grew up, the soundtrack to private victories and disappointments, and sometimes a language for emotions we had not yet learned to articulate.

For me, rap has been one of those forms of art. It accompanied younger versions of me trying to understand confidence, ambition and the distance between who I was and who I wanted to become. It has been there during moments of uncertainty, when I wanted energy, humour, perspective or simply something familiar.

I cannot honestly claim that a particular song transformed my life. Family, friendships, education, relationships and lived experience have shaped me in countless ways. But rap has accompanied a surprising number of those chapters.

My work today often returns to questions of human behaviour, identity and agency. Music belongs in that inquiry too. If we want to understand how people make sense of themselves, we should probably pay attention to the songs they carry with them.

Before it was my soundtrack, it was a cultural revolution.

Hip-hop did not originate as a motivational playlist for an Indian listener. Its history is rooted in the Bronx in 1970s New York, where Black and Latino communities developed creative forms of expression amid social and economic challenges. DJs, MCs, dancers and visual artists helped create a culture much larger than recorded music.

That history matters. Rap has been a vehicle for storytelling, protest, humour, community identity, technical invention and self-definition. It has also contained contradictions and themes worth questioning. Both things can be true.

My experience is not the experience that gave birth to hip-hop. I don't need to pretend otherwise to be grateful for what its creators made possible.

Read the Smithsonian's history of hip-hop in the Bronx ↗

Confidence. Language. Permission to imagine.

Growing up involves negotiating the distance between our current circumstances and our imagined futures. Rap often speaks in an unusually direct register: ambitious, playful, irreverent and concerned with self-definition. Even when the performance is exaggerated, it can make the possibility of authoring one's own narrative feel vivid.

Perhaps that was part of its appeal to me. Perhaps I simply loved the rhythms, wordplay and personalities. My interpretation is retrospective, not a scientific reconstruction of my younger mind.

Still, I hear echoes of questions I now write about: Who defines success? How do we respond to rejection? What does confidence mean? How do identity and action relate? Rap did not invent those questions for me, but it may have made some of them emotionally memorable.

Love the art. Keep your judgment.

Rap can include themes involving violence, misogyny, substance use, materialism and other subjects that deserve criticism. It would be simplistic to claim that music never influences people. It would be equally simplistic to assume that listening to a song means endorsing everything it describes.

We engage with fiction, cinema, literature and music in many ways. We can admire technical skill, recognise satire, appreciate a flawed character or explore a perspective we do not share. Listening is an active process, even if interpretation differs from person to person.

I can appreciate a Lil Wayne punchline without adopting its worldview, or admire Eminem's technical ability without treating him as a moral authority. Gratitude and critical thinking are compatible.

Different songs. Different versions of me.

A familiar song can stay the same while the listener changes. Something I once heard as confidence may now remind me of the insecurity that made confidence so attractive. A song I associated with ambition may now raise questions about the meaning of success. Music becomes autobiographical through the memories we attach to it.

I do not know these artists personally, and they do not know me. I don't need to invent a relationship to acknowledge the value of their work. Nor do I want to forget the DJs, MCs, producers, dancers and communities whose creativity made the culture possible.

Not everyone enjoys rap, and nobody has to. People find meaning through ghazals, jazz, classical music, rock, devotional music, electronic music or silence. We can disagree about taste without dismissing what an art form means to someone else.

So thank you, hip-hop. For the humour, the energy, the craft, the stories and the company. Sometimes I am an independent researcher thinking about identity and agency. Sometimes I am simply someone who enjoys listening to Lil Wayne. Both can be true.

— Sahil Tayal