Suffering so you can return harder — the suprising link between hip hop pioneers and intergenerational healing

“I’ve suffered just so I can return harder” from Gang Starr's Full Clip is one of many lyrics pointing to the link between intergenerational healing and the roots of hip hop. 
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We live in a world that is so rich - filled with chances to move beyond tolerance to deep understanding and love. 

As high school was ending and a year of getting lost to find myself began, it was 1989 and the early beats and rhythms of downtown New York began hitting Australian shores.

Nightclubs filled with teens and twenty-somethings searching for themselves and ecstaticallly dancing out their traumas. We didn't know it then, but it's obvious looking back on it now — we were healing ourselves with movement and connection. 

In Sydney, where I grew up, the club scene was having a resurgence. The 'gay clubs' were the most fun, playing the best music, and providing the safest spaces for young women to rebel with dance and social connections long into the night. 

I was 15 or so when I started going to these clubs - such a baby when I look back on it now that I have kids of my own. At the time I was surrounded by a safety net of older cousins and friends of friends. We all looked out for each other as we subconsciously carved out our independence from a variety of households affected by post-feminist ideals, mums working overtime, and an economic recession. 

The somewhat accidental and fortunate by-product was that I was in the clubs when early hip-hop started to hit our shores. The messages of love and belonging were our panacea. I related instantly to the ghetto language of reclaiming power in a world that felt the exact opposite.

My love for this form or expression has lasted well into my 50s, and isn't going anywhere. 

A year later I returned to Sydney University and somewhat miraculously achieved a degree in modern history. The particular focus of my studies was social and cultural.

I learned a lot about settler societies, black history in America, Aboriginal history here, and women’s history all over the world.

One of the highest-marks I received was with a paper quoting Public Enemy lyrics as historical evidence of black men reclaiming masculinity in a post-slavery world. I am pretty sure that was a first for my lecturers in 1990.

All of that to say: modern rap and hip-hop are as much social commentary as they are a cultural form of generational healing.

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So this year during #blackhistorymonth I want to share how the same principles of understanding and expansion can inform so much of our allyship.

I don’t often say it aloud but cultural responsiveness is a core value of all that I do and one of the reasons I work with women in a therapeutic space is to help us open up to each other, to difference, and recognise that what we all share and what we all have in common as human beings far outweigh our differences.

It has been said that when we heal ourselves we heal seven generations prior and the seven ahead of us.

…ultimately we all need to feel seen heard and safe.

That how somatic healing and hip hop (or the origins of rap) come together. They represent people of colour making sense of their past and re-claiming their future.

Just look at @doechii and you’ll see it happening again now, in 2025.

Like the Gang Starr lyrics said, “I’ve suffered just so I can return harder” with two turntables and a microphone, learning the 5 arts of hip hop.

Culture is important.

Let’s talk more about it in the comments ✊🏽✌️🖤 who is on your list of pioneers?

Shout out to the pioneers @publicenemy Mos Def, Monie Love, Jungle Brothers, Bahamadia, @jayz, @gangstarr @arresteddevelopment__ @dilatedpeoples @drdre @wearedelasoul @qtiptheabstract @mrchuckd @officialspikelee Erik B & Rakim and so many more.

#hiphoppioneers #somatichealing

Photo credit -Josh Berendes (@brende_films)