Community

I remember a few years ago when hip-hop group Foreign Exchange released its first album. The group was notable for the unique circumstance of its formation. Rapper Phonte from North Carolina and producer Nicolay from Sweden connected over the Internet and put together an entire album without ever sitting in the same room. Through the power of accessible music software and cable modems, fans, rappers, and producers alike have been able to engage in an unprecedented and truly global discourse.

With increased access comes extreme fragmentation. Hip-hop, a historically regional art form, has splintered into countless communities and sub-genres—it is almost impossible to keep track of rappers and their output. Classifications become irrelevant as artists across genres and borders blend styles and utilize signature elements of hip-hop, including booming 4/4 beats and heavy bass. Further divisions and technological breakthroughs allow for new opportunities. For example, Bay Area rapper Lil B has created an entire virtual world through the use of an alleged 100 MySpace pages (an intriguing, if perhaps flawed and puzzling, experiment).

This fragmentation, for all its potential, means the disintegration of one of hip-hop’s most important aspects: human interaction. Hip-hop was born from parties—from sweaty bodies joining together to lose control and forget cares over pulsing rhythms. Hip-hop was the sound track to block parties, cookouts, and summer nights spent listening to old favorites. Hip-hop was the battle—the break-boy battle, the master of ceremonies battle, the disc jockey battle. This is not to romanticize hip-hop’s past. As an art form, it truly blossomed from the close contact among human beings.

The same could likely be said on some level of a number of genres (punk springs immediately to mind), but the interaction was never merely an accomplice to the music. It was an integral piece, expressed in lyrics and beats. It is difficult to gauge precisely what rappers mean when they speak of the “streets” these days. It often seems like they work from a photocopy that has been run through the ringer to the point at which they are producing nothing but a faded image, a series of shadows that resemble some great “gangsta” rap you once heard. The link to reality is lost in the shuffle to outshine, outshoot, and outsell the competition.

So why not try to bring a little piece of hip-hop’s past into the present and future?

At the start of the year, I got together with a group of students to form the Columbia University Society of Hip-hop. I won’t regurgitate our mission statement here, but I will say that one of our principle goals is to provide an open space for creative and critical discourse for artists and fans alike. We view hip-hop as a powerful tool for uniting people across cultural and racial lines. We want to have cookouts and battles—we want to advance the positive aspects of hip-hop that we feel have been pushed by the wayside.

We can’t deny the power of the Internet, nor the promise it holds, but we feel our mission requires the return of the human element to hip-hop. When we came together, we felt there simply wasn’t an outlet at Columbia that fostered both discussion of hip-hop and creative expression. In three meetings, we’ve had aspiring dancers, rappers, producers, poets, and DJs in our midst—young men and women who repeatedly expressed their desire to share their creativity and their opinions. We’ve had debates and laughs, and most of our meetings have spilled beyond the allotted 90 minutes into impromptu freestyle sessions and further arguments. We’ve just had a damn good time. At its core, that’s what hip-hop is about—an escape from the pressures of our world, no matter how great or small. We’re not trying to bring the hip-hop music of the ’80s back, just the feeling. And that’s something you can’t do through YouTube.

The author is a Columbia College junior majoring in film.