Exhibit Honors Cultural Odyssey of Hip-Hop
The Grammy Museum in Los Angeles is celebrating hip-hop culture and lifestyle.
Feb. 12, 2011— -- What do Grandmaster Flash, Mike Tyson, Cee-lo, Nicki Minaj, Prince, President Barack Obama, and Eminem have in common? They each represent some aspect of hip-hop culture, whether it is through politics, sports, entertainment, or music.
The Grammy Museum in Los Angeles is celebrating the culture and lifestyle inspired by hip-hop music in a groundbreaking exhibit named after and based on the release of the first ever hip-hop anthology, "Hip-Hop: A Cultural Odyssey."
The project is one of the first major museum exhibitions to explore four decades of Hip-Hop music in America -- and its impact on the world. Items on display in the exhibit, which opened this week and runs through May 4th, include original, handwritten song lyrics from Tupac Shakur, Grandmaster Flash's turntables, a hip-hop sneaker gallery from the private collection of recording artist Everlast, and the leather jacket and pants worn by Run-DMC during the group's "Walk This Way" Grammy performance with Aerosmith. The exhibit also boasts video and interactive content. The 16 pound, 420-page coffee table attraction was also debuted on Tuesday, in conjunction with the exhibit.
Jordan Sommers, president of Aria Multimedia Entertainment and editor of "Hip-Hop: A Cultural Odyssey," has been a fan of hip-hop his whole life, and wanted to create a piece of history that would not only entertain and educate people, but also spotlight a genre that could arguably be one of the most influential American musical styles of all time.
"I have been a fan and participant in the culture over the last 20-plus years, and watched it evolve and grow from humble beginnings to the globally dominant pop culture that it is today. And I noticed no one had done a definitive tome on hip-hop culture that was the size and scope that it needed to be," Sommers said.
Born in the predominantly black South Bronx area of New York City in the 1970s, the hip-hop sound grew and developed until it quickly became the dominant cultural movement throughout urban communities in the 1980s.
