Punk, Hip Hop & Videogames

With the passing of Malcolm MacLaren last week I just had to post one of my favorite tunes from his work with World Famous Supreme Team. Although Malcolm McLaren's biggest (and most controversial) contribution to music was as part of the Punk movement and his work with the Sex Pistols, his interest in Hip Hop was real.



As a Hip Hop junkie growing up in the 80s, I loved the passion, fierce independence and amazing creativity of this powerful youth movement that was not (at that time) supported by the established industry but regardless was pushing creativity and invention in every direction.

I guess every generation has its own youth movement, that brings a powerful voice to challenge the status quo and bring change to the established way things are. Hip Hop Culture was mine.

Malcolm McLaren was also a fan of at least one aspect of videogames, writing an article in 2003 championing 8-bit music. In an interview for Swindle magazine, he said;

There was some anarchic element in the culture of early interactive video games that inspired them. They wanted to grab that sound and use it to express music of their own kind. They love those machines, the consoles, the Game Boys. They weren’t ass lick or as well programmed back then. There was a rawness in the sound and imagery. They produced a sound that had a connective spirit to the world of punk rock, because it was so DIY, equally disobeying of overly slick productions, equally trying to deconstruct and get down to the roots and rawness, equally using source material instruments that they aren’t necessarily in control of. That world, to me, was the next stage.

To all those aspirational indie game makers, this is your time, your movement. Make a real change in the world with the games you make.

And in the spirit of this post, I'll mashup my point with a quote from Robert Kennedy in a post about Punk and Hip Hop!

“There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?”