Question: If you were approached by a stranger who asked your opinion on starting a museum for hip-hop, what would your answer be? Ninety percent of the respondents I asked had the following reaction: “That doesn’t already exist?” The answer is, no it has not existed, until now. And, yes, it is WAY overdue!

The National  Museum of Hip-Hop is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) institution that was founded in late 2005. This 3-phase project, will be housed within a high-tech platinum-lead Green facility in New York City.

The Museum will exist as a hub for community uplifting and development. Many of the Museum’s initiatives involve programs and policies which require a strict adherence to community issues and interactivity. As a nonprofit, part of the mission of this organization is to utilize the financial, economic and political power of hip-hop improve the quality of life for the residents of the communities that helped spawn this phenomenon—Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn to name a few. The Museum will also produce programs for the public that include concerts, lectures, panel discussions, film series, local resident education and much more.

In addition to the many educational and community-related programs initiated by the Museum, there will also be a collection of artifacts from all aspects of the culture—music, technology, sports, graffiti art, fashion, break dancing and language, including vinyl records, handwritten lyrics, boom boxes, clothing and costumes, videos and interviews, disc jockey equipment and microphones, personal and business correspondence, posters and photos.

Also housed within the NMoH, will be the Hall of Hip-Hop, which will honor the legendary performers, producers, songwriters, disc jockeys, dancers and others who have given hip-hop the presence it holds in our culture today. Soon, the Hall of Fame Council will be nominating and the hip-hop community will be electing those figures, and honoring them at the first annual ceremony, which will be one of the most celebrated events of the year. And, certainly one of the hottest tickets in hip-hop.

Once inducted, the artists will be further honored when they are featured in the Museum’s Hall of Hip-Hop exhibit, which will include a computerized “boom box” containing virtually every song of every performer inductee, etched-glass signatures of the inductees, a film on huge screens recounting their careers and music, and a display of artifacts from the current year’s inductees.

NMoH is committed to exploring the entire breadth of hip-hop’s musical as well as cultural history. The Museum will collect, preserve and display hip-hop culture through exhibitions and community programs about social, political, cultural and musical history. Documenting the inner-city experience from the 1970’s to the present, the Museum will look at growth and change in hip-hop culture.

Thank you for visiting the NMoH web site. I hope you will bookmark this site and visit regularly. Our content will be continually updated. Spend a few minutes looking around. I think you’ll find the site interesting and helpful. As we embark on the next stage of the hip-hop revolution, NMoH is committed to being a true leader bringing positive change to hip-hop communities everywhere, thereby supporting and contributing to a greater global hip-hop society. It is an ambitious goal and one in which we will put all of our heart and soul into achieving.

Sincerely,

Craig Wilson

President & CEO
Vice Chairman, Board of Governors
Chairman, Executive Committee