Creativity Quote by Kool Moe Dee

Manhattan likes to imagine it invents the future; Kool Moe Dee flips that myth with one dry, territorial line. “As far as Hip Hop Manhattan was after the Bronx” isn’t just a brag about origin points - it’s a correction aimed at the cultural record keepers who default to downtown as the center of everything cool. He’s drawing a map where the Bronx isn’t a gritty prelude to the “real” story; it’s the primary text. Manhattan arrives later, as an adopter, a market, a spotlight.

The phrasing matters. “As far as” frames hip-hop history as a matter of distance and perspective, like you’re standing in the Bronx looking outward. Manhattan becomes “after” not only chronologically but in rank: second, downstream, derivative. There’s also a faint sting in how matter-of-fact it is. No big anthem, no nostalgia - just an accounting, the kind you make when you’ve watched your neighborhood get mined for raw material and watched someone else sell it back with better lighting.

Contextually, this lands in the long argument over who gets credit, who gets paid, and who gets to narrate. Hip-hop was born in outer-borough necessity and ingenuity; Manhattan’s machinery (labels, clubs, media) helped amplify it while often sanding off the borough politics that made it dangerous and specific. Moe Dee’s intent is to reassert authorship: not “we were there too,” but “you came to us.”