*A gala this weekend in the Bronx paid tribute to and raised funds for the Universal Hip Hop Museum, which has broken ground and will officially open in 2024.
It is the country’s first and only permanent museum that will comprehensively document the history, present, and future of hip hop opening in a once tough, impoverished neighborhood in the south Bronx.
“Everyone around the world pretty much has the understanding that hip-hop culture originated in the South Bronx. “Â Reggie Peters, Director of Marketing and Visitor Services shares “We are building a state-of-the-art facility right in the birthplace of hip hop. We are creating a space that’s dedicated to preserving the entire history from its inception all the way to today’s market”
Peters added: “There’s a lot of stories that can be told that have never been told. There’s artifacts of all types that can be displayed.  Its state of the art with digital mediums, visuals, holograms, and computer graphics. We will have a replica of a subway car so that the graffiti artists can come and paint. And we will basically be like the central nervous system to everything hip hop focused around New York City and how it’s spread around the world.”
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New York Mayor Eric Adams who refers to himself as New York’s first hip-hop mayor, recently announced a 5.5 million grant to the museum saying “Hip Hop tells the story of this city and the Bronx so vividly. It tells life amid poverty and crime, of turning pain into purpose, of making it.
One little-known story that the museum will showcase is the birth of hip-hop’s impact on fashion according to Peters.
“One of the things that really fascinates me about this museum is how hip-hop and fashion started to fuse in the early to mid-1980s. And we have an exhibition running with Dapper Dan. To hear Dapper Dan go all the way from the street corner in Harlem up to the level of Gucci where he’s playing now is an amazing run. And to hear how he was donating free clothes to a lot of artists in New York City who could not afford a stylist or how he was styling people and videos and not getting paid, and how he made such a name for himself in the community with the hustlers, the party-goers and the promoters and all of that merchandise that he created. Now it seems like standard play to have Fendi or a Gucci but in the 1980s it was rare and left for the elite class of hip hop but he styled them all. ”
At the black-tie fundraising dinner, fashion was on display.
“This is our fourth annual black-tie gala, ” says Peters. “Put it on your calendar for next year, We hold it in the elegant Eastwood manner in the Bronx. Over 300 guests, a lot of community support from first responders and all of the city agencies have backed this event. At the very minimum, people can donate a dollar. Mr. Curtis Blow will be in the building with the whole entire first-generation B-Boys, the original breakers that started in the early days of the 1970s. He is our former chairperson and we have a cameo by DJ Chuck Chillout on the ones and twos, and DJ Kid Capri .”
Even though the two-story museum opens in 2024, you can still check it out at “[R]Evolution of Hip Hop”, a temporary exhibit recently opened at the Bronx Terminal Market—across the street from the museum’s location—offering visitors a teaser.
Upon entering, visitors travel through a 24-foot-long tunnel with a light show that’s sequenced to a mix of beats from the period. This leads into a virtual graffiti experience that mimics graffiti writing, plus displays featuring rarely seen artifacts and memorabilia as well as a live DJ on-site spinning tunes.
Peters explains, “we have a temporary exhibition running about the golden era of Hip Hop, focusing on the time period from 1985 to 1990, which is really the period where hip hop started to explode around the world. There was the growth of Yo MTV Raps, there was the group of award shows recognizing hip hop, and radio stations around the country started playing it 24 hours a day. And this is the period when hip-hop was really original and there were a lot of different varieties. There was conscious music, there was social-political music, and there was party music. So there’s a lot of storytelling that we’re doing right now at the “(R)evolution of Hip Hop” where you can get a sneak peek at what to expect when we open up in 2024.”
The museum has received strong support from the hip-hop community including icons Nas, LL Cool J, Fat Joe, and Doug e Fresh who attended the groundbreaking.
Interview/article by Jazmyn Summers. Follow her @jaztalk1 on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. And please don’t forget to subscribe to Jazmyn Summers’ YouTube.
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