On August 10th and 11th, Howard University celebrated Hip Hop's 50th anniversary with a two-day conference, “Hip Hop 50: Past, Present, Future Conference.''
Conference organizers included executive committee members Benita King, Dr. Misia K. Clark, Dr. Roger Carruth, and a committee of faculty and students from across the university. Ms. King said her son's desire to experience hip-hop in her classroom inspired her to integrate hip-hop and academics on Howard's campus.
“Hip-hop is transcendent and we loved the academic element, so we hope we can incorporate something that can teach that,” King said. That was at Howard. ”
Imani Bonham, a Los Angeles County native and assistant program coordinator in the College of Arts and Sciences, served as a conference volunteer and oversaw the conference’s digital outreach. Bonham focused on appealing to hip-hop's diverse groups and strived to create graphics that resonated with hip-hop's diverse eras.
Bonham said this year's conference highlighted how universities and higher education support hip-hop. “Hip-hop teaches us a lot because it's always young people who listen to music from the past, present and future,” she said. “We could do some real magic in the classroom because it’s talking to us.”
This year's conference coincided with the creation of a hip-hop minor in the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies, a venture led by King and Clark. King combined his son's hip-hop requests with Clark's work as a hip-hop scholar in the African Studies Department. The board is expected to vote on establishing a hip-hop minor during the 2023-2024 academic year.
“Similar to the Bratvanik Center, I think this minor can open even more doors for students to enter the industry,” Bonham said. “It can really advance a student's career.”
The 1991 Cultural Initiative Hip-Hop Conference was Howard's first hip-hop symposium, allowing college hip-hop enthusiasts to borrow from each other's musical palettes while fusing both the intellectual and cultural aspects of the genre. It has developed into a prominent gathering space that can be diversified.
Timothy D. Jones (BA ’91) says the blueprint for the first meeting was built by the Howard University Student Association (HUSA) and that Cabinet officials Ras Baraka and April Silver created a blueprint for outsiders within the university and the hip-hop business. He said he has assembled resources through partnerships. . The theme of the first conference was Hip Hop at a Crossroads, contextualizing the rise of this art form.
“Hip-hop is going through a period of tremendous growth right now,” Jones said. “There was a strong sense of activity, community and tradition.”
Conference attendees left the university and became successors to the genre. Although the student body wanted to unify hip-hop culture, Jones believes the conference gained its own prestige and became an influential movement beyond its intentions.
“This culture is now impacting literally every aspect of the ecosystem of life as we know it,” Jones said. “It affected the entire planet. And I think the impact of what we did was more widespread than we could ever imagine.”
Jones and the original conference founders, including Silver, Alberta Coker and Rechelle Hatley, will launch this year's conference with Step Into a World: The Original Hip-Hop Conference Founders. I participated in a panel titled “Let's talk about things since 1991.'' Noting the goals of the first conference, Jones emphasized the diversity of hip-hop over the years, interweaving cultural, economic, and artistic aspects.
“They supported thinking of this conference as a hip-hop-centric homecoming for students, where they could walk across campus and meet countless artists like Chuck D, KRS-One, Queen Latifah, and more.” Jones said. .
Other panels include “Inside the Music Industry,” “The Past, Present, and Future of Women in Hip-Hop,” and hosted by businesswoman Hajj Flemings and artificial intelligence engineer Cynthia Respert, and rapper It included an interactive corner “Rap vs. AI” featuring Freestyle to artificial intelligence systems called “semantic kernels.”
