Grand Hip-Hop Museum May Rise in the Bronx

If it flies, it will have subway cars to tag and Chuck D seminars
By Harry Kimball,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 9, 2009 10:52 AM CST
Grand Hip-Hop Museum May Rise in the Bronx
The community center on the ground floor of 1520 Sedgwick Avenue is recognized as the birthplace of hip-hop.   (Getty Images)

A prospective hip-hop museum in the Bronx will feature MTA subway cars free for the tagging, a Microsoft-designed music video wall, a hip-hop hall of fame, and political action seminars designed by the likes of Chuck D and KRS-One—if its founder can scare up $150 million to $250 million. “We’re fighting all the past failed attempts to do this,” Craig Wilson tells Paste. But he’s driven. “There would be no Soulja Boy if there was no Afrika Bambaataa.”

Wilson got the idea for the National Museum of Hip-Hop when an acquaintance didn't understand why the Bronx—the birthplace of hip-hop—figured in so many hip-hop movies. “The fact that deejays, graffiti artists, and beat boys are all but forgotten,” he says, “is exactly the kind of stuff that perpetuates the absolute need for a museum of hip-hop.” A raft of hip-hop luminaries will kick off fundraising in February, and industry leaders are behind him. (More hip-hop stories.)

Get the news faster.
Tap to install our app.
X
Install the Newser News app
in two easy steps:
1. Tap in your navigation bar.
2. Tap to Add to Home Screen.

X