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Posts tagged as “Grandmaster Flash”

Universal Hip Hop Museum in the Bronx Awarded $3.75 Million Grant by New York State

Universal Hip Hop Museum at Bronx Terminal Market (image via Kevin Ross/radiofacts.com)

New York state officials have approved a $3.75 million grant to help build the Universal Hip Hop Museum, according to cnn.com.

The museum will be located in the Bronx and is the brainchild of local hip hop aficionados. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced the $3.75M grant last Thursday to the nation’s first museum dedicated to hip-hop.

To quote from CNN:

Now at a temporary location in the Bronx Terminal Market, The Universal Hip Hop Museum is the brain child of New Yorkers who have been on the hip-hop scene since the very beginning. One of these New Yorkers is executive director Rocky Bucano. Born and raised in the Bronx, Bucano was a DJ as a teenager in the early 1970’s.

Bucano describes the 8-year-old museum as an “ambitious, audacious dream.” Bucano’s co-founders include hip-hop legends Kurtis Blow and Grand Wizzard Theodore, who helped pioneer the popular DJ technique known as scratching.

According to CNN the founding board of directors includes Ice-T and cultural ambassadors include New York natives LL Cool J, Rakim, Big Daddy Kane, Grandmaster Flash, Fab Five Freddy and Nas.

In 2018, the Universal Hip Hop Museum announced that Public Enemy’s Chuck D would serve as the chairman of the museum’s celebrity board.

Thanks to the state funding, the 50,000-square-foot hip-hop museum will have a permanent place to call home in Bronx Point come 2023. The museum’s construction will begin in the summer of 2020.

The museum will showcase all aspects of hip-hop culture — from fashion and breakdancing, as well as the evolution of hip-hop — highlighting artists new and old, from the late ’70s to today. The museum will offer workshops, mentorships and programming to help area youths.

To visit the museum’s site for tickets or to donate, go to: https://www.uhhm.org

To read more: https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/20/us/new-york-hip-hop-museum-trnd/index.html

Grandmaster Flash Joins Upcoming Netflix 1970s Rap Series "The Get Down" as Associate Producer/Adviser

Grandmaster Flash and Mamoudou Athie
Grandmaster Flash and actor Mamoudou Athie (Photo: Netflix)

 Hip-hop icon Grandmaster Flash is set as an associate producer and adviser on The Get DownBaz Luhrmann’s upcoming Netflix series about the 1970 NYC music scene and the birth of rap. “I can’t tell you just how much joy and great spirit we are getting from working with some of the founding fathers of the form,” Luhrmann said in a statement. “Not only in music, dance and graffiti but the culture of the time in general. The whole team is absolutely thrilled to have Grandmaster Flash on board.” Netflix also said today that newcomer Mamoudou Athie will play the DJ legend on the show (see photo above). Best known to mainstream audiences for the 1982’s “The Message,” Grandmaster Flash emerged from the ’70s Bronx scene along with fellow DJs Kool Herc and Afrika Bambaataa as a pioneer of the fledgling genre. “Flash developed a host of specific techniques that allowed DJs to move seamlessly from one break beat to another,” said author-journalist Nelson George, part of The Get Down writing team. “Flash’s innovations, developed in his Bronx apartment bedroom, are the bedrock of club spinning, even in the age of (vinyl emulation program) Serato.”

Flash’s involvement with Get Down follows VH1’s announcement last month of The Breaks, an original movie and potential backdoor pilot about the 1990s NYC hip-hop scene. Gang Starr’s DJ Premier will serve as music producer for that project, becoming the latest music great to oversee soundtracks for TV series including Timbaland on Fox’s Empire and T Bone Burnett on ABC’s Nashville.
article via Erik Pedersen via Deadline.com

Hip Hop Hall of Fame Museum to Open in NYC in 2017

hiphop-225x180Decades after hip hop music hit the streets of New York, and later, became an cultural phenomenon enjoyed by listeners around the world, it’s all coming back to the Big Apple, as a Hip Hop Hall of Fame Museum is set to open in 2017.
“This will be the home of hip hop history,” museum Chairman JT Thompson told the NY Daily News. “People need to understand the importance of hip hop, the elements, the DJs, the B-boys and B-girls and the graffiti writers.”
The museum will open to the public at its location on 125th Street in 2017 and exhibits will feature memorabilia such as jackets, turntables and posters donated by artists like Afrika Bambaataa, Grandmaster Flash, Run-DMC, Salt-N-Pepa, Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube, Outkast, Young Jeezy, Common and Eminem. There is also a planned juice and coffee bar, TV studio, shops and a dedicated youth media program.
article via hiphopweekly.com