“What is hyphy?” a Scottish DJ asked me at a Fresh Air: The Alternative meeting in fall, 2008. I had just started grad school at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and was attending my first meeting with the student radio club. I had mentioned that I was thinking of doing a show featuring hyphy music. I explained to the first-year undergraduate that hyphy is a fast, hyper-active style of hip hop music from Oakland, California where I was born. I continued, clarifying that hyphy doesn’t involve just music, but it’s an entire movement, which embodies a culture, lifestyle, attire, and an ever-evolving patois consisting of words that for the most part originate from 3 men named Mac Dre , Keak da Sneak , and E-40 . He was intrigued. I went on explaining that the Hyphy Movement involves sideshows, which are wild rallies, often in abandoned parking lots in East Oakland, where people “go dumb,” doing wild car tricks involving “ghost riding the whip,” which is when t...
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