Introducing the new Hip-Hop.com
Azadamrevolution / 2012
Today is the 39th anniversary of a house party held by DJ Kool Herc in the South Bronx that historians have pointed to and said this
was the event where hip-hop started. That day, August 11, 1973, that
inconspicuous day that no one really celebrates or barely remember, Kool
Herc introduced to America the idea of the break beat as the foundation
of new a kind of music, which four decades later we know now as hip-hop
music. To be real, we didn’t plan on launching the new Hip-Hop.com on
this day, but that we got it done and finished today might just mean
something.
For those of you who just stumbled onto our site or if you been here
before, thanks for coming. We’ve been working on the site for quite some
time, with the goal of using smart design and new technologies to bring
a new kind of experience on a web site. We are going to showcase the
best hip-hop we come across, with a focus on the stuff that you probably
never checked out before but what you should see, and also to inform on
what’s happening at clubs and shows so that you can experience hip-hop
the way it was intended—live. We’re based in the Bay Area in California
but we’ll expand our coverage sooner than later, and we got an eye out
on what’s coming out only the west, east, south, and mid-west, but also
outside of the US, into Canada, the UK, France, Japan, Africa, and the
rest of the globe.
A belief we have, which is found in our core and is everything that
we do, is that is that hip-hop is alive and well and thriving. I know
that for many of us who grew up as hip-hop heads (and even some of us
who aren’t that grown up yet) have turned on the radio or TV and just
don’t feel it anymore, that whatever that lured us to hip-hop and fell
in love with it is gone. And while there are many reasons why that
perception persists and perhaps was once true, we don’t believe it is so
today. Hip-hop, nearly 40 years since its creation, has evolved,
transformed itself, replicated, duplicated and mutated itself into
styles, genres, and codes divided by geography, culture, race, and
class. But at its core is the same creative energy spawned four decades
ago in the South Bronx where youth in desolation decided they will make
something out of nothing.
Hip-hop is more decentralized than it’s been in recent history, as
we’re seeing the loosening of the grip of greater forces with the
emergence of technology. Where it was technology that birthed hip-hop,
with turntables, samplers, spray cans, mics, snyths and speakers, it’s
now new technology, social media, internet, cheaper video cameras,
affordable film editing, and such, that has put the marketing of hip-hop
in the hands of its grassroots and creators. The democracy of hip-hop
is widening, creativity is being unshackled, and our mission is to speed
the process. Our job is to make you fall in love with hip-hop again.
Thanks to Ben, Alex, Kamel, and everyone else at Ankh for bringing
this site to life. Also thanks everyone else who worked on the first
version of Hip-Hop.com: Jason, Brian, Uriah, Jahi and Jia. Thanks all,
now that we have the foundation, lets start building.
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