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Editors’ Note: This guest column by former Luke Cage showrunner and Creed II writer Cheo Hodari Coker is part of Deadline’s series commemorating the 50th anniversary of Hip-Hop on August 11.

In 1999, Yasin Bey — then known as Mos Def – dropped the seminal album “Black On Both Sides.”

The first song, “Fear Not Of Man” still gets me every time I play it. It’s a classic – — just as powerful now as the first time I heard it two decades ago. A meditation on everything Hip-Hop is…and isn’t.

You know what’s going to happen with hip-hop? Whatever’s happening with us. If we smoked out, hip-hop is going to be smoked out. If we doin’ alright, hip-hop is gonna be doin’ all right.

We are hip-hop. Me. You. Everybody.

So the next time you ask yourself where is hip-hop going, ask yourself – where am I going?

Twenty-four years later,...

At the outset of PBS’ docuseries Fight the Power: How Hip-Hop Changed the World, Chuck D asserts, “[In 2020], the Black Lives Matter protests wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for hip-hop.” It’s a lofty statement, as anti-establishment organizing and revolt have existed since Black people were brought to America. Hip-hop has augmented social movements since its 1973 founding; as Lupe Fiasco notes in the finale of the four-part series, ”Hip-hop is gonna supply you the theme song for the moment.”

Fight the Power does a strong job of chronicling...