A Hip Hop Museum Right Where It Belongs

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by Jon Minners

It’s about time. As Hip Hop continues to be the music of choice amongst all Americans, the music, the fashion, the entire culture is about to be recognized with a brand new museum that is about to become a reality. Hip Hop has a home and it is right where it was born; in the Bronx.

Over 30 years ago, the South Bronx was all, but forgotten; known for burnt out buildings, gangs and violence. The City let it remain in squalor, pretending that part of the borough didn’t exist as the rest of the Bronx was grouped in with its bastard counterpart, receiving a black eye that is now only being removed through the hard work of the people that didn’t give up as others ran away.

And while others were running away; businesses fleeing, landowners burning property to collect the insurance, something was emerging from the rubble. Like a phoenix from the ashes, Hip Hop was born. It started out slowly. The old gangs signed a peace treaty and suddenly disagreements were resolved through DJs battling it out; dance offs much different from the kind you saw in Michael Jackson’s Beat It video and then MCs got on the mic and sometimes for hours on end, one after another, a different performer would answer the call and just rap straight off the top of their head, rhyme after rhyme in a phenomenon people would consider a fad at its time.

Graffiti was on the rise as the Island of Misfit Toys decided to have their voices heard. They dressed funny. They danced in a way no one could comprehend. It was new, it was fresh and it was in the South Bronx, the place people forgot, the land that no one will ever soon forget. In the near future, if someone wants to know about the roots of Hip Hop, they will have a place to go, right in the heart of the Boogie Down Bronx; the place where it all started, the place where a Hip Hop Museum belongs.

Coming off the heels of an announcement that the Smithsonian National Museum of American History was creating a Hip Hop Exhibit in Washington, the New York City Council allocated $1.5 million in capital funding over the next two years to construct a museum in the Bronx.

The recent revelation came thanks to the efforts of Councilman Larry Seabrook who looks to construct the museum in the northeast section of the Bronx, at the corner of 212 Street and White Plains Road, as part of a community center and housing development project being built by the nonprofit Northeast Bronx Redevelopment Corporation, and became welcome news to Bronx leaders.

"The Bronx is the birth place of Hip Hop so it is absolutely appropriate that the borough should host a museum celebrating Hip Hop,” said Borough President Adolfo Carrion, Jr. “I had the pleasure of honoring the “pioneers” of Hip Hop including, Grand Master Flash, Afrika Bambaataa, and Kurtis Blow for their contributions to the Bronx and the entire city. This important art form deserves its own museum where people can experience the cultural revolution that Hip Hop has launched.”

Back in February, Bronx legends Afrika Bambaataa, Kool Herc and Fab 5 Freddy were just some of the pioneers of Hip Hop on hand during the announcement of “Hip Hop Won’t Stop: The Beat, The Rhymes, The Life,” a major collecting initiative by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History aimed at tracing the culture from its origins in the 1970’s as an expression of urban black and Latino youth culture to its status today.

“The National Museum of American History is committed to telling the story of the American experience, and with the significant contributions from the Hip Hop community, we will be able to place Hip Hop in the continuum of American history and present a comprehensive exhibition,” said Brent Glass, director of the National Museum of American History.

While Hip Hop aficionados were proud of their culture being represented, many felt slighted that it was not the Bronx that first came up with the idea, being that the borough’s housing developments were the spawning ground of the Hip Hop movement that features music, clothing, graffiti and dance as part of its cultural identity. A call was put out for the Bronx Museum.

“The need is there. It’s great that the Smithsonian has shown an interest in Hip Hop, but the Bronx is the birthplace; its where the museum should be built before anywhere else,” said DJ Cool Clyde, who has become the Bronx’ voice for Hip Hop in recent years, even hosting his own show discussing its history on Bronxnet. Clyde, along with a number of other Hip Hop personalities, has helped to spearhead the new museum, which he expects not to be built until 2008 after the formerly abandoned transfer station for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, acquired this spring is cleaned up thanks in part to an additional $1 million in state funding.

The museum, which is said to be in the very early stages, will pay homage to the roots of Hip Hop, said Seabrook in an interview with the New York Sun. “We’re not talking about gangster rap,” he said. “We’re talking about Hip Hop.”

Clyde agrees stating that Hip Hop came from Bronx gangs as a way of getting out of poverty and out of the gang life while Hip Hop of today features those who have achieved those dreams of their forefathers and yet choose to glorify gang life, creating incidents that have tarnished the musical genre currently at the top of the music charts.

The facility, which will consist of several floors of low to moderate income housing, a gymnasium, a small theater, a recording studio and the museum, is expected to educate people about where Hip Hop came from and where it lost its way. “We need to start artist development; use the recording studios and a low frequency radio station to get people involved in Hip Hop and keep them entertained from a grass roots perspective,” urged Clyde. “We need to focus on the positive. It doesn’t have to be the way it is now.”

So while the museum will honor legends such as Tupac, Notorious BIG, 50 Cent, Eminem, Dr. Dre, NWA and others of their ilk, the facility will also recognize the pioneers like Fab 5 Freddy, Bambaataa, DJ Kool Herc, The Rocksteady Crew, which is currently celebrating its 29^th year, and a great number of others who helped pave the way for the stars of today who make the money those from Hip Hop roots only dreamed about. The museum will recognize all their accomplishments and try to get people to remember where Hip Hop came from, in an effort to stop it from where it has been going.

Due to the negative stigma attached to rap, Clyde becomes angered when he hears people comment that the funding allocation is a waste of taxpayer’s money. “People that look down on Hip Hop do not understand the nature of Hip Hop or its important role in the rebirth of the Bronx,” said Clyde. “Hip Hop made people take a closer look at the South Bronx and look what is happening there. It has a significant role in Bronx history and it deserves to have a museum of its own. I am proud that excited that it is finally becoming a reality. It’s been long overdue.”