Hip Hop Meets Street Fighter: An Unlikely Fan Casting of Hip Hop’s Street Cred

Hip hop, meet Street Fighter. And I couldn’t be more thrilled you’ve met. For many, the 90’s was the golden decade for hip hop. We listened to DMX bark without question and didn’t laugh hysterically at Cash Money album covers. Quite the contrary, many of us took our money to Sam Goody and bought 400 Degreez. Rap music came into its own in the 90’s, evolving from a fringe border of popular culture to the forefront of music sales, awards shows, and celebrity news. Possibly one of the more unforeseen impacts has been its impact on language, with words like cray and YOLO being added to the Oxford online dictionary just this year. Thank you 90’s for paving the way with jiggy, dope, and bling bling, because without you, this may have never been possible.

One day archaeologists will discover fossilized remains of these artifacts together, solving the riddle of media retail stores’ speculated existence. And Street Fighter – if I had spent half the time perfecting evasion strategies for Sagat’s high-and-low fireballs on studying science, I would be Neil deGrasse Tyson. I wouldn’t, however, have the edge on Sagat, so, you know, tradeoffs. A genre-defining game, Capcom’s Street Fighter became so iconic the company has basically re-released the same game for 27 and years and counting. It was so successful, competitors bought into the game design themselves, creating “street fighter clones” so similar to the original that if you were good at one game, you were good at them all. If you pl…