BALTIMORE — Celebrating 50 years of hip-hop is what Black communities all over the globe are doing.
The Baltimore Museum of Art has a special exhibit highlighting the 21st century of hip hop and its impact, celebrating it in various forms including art, music and fashion.
Brittany Harris, who visited the exhibition, said it highlighted hip-hop's entire phenomenon in the 21st century through six different themes being language, brand, adornment, tribute, ascension and pose.
“Hip-hop really encapsulates the entire experience of being Black in America. The way we wear our hair, the way we talk, the way that we dress, just the way that we present ourselves,” Harris said.
All of it and more encompassed in “The Culture” exhibit at the Baltimore Museums of Art, where hip-hop is displayed not just in music. The language portion in the music however being what African American studies professor Dr. Kaye Whitehead said had the most impact on the Black community.
“Hip-hop just gave us another outlet to share who we were, to share our creativity, we created jazz music, creation is what we do. Hip-hop brought us together, but there was a turn in hip-hop, and I think that’s what started to separate us when the music was less about coming together, fighting the power, thinking about our community standing up against the system, and they started to talk about some of the ills of our community, that’s when it was heartbreaking,” Whitehead said.
“The good, the bad, the highs, the lows, the joys, the sorrows, going through the exhibition, I felt all of those emotions,” Harris said.
And it’s the language in the music Dr. Whitehead wants the younger generation to pay attention to more.
“Go back to the early days of hip-hop, and really begin to understand what we have come through. What happen with drugs flooded our community because they talked about that in hip-hop, the impact of politics and politicians, we talked about that in hip-hop and where we are today. It’s been co-opted and it’s been changed but the hip-hop of my childhood of the early days of understanding, if you want to know what’s happening in our inner cities you listen to hip-hop music, it was a coded language that we used. I will tell young people they have to learn to appreciate not just music not just the beat, but the words, part of the real beat of hip-hop is understanding,” Whitehead said.
The culture exhibit will remain in Baltimore until July 16 and the next stop is in St. Louis, Missouri.
