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Block Party: Hip Hop’s 50th Birthday Jam
Aug 11, 2023 @ 12:00 pm
Ruben Díaz, Jr.
The Hip Hop Museum’s Board of Trustees is an amalgamation of leaders, artists, and founders from around the world. Every month, via our newsletter, we will put a spotlight on these remarkable people.
We kick off 2023 via an interview with Ruben Díaz, Jr. Currently the Senior Vice President, Strategic Initiatives at Montefiore Medicine (the umbrella organization for Montefiore Health System and Albert Einstein College of Medicine) in the Bronx. Prior to this, Ruben was a member of the New York State Assembly (1997-2009), which was followed by serving as Bronx Borough President (2009-2021). During his leadership, $27 billion in private investments were raised for the borough, housing development units increased, unemployment rates dropped by 10%, and the once “burning” Bronx became a source of job creation, economic development, and improved health and wellbeing. Bronx-born, Bronx-raised, and Bronx-leading, Ruben exemplifies resiliency and resources. It’s only appropriate he be a Trustee at the Official Record of Hip Hop.
We met at his office on the Montefiore campus earlier this month.
While Ruben Díaz, Jr. is a lifelong public servant, he is also an artist and an extremely active member of the community into which he was born, culturally and geographically. It began, as it ought to have done, in the Bronx. Ruben, the youngest of three (his sister is retired NYPD, his brother works at NYCHA), was born to Puerto Rican parents. Service was inherent in the household, Mr. Díaz, Sr. was a New York City Councilman and a member of the NYS Senate, Mrs. Díaz was a daycare provider (now retired).
It’s not a surprise that this born-to-serve man would run for office. With no one focused on the plight of Bronx youth, Ruben wanted (and needed) to be that person. He won the State Assembly at age 23, and immediately distinguished himself. As a representative of the Soundview neighborhood, Ruben’s election was, frankly, necessary for any significant and long-term improvement. “You can’t have an honest voice for the underrepresented community unless someone will represent them,” he declared. I added, “Someone who is them needs to represent them.” No one knows more or better what the Bronx needs than one who grew up and lives in the Bronx.
Like all new jobs, things weren’t immediately easy: between being a husband, a father, and part time college student throughout the State Assembly years, in the early days there were ill-fitting suits and what I call the Clark Kent hair. Still, it was Ruben’s – as a friend called it – “Hip Hop Swag” that prompted him to show up and show out first as one of 11 state assembly members representing the Bronx, and then in 2009 when he ran for Bronx Borough President.
Where Hip Hop fits in Ruben’s life presents in everything from “breakdancing to Sugar Hill Gang at [his] aunt’s house on Stratford Avenue to when [he] fell in love with Hilda [his wife] at age 14, to burning [his] own CDs on Napster, to taking them to Albany [where the state assembly is based] today,” Hip Hop music is Ruben’s soundtrack. It underscores him playing slugs with a Spalding at 1150 St. Lawrence Avenue. It’s where his awareness and appreciation of percussion’s power – represented well by the Boom Bap – began.
Like everything he experienced in life, Hip Hop music “happened on the block.”
The Bronx borough’s lead arbiter and advocate chose to address the aftermaths of white flight, corrupt officials, the West Tech scandal and stop feeling “tired of the Bronx being first on the list of what’s good and last on the list of what’s bad.” Unsurprisingly, Hip Hop provided a blueprint for how to serve his community as an elected official. Specifically, Ruben extracted from Hip Hop what people around the world know thanks to the most popular music genre: take control of the narrative.
Once called the burned-down Bronx, the most challenging portion of New York City, the poorest Congressional district in the nation, presented itself as a real challenge for Ruben. He was game for it, and made good health and wellness a priority. His #Not62 – The Campaign for a Healthy Bronx – created to help all Bronxites become healthier. It wasn’t exclusively about nutrition and exercise. The mission was to address social and economic environments, health behaviors, clinical care, and physical environments throughout the borough. And its name – #Not62 – was born of the Bronx residents’ health ranking 62, the last of all five NYC counties, in 2019, 2020, and 2021.
Since he passed the torch to current Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson, Ruben has worked seemingly nonstop at Montefiore Medicine to help realize the dream of President/CEO Dr. Philip Ozuah. To build this “wellness village,” Ruben’s background of successfully building housing and parks, his expertise regarding land use, ulurping, the Metro North train line expansion, and his lifetime in the borough make him ideal to create a new paradigm. This paradigm, which will occur and sustain after the COVID-19 pandemic, will rewrite the blueprint for preventative care, post-care, and wellness. Ruben declared staunchly, “What I feel comfortable building in the Bronx, where my family and I live, will ensure that all people who live in the Bronx are better.”
These efforts do not hold a candle to what he is doing as a THHM Trustee. Besides feeling the joy of “having the museum in the Bronx,” Ruben is dedicated to “making sure we build a world class destination that is financially sustainable forever, and ever, and ever.” When asked how this was going to be done, with Hip Hop as the foundation, he replied, “We will be a source of information and academics, and make sure we tell the story correctly.” We discussed how deep, detailed, and sometimes not pretty the story is. Ruben was clear, and said that correct storytelling includes “the good, the bad, everything in between, all of which include the artists and the Five Pillars.”
He went further, during our discussion about feelings of opportunity to use what we know and what we’ve learned when Ruben told me, and accurately so, “Hip Hop is the biggest bridge between the racial divides in this country. No genre of music, no other force does this. The ethnic, generational, geographical pull is made, and fought, by Hip Hop.”
Amen, said I on behalf of the THHM, and Hallelujah.
Within the more than two hours of our time, Ruben did me the honor of playing DJ. Legendary stuff, from someone who appears to have a near eidetic memory, who can diddy bop with the best of them, and who knows where the world might be if he took piano lessons.
What follows is a playlist you’re not going to hear (tracks are on Spotify) or see (videos on YouTube and assorted sources) anywhere else. So, from the decks of the Hip Hop class’s elected official, here are some favorite tracks by artists and on albums that rep east and west coasts and resonate hard with Ruben Díaz, Jr. (note: watch the videos with the captions on, because it’s about the lyrics):
As a bonus for our readers, here are the clips of Ruben rocking the mic while performing Eric B. and Rakim “Move the Crowd” with Rakim (and, yes, those are Grandmaster Caz and Cutman L.G also onstage) during Bronx Week 2014, and performing “Step to the Rear” while appearing with Grand Puba of Brand Nubian in 2015.
Our Trustee has bars. We’re grateful to him for that, and for everything he brings to the City of New York, the Hip Hop community, and our community.
Keep in touch with Ruben Díaz, Jr. via his Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
by Kate Harvie, Contributing Writer for The Hip Hop Museum (originally published February 2023)
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