• Live
    • Audio Only
  • google plus
  • facebook
  • twitter
News > U.S.

Hip Hop Museum To Open in its Birthplace in the Bronx

  • Construction is set to start in July, with the grand opening planned to mark 50 years of hip hop in 2023.

    Construction is set to start in July, with the grand opening planned to mark 50 years of hip hop in 2023. | Photo: EFE

Published 6 March 2020
Opinion

The first exhibit tells the early origins of hip hop history and will be replaced every six months with the next stage of the culture’s development.

Hip hop - the music, dance, art, and fashion phenomenon that went from rough streets into fancy suites in five decades - is getting its museum in its birthplace in the Bronx, New York.

RELATED:
Saudi Authorities to Arrest Woman Rapper Over Mecca Music Video

A small pop-up exhibit gives a preview of the Universal Hip Hop Museum’s permanent home, set to open in 2023 to celebrate the culture’s global history.

To date, “there isn’t a physical place that is dedicated to the preservation and celebration of hip hop history and culture,” the museum’s Executive Director Rocky Bucano said in an interview.

The museum dreamed up by rappers Kurtis Blow, Afrika Bambaataa, and Grandmaster Melly Mel eight years ago, will seek to ensure that “the stories can be told accurately by the people who created the history themselves,” Bucano added.

Other rapper-producer-entrepreneurs have since become partners in the project, including Nas, Ice-T, and LL Cool J.

Hip hop was born in the south section of the New York City borough of the Bronx in the United States in the late 1970s. The dancing, rapping, and deejaying elements of hip-hop grew out of the depressed inner-city environment and has since evolved into a multi-billion dollar part of mainstream global culture.

When the museum is complete, the 5,570 square meter space will feature interactive and immersive exhibits, live shows, film screenings, and seminars.

One highlight will be a ‘breakbeat narratives’ interactive console created with Microsoft and the MIT Center for Advanced Virtuality. It takes visitors on a hip hop history based on their responses to different characters in a game.

“It forms a custom narrative of hip hop history based on their musical preferences,” Bucano said.

Artifacts on display will include Kurtis Blow’s original beatbox machine, and the first and second rap records ever released.

Comment
0
Comments
Post with no comments.