"It's Hip' To Be A Saint In The City"

"I was the pimp's main prophet I kept everything cool

 Just a backstreet gambler with the luck to lose"

These lyrics are taken from the Bruce Springsteen song, "It's hard to be a saint in the city," which I immediately thought of when reading this weeks blog question: 


"Does the city play an essential role in the creation of "hip"? 


The song, infused with jazz,  is brilliantly written about the hard life situations that occur in the city, and how it's so easy to get caught up in a life of crime, but also the myth that is created around rebels. Here, you listen to it: It's hard to be a saint in the city

Okay, back to the question: Yes! Hip absolutely comes from the city and I feel that Leland hits the nail on the head when he says: 

"As a delivery system for hip, popular culture moves in tandem with technology and media. Technology has a way of making race an abstraction....."

Without the city, there would be no popular culture; it's hard to be popular on a farm!


Another example that jumps to mind is MODERN ART?! 
Would anyone know who Andy Warhol was if it wasn't for the city?






"City life has a way of living
 in the moment,
 and that's where hip lives."
~ I said that














And finally to CONTRADICT myself, hip also came from the country. More specifically, the blues came from the country. In a previous post, I discussed the origins of the blues, as outlined by John Leland, and without farms and plantations, blues didn't exist. 
Young blues artists got their start playing in rural areas and then they migrated into the city. 
So "hip" transcends the city.