FIELD NOTES: Hip Hop’s “Reset”(?), Mamdani x Jada, a “Secret” Podcast
Plus, upcoming Hip Hop conferences and interdisciplinary events
Happy New Year friends. Well, not so happy so far I guess. Still, I wish the best for everyone this year. (Except the people who are actively engaged in holding back or stepping on other people. They can have a terrible year for all I care.)
I’m very much gearing up for what I think will be an incredibly inspiring year together here within the Hip Hop Can Save America! media ecosystem. We’ll have some of the same content (the podcast of course, with mostly-weekly YouTube livestreams coming back this Monday night!), this newsletter (including roundups of Hip Hop News That Isn’t About Dumb Sh*t and listing of dope interdisciplinary Hip Hop events/conferences/etc.), my full editorials (aka Mannyfestos lol), and this new segment, sharing a few things I’ve been mulling over this week.
I’m also experimenting with using Substack’s Chat feature a bit more for in-between conversations and questions. I posted one this week that I’ll be drawing from in an upcoming edition so swing by if you can.
👀 WHAT I’M NOTICING
There was a lot of year-end talk about 2025 as being the year that Hip Hop “came back.” For instance, Okayplayer published an article, “2025 Was the Year Hip-Hop Hit the Reset Button” with the subhead stating, “From Clipse to Nas, and from the underground to the global stage, hip-hop returned to its foundation — prioritizing culture, intention and longevity over virality.”
Now, I understand the sentiment — plus, some of this also had to do with the news that for the first time in a long while, for a very quick minute, no rap song was in the Billboard Top 40. So you put all that together, it might seem like the culture really was making some kind of stand — returning to its foundation.
Well… I actually don’t put a lot into the momentary Top 40 drought as a bellweather stat — longer convo, but regardless, I would gently push back against the Okayplayer framing. I think it was less about Hip Hop “returning to its foundation” as it was about Hip Hop FANS returning to THEIRS.
As I put it on Facebook in direct response to that claim that Hip Hop hit a reset button:
I see 2025 more like older fans of the genre hit the, “Oh, maybe I should start to pay attention to rap again” button. Cuz artists have been putting out projects like these every year... This year we saw a bit more industry push than normal, thanks to Mass Appeal for instance, and while that’s great, there really hasn’t been some giant sea change in content -- it’s just that a lot of people seem to only pay attention when it’s handed to them. 🤷
In ‘26, let’s remember that us older rap music fans used to have to sit by the radio with our blank cassette tapes ready on Friday and Saturday nights, run home to watch a fuzzy Video Music Box on UHF channels, maybe take buses to other cities to even buy rap records or see shows. In other words, we used to put in WORK to find the Hip Hop that gave us life. If 2025 reinvigorated your love for the genre, bring some of that energy back — even if the industry doesn’t do as good a job of serving it up to you. There was plenty of this kind of music last year, and there will be plenty this year.
Here are some resources to help us all keep an ear out for the kind of “grown folk” rap that folks responded well to this year.
ALSO: A super dope year-end playlist from the good homie DJ Hoodwink. He describes it in part this way:
First, these are tracks that speak to me for both beats and lyrics. First and foremost - both have to hit for me, a beat I can rock to, and then bars. And either no hook, or a quality hook… The lyrics have to be something we can explore, what I label as empowering - something we can make sense of and examine in pursuit of personal or collective growth. This doesn’t mean “positive” or “conscious” per se, as these can have risky content and be opportunities to learn, to reflect, or even to plan in the face of cautionary tales.
🤔 WHAT I’M THINKING
Now that my first book and my first TEDx talk are out in the world, I’ve been thinking a lot about an even bigger picture. Like, what happens when crisis becomes the baseline rather than the exception… Essentially, the kind of world most of us are finding ourselves immersed in.
One thing I keep coming back to — especially through the lens of Hip Hop — is how often culture ends up doing the important work institutions can’t or won’t.
In these times, communication, coordination, even economic pathways emerge not as art-for-art’s-sake, but as survival systems. I’ve started to think of this as something of an “emergency infrastructure” — not as metaphor, but as function — that deserves more exploration. It’s not a frame I’m ready to fully unpack here, but it’s one I’ll be working with more intentionally in the months ahead.
📖 WHAT I’M READING
As you might know, some of my other work focuses on social justice, politically progressive, and anti-racist podcasting and journalism. If these are subjects that matter to you, allow me to suggest Phil Lewis’s What I'm Reading Substack. I spend a lot of time working on my own content and producing/editing podcasts for other clients so I often don’t have the time to sift through the Internet for the most urgent and insightful journalism, but Phil? Phil is ON IT, and I make sure that I find time to check in with his roundups every chance I get.
🎧 WHAT I’M LISTENING TO
Now, let’s look past the fact that I’m involved with this project, because I’d be cheerleading for this podcast regardless. The Secret Life of TK Dutes is a living, breathing, unique, compelling testimony that many of us NEED to experience.
She says: “I’m on a mission to renew my spirit in the face of unchecked capitalism and all the other -isms that plague us. Each episode is a loose biography of a life in progress. Stop doing what’s expected and start doing you.”
To know TK is to love her, but you don’t need to know her to listen (although she will most likely end up a friend in your head very quickly). This is an unorthodox podcast — a very different format brilliantly crafted by top tier producers and writers (and a top-tier, award-winning podcast editor I might add, ahem ahem).
Here’s the description. If you recognize even a tiny bit of yourself in it, you absolutely must listen.
The Secret Life of TK Dutes is the story of what it means to become when the system won’t let you be.
One woman sets out into the world, looking for ways to get ahead as an Artist. Producer. Daughter, Sister. Partner.
Together with those who bear witness, TK throws away the scripts and looks for answers, in airports, dentists offices, across borders.
Each episode is a new world, pioneering the art of loose autobiography to build the picture of a life in a community of voices.
What happens when you stop doing what is expected of you and start doing YOU?
A better life can be a hustle. It doesn’t have to be a secret.
📺 WHAT I’M WATCHING
I watched the public swearing in of Mayor Zohran Mamdani. As a nearly-lifelong New Yorker, I absolutely love NYC (despite doing the thing many of us do and moving to Atlanta 🤣). Still, NYC — and NYC Hip Hop in particular — played an enormous role in who I’ve become and the work I do, and so I’ll always be rooting for the Big Apple. As someone who leans progressive poltically, I’m eager to see what this administration will bring.
As a Hip Hop head — and one who advocates for Hip Hop to be an intregal part of any institutional reforms that a mayor can control, I wrote his transition team a policy memo about how I believe some of the brilliant people I’ve talked to over the years can help.
Now, we know the Mayor — a former aspiring rapper — is down with Hip Hop, which is a plus out of the gate. So it was little surprise when, during his speech, he said — to the delight of the multicultural, multigenerational crowd, “And throughout it all we will, in the words of Jason Terrance Phillips, better known as Jadakiss or J to the Muah, be “outside”—because this is a government of New York, by New York, and for New York.”
{Cue Jadakiss laugh}
Still, as my post made very clear, what I’m talking about Hip Hop sitting at the governing table, not just being nodded to.
As I stated:
Proximity to Hip Hop — even deep personal or professional ties — is not the same as understanding how to effectively incorporate Hip Hop-informed methods into governance and public systems.
So, while it was dope to hear Mamdani quote Jadakiss during his swearing in speech, as I posted to my FB:
Quoting Jadakiss is cool and all, but Hip Hop deserves more than just name-dropping when it comes to helping inform policy.
I really hope they’re listening to us, and not just the music.
🫶 WHAT I LOVE
😠 WHAT I LOVE NOT
Obviously, Minneapolis. 😔 But since I wrote this before that, we’ll go with that other thing that happened in Venezuela. If you’d like a very solid analysis of what this is actually all about, check out this video from my podcast brother Max from Unf*cking The Republic.
📅 UPCOMING HIP HOP INTERDISCIPLINARY EVENTS
I’ll be keynoting or presenting at a BUNCH of these (look for the *)! If you want to talk about booking me for your event, just reply to this newsletter.
Also, if you have an event that should go here, please reply and let me know, I’ll be happy to include it in upcoming newsletters.
* February 5-7: The Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership at Kalamazoo College
“Hip Hop Can Save America!”
Book talk and community discussions/performances
* February 21, 2026: UMass Amherst College of Education
Black AF (Artistic Freedom) Conference
TV OFF: Hip-Hop as the Revolution for Critical Conversations and Resistance to Conform
March 4, 2026: Berklee College of Music
Fifth Annual International Hip-Hop Symposium
* March 18-21: Groningen (The Netherlands)
European Hip Hop Studies Conference
“Things Done Changed”: Hip Hop Futures for a World on Fire
* April 9-13, 2026: Trinity College, CT
20th Trinity International Hip Hop Festival
November 13-15, 2026: Howard University
4th Annual Hip Hop Studies Conference (Recap of 2025 conference)
* means I’ll be presenting!
📺: WATCH MY TEDx TALK!
📖: READ MY BOOK!
🎧: LISTEN TO THE HHCSA! PODCAST
📺: WATCH THE HHCSA! YOUTUBE CHANNEL
💬: JOIN THE HHCSA! DISCORD CHANNEL!
🙏: Support this work by becoming a paid subscriber below or on Patreon if you prefer.
Talk more soon.
~Manny