Hip Hop Is In The Building (Let's Keep It That Way)

The house that hip hop built (or, more accurately, built from) may fall into the wrong hands.

At least according to the tenants of 1520 Sedgwick Ave., the apartment building on the outskirts of the Bronx where hip hop is said to have started with Clive Campbell aka D.J. Kool Herc spinning records at parties back in 1973. The future of the working-class building remains a mystery and a fitting metaphor for the music industry.

Picture this: an apartment building that has maintained its position all these years, not by chance, but by tenants who have worked hard and lived for about $1,000 under the state’s Mitchell-Lama affordable housing program, according to this story from NY Times' cityroom blog (thanks TC!).

The building has 100 units rent for an average of $1,000 a month under the state’s Mitchell-Lama affordable housing program, in which private landlords receive tax breaks and subsidized mortgages and, in turn, agree to limit their return on equity and rent to people who meet modest income limits. The landlords are allowed to leave their contracts after 20 years, and the rate of those choosing to do so has accelerated since 2001. Last February, tenants were told that the owners planned to leave the program.

All of a sudden in comes some big-time real estate mogul, Mark Karasick, and no one really knows what he's up to. But it can't be good. This is the guy that flipped the Bank of America Center in San Francisco and sold it for $1.05 billion to Donald Trump an' nem.

So we can bet big money that he's not coming in with the intention of helping out a brotha or two. And if he does get it, he definitely won't be turning it into some kind of hip hop landmark as D.J. Kool Herc wants. According to the Times blog, "Mr. Karasick has said his interest in the building has nothing to do with the building’s status as the birthplace of hip-hop."

So the tenant group (which has setup a website at save1520.org), with support from United States Senator Charles E. Schumer, are looking at buying the building themselves. But the asking price is a whooping $14 million, even though advocates say it is "way beyond the $5 million or $6 million they have calculated based on the future rent stream." And what would they do with it you ask?

Mr. Campbell thinks the building should be declared a landmark in recognition of its role in American popular culture. Its residents agree, but for more practical reasons. They want to have the building placed on the National Register of Historic Places so that it might be protected from any change that would affect its character — in this case, a building for poor and working-class families.

So let us hope that this building, the birthplace of hip hop, doesn't suffer the same fate of so many music industry artists and fall victim to ravenous capitalists willing to flip and sell our culture for cold, hard cash.