Jesse Jackson Challenged Hip-Hop Because He Believed in It

Jesse Jackson’s relationship with hip-hop was never simple, and that’s part of what made it significant.

The Civil Rights leader died on Tuesday, Feb. 17, at age 84. According to The New York Times, Jackson had been hospitalized in November for treatment of progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), a rare neurodegenerative condition, as confirmed by the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, the advocacy organization he led for decades.

At a time when rap was still carving out its place in the mainstream, Jackson recognized its power.

During a May 2025 appearance on The Breakfast Club, rapper Kurtis Blow recalled an early show in Chicago where Jackson pulled him aside. Blow said Jackson told him rap artists were becoming the new icons of Black America — heirs to the Civil Rights Movement — and that if the genre hoped to see larger success, it would need to keep its message clean.

Blow took that to heart, adopting what he described as a code of ethics — no profanity, no dissing — and later noting that he recorded 240 songs without cursing. He framed it as a sacrifice meant to help pave the way for the generations that followed.

Jackson wasn’t disconnected from rap culture. His voice opens Public Enemy’s 1987 “Rebel Without a Pause,” sampled from his 1972 “I Am Somebody” speech at the Wattstax Music Festival in Los Angeles. The connection between politics and rap wasn’t theoretical. It was literal — and it was tested.

These early moments carried weight. Jesse Jackson didn’t see rap as a passing trend. He saw it as a language — one capable of mobilizing, organizing and shaping Black identity. In many ways, he approached hip-hop with the same tough love he brought to politics. It was a vehicle for communicating power.

As hip-hop evolved in the 1990s and 2000s — becoming louder, shinier, more dominant than ever — Jackson grew more critical. He condemned misogyny, violence and the normalization of the N-word, organizing a symbolic “funeral” for the term in 2007. In interviews, including a 2014 conversation with radio personality Sway, Jackson praised hip-hop’s communication power while questioning whether its substance matched its influence.

To some artists, that felt like generational friction. To others, it reflected accountability — sort of like parents and children.

What remains clear is that Jackson never treated hip-hop as trivial. He treated it as influential — and understood that with influence comes consequence, whether you like it or not.

His relationship with the genre mirrored a familiar dynamic within Black communities: belief and challenge existing at the same time. He saw rap artists as heirs to a movement before much of America did. He also demanded more from them.

Hip-hop didn’t always agree with him. It wasn’t supposed to.

But the conversation he pushed — about language, influence and responsibility — didn’t disappear. It became ingrained. It evolved. And in many ways, it helped shape how the culture understands its own power today.

Jesse Jackson’s tension with hip-hop wasn’t a footnote. It was part of the story.