Universal Hip Hop Museum commemorates with Know Ya Hip Hop campaign

The United States will commemorate its inaugural observance of National Hip Hop History Month this November. To celebrate, the Universal Hip Hop Museum (UHHM) will launch its Know Ya Hip Hop campaign.

Know Ya Hip Hop is a call to the public to educate itself on hip hop as a culture’s significant impact on history and to acknowledge its “universal” spirit, one that is inclusive and brims with diversity, creativity, and social equity.

In 2021, Congressman Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) and Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) co-sponsored Resolution 331 in Congress and pushed to bring this to fruition. The Senate, under the leadership of Senator Chuck Schumer (D-CA), passed it, thus designating November 2021 as “Hip Hop History Month.”

“Back in July, I was asked by Congressman Jamaal Bowman to help review the language being used to create the Resolution designating August 11th as Hip Hop Recognition Day and November as Hip Hop History Month,” Rocky Bucano, the Founder and President of UHHM recalls. “Little did we know it would pass!”

“Four months later, UHHM will celebrate the inaugural Hip Hop History month celebration with a collection of rare event flyers, artists interviews, historical factoids, and a special tribute to Violator Management founder Chris Lighty. As President of the Official Record of Hip Hop, I take great pride in preserving and celebrating the work and contributions of the culture’s original architects,” he states.

The Universal Hip Hop Museum is committed to diversity and inclusion and dispels the notion of toxic masculinity often associated with rap music, street culture, and art. While we also do not censor, this campaign hopes to afford the world a greater definition of the almost 50-year-old culture founded on August 11, 1973. The congressman is a child of this movement and wanted the world to recognize its value.

“Hip hop is my life. Hip hop saved my life. Hip hop gave me knowledge of self. Hip hop is who I am,” declares Congressman Bowman. “The celebration of hip hop history and the study of it is essential to our democracy, our innovation, our voice, and who we are as human beings.”

Hip hop was created on August 11, 1973 Clive “DJ Kool Herc” Campbell at a “Back To School Jam” organized by his sister Cindy Campbell in the Bronx, New York. DJ Campbell introduced his innovative style of disk jockeying and, together with the master of ceremonies engaging the crowd with rap on the microphone while partygoers known as B-boys and B-girls danced, introduced a new style, later known as hip hop, which combined the elements of a disk jockey, a master of ceremonies, music, art, fashion, and dance.

The genre has become a culture, now found in communities across the United States, and has long been a worldwide phenomenon. Hip hop is an original American creation.