CLEVELAND, OHIO - CLEVELAND, Ohio - The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame will celebrate 50 years of hip-hop music and culture with a major new exhibition, “Hip Hop at 50: Holla If Ya Hear Me,” opening to the public on June 29 with an “icon-laden dedication event.”
The museum made the announcement in a news release on June 1, saying that the new exhibit will highlight important moments in the hip-hop timeline and feature previously unseen artifacts from many of the genre’s progenitors and early pioneers.
Among the items slated to be on display: The handbill from the “All-Star Birthday Bash for DJ Kool Herc,” the rec-room party in the Bronx in 1973 that is widely acknowledged as the birthplace of hip hop. The exhibit will chronicle many of hip hop’s other important moments, including the signing of Kurtis Blow to a major record label in 1979 and The Funky 4 +1′s performance of “That’s The Joint” on “Saturday Night Live” on Valentine’s Day 1981, marking hip hop’s national television debut.
Other important moments include the 1982 release of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s “The Message,” hip hop’s first socially conscious hit song, and hip hop’s first on-record rivalry, UTFO’s “Roxanne, Roxanne,” vs. Roxanne Shante’s “Roxanne’s Revenge,” from 1984.
The exhibit will feature artifacts from other pioneers, including Salt-N-Pepa, who were the first women emcees to sell gold and platinum recordings. They will be represented by the colorful jackets worn in the classic “Push It” Video. There are also some behind-the-scenes items, too, including the 1977 Fender Precision bass used on “Rapper’s Delight” by musician and producer Chip Shearin and the Guild X-100 Blade Runner guitar Joe Perry used in the Aerosmith and Run DMC video for “Walk This Way,” a massive moment in hip hop’s mainstream crossover on radio and on MTV.
“Holla if Ya Hear Me” will also highlight both socially conscious icons artists such as Public Enemy, Queen Latifah, and Kendrick Lamar alongside hardcore, “gangsta,” and bling rap legends such as N.W.A., Wu-Tang Clan, DMX, and Notorious B.I.G.
A section of the exhibit will focus on the “Moguls” of hip-hop, with artifacts from the first hip-hop billionaire, Jay-Z, as well as pieces from Sean “Diddy” Combs, Russell Simons and more.
The Rock Hall’s education team has developed a new resource collection to supplement the exhibition aimed at helping students explore hip-hop and the Rock Hall inductees over the style’s first 50 years. All are available for free through RockHallEDU and found at rockhall.com/edu.
“The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame has been recognizing hip-hop and its contributions to music since 2007 when it inducted Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five,” Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Public Enemy frontman Chuck D said in the release.
“This year, the innovator of it all, DJ Kool Herc, will receive his Musical Influence Award, and Missy Elliott and Rage Against the Machine – two artists who show us all how far the genre can go – will be inducted. I’m honored to be a part of the Rock Hall’s celebration of the 50th anniversary of hip-hop, both as a member of Public Enemy and as the co-creator and executive producer of the PBS/BBC docuseries “Fight the Power: How Hip Hop Changed the World.”
Details of the opening-day dedication event will be released soon, according to the release.