Remix Award Winners
 | This section is empty. You can help by adding to it. (August 2020) |
Words Beats & Life inc. is a Washington DC based hip-hop non-profit working to "transform individual lives and whole communities through elements of hip-hop culture." [1] [2] Founded as a hip-hop conference in 2000 at the University of Maryland, College Park, Words Beats & Life separated from the University to become a separate organization in 2002, officially incorporated as a 501(c)(3) in 2003. [1] [3] Words Beats & Life works with the community by teaching, convening, and presenting hip-hop through the Urban Arts Academy, the Cipher, and publication of the first peer-reviewed academic journal of global hip-hop culture. [1] [3]
According to The Washington Post, the Words Beats & Life Academy “aims to transcend the familiar beats and rhymes and use hip-hop as a catalyst to change lives.” [4] Starting as a Saturday program, the Academy grew into an afterschool and summer program that serves 150 students during the year and up to 300 during the summer. [1] [5] Classes are taught by practicing artists, who serve as mentors for their students. [2] Youth, ages 5–23, participate in pre-vocational arts programming to hone skills in graffiti and visual arts, B-boying, DJing, and emceeing. In addition to skill mastery, the urban arts academy focuses on self-awareness and employability, using hip-hop as a platform to engage students in learning, building community, and thinking about their futures. [1] [4] [6] For example, emceeing helps students sharpen public speaking skills, and DJing connects students to technology and engineering. [7] Visual arts skills are used to paint murals and Words Beats & Life has worked in conjunction with the DC Government on the Murals DC project, which aims to redirect the energy of graffiti artist to legal projects to beautify the city. [8]
Scratch, Sip & Paint
Graffiti
DJing
Hip-Hop Tea Party
Walking Mural Tour
Bike Mural Tour
Concrete and Roses
Chocolate Milk and Butter Crunch
Creative Economy Career Fair(s)
Summer Youth Employment Program
Alternative Spring Break
Like a Boss
The League
The Cipher is a national network, connecting institutions, organizations, and individual artists and scholars using hip-hop as a medium to promote social change. [1] [9] Traditionally, hip-hop organizations are often absent from conferences and symposia in their respective fields, and therefore working in isolation. [9] Through publication of a peer-reviewed academic journal and an annual Teach-in, Words Beats & Life works to bring together scholars, educators, artists, and activists who use hip-hop as a tool for social change in a discussion of how to work together as a community and maximize the collective capacity to make change. [9] [10] [11]
Words. Beats. Life: The Global Journal of Hip-Hop Culture is the first academic peer-reviewed journal of hip-hop studies, also showcasing the talents visual artists and poets in the field. Combining art and scholarly work intends to present a dialogue between different mediums. Featuring established intellectuals and artists in the field as well as previously unknown individuals, the journal is a resource for hip-hop scholars and non-profits, representing current developments in the field. [12] [13] The Journal is published twice a year with the goal to promote dialogue and interaction between artists and scholars within the DMV. [14]
Vol 1 Issue 1: Inaugural Issue
Vol 1 Issue 2: The Art of the Name Drop
Vol 1 Issue 3: Where My Girls At?
Vol 1 Issue 4: Poetry, Hip-Hop, and Global Revolutions
Vol 2 Issue 1: Golden Era of Hip Hop
Vol 2 Issue 2: One Day it Will All Make Sense
Vol 3 Issue 1: The Blueprint for a Movement
Vol 3 Issue 2: Bootleg This Journal
Vol 4 Issue 1: It Ain't My Fault
Vol 4 Issue 2: The Sex Issue
Vol 5 Issue 1: I Am
Vol 5 Issue 2: Untitled
Vol 6 Issue 1: Who We Are
Vol 6 Issue 2: Brazil
Vol 7 Issue 1: Spaces and Places
Vol 7 Issue 2: Street Lit
Vol 8 Issue 1: South Africa
Live @ 5
Words Beats & Life Radio
The 5th Element
Malachi Byrd
Kenneth Carroll III
Baltimore
U Street
DC Youth Poet Laureate
Words Beats and Life Festival
Chinatown Block Party
The Fresh Ball
Juste Debout
La Belle Hip-Hop
Bum Rush the Boards is an annual hip-hop chess tournament created in 2005 as a more inclusive alternative to traditional chess tournaments. [1] Named after Public Enemy's 1987 album Yo! Bum Rush the Show, the tournament aims to connect the hip-hop generation to chess as a model of “overcoming through strategic struggle.” [15] [16] In addition to chess matches cultivating strategic thinking, the event includes workshops about the elements of hip-hop culture and how they related to STEM fields. [17] [18]
Remixing the Art of Social Change is an annual teach-in hosted at Howard University since 2007, bringing together organizations, artists, and scholars that use hip-hop culture to promote social change. [11] [19] Through roundtables, panel discussions, film screenings, and workshops that build on the efforts of the previous teach-ins, the event showcases work being done and creates a network for individuals and organizations to connect and advance how hip-hop is used as a medium to promote positive change. [11]
The Freshest of all Time is DC's largest B-boy/B-girl jam featuring prominent b-boy crews from DC, Maryland, Virginia, Philadelphia, Boston, and New York. The battle drew more than 600 people in 2009, and 800 in 2010. [20] [21] [22]
| | This section is empty. You can help by adding to it. (August 2020) |
| | This section is empty. You can help by adding to it. (August 2020) |
Graffiti is art that is written, painted or drawn on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from simple written words to elaborate wall paintings, and has existed since ancient times, with examples dating back to ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, and the Roman Empire.
Fred Brathwaite, more popularly known as Fab 5 Freddy, is an American visual artist, filmmaker, and hip hop pioneer. He is considered one of the architects of the street art movement. Freddy emerged in New York's downtown underground creative scene in the late 1970s as a graffiti artist. He was the bridge between the burgeoning uptown rap scene and the downtown No Wave art scene. He was immortalized in 1981 when Debbie Harry rapped on the Blondie song "Rapture" that "Fab 5 Freddy told me everybody's fly." In the late 1980s, Freddy became the first host of the groundbreaking hip-hop music video show Yo! MTV Raps.
Wild Style is a 1983 American hip hop film directed and produced by Charlie Ahearn. Regarded as the first hip hop motion picture, it includes appearances by seminal figures such as Fab Five Freddy, Lee Quiñones, Lady Pink, The Rock Steady Crew, The Cold Crush Brothers, Queen Lisa Lee of Zulu Nation, Grandmaster Flash and ZEPHYR.
Henry Chalfant is an American photographer and videographer most notable for his work on graffiti, breakdance, and hip hop culture.
Hip hop or hip-hop is a culture and art movement that was created by African Americans pioneered from Black American street culture, also known as hip hop African American culture, that had been around for years prior to its more mainstream discovery while later reaching other groups such as Latino Americans and Caribbean Americans, starting in the Bronx, New York City. Hip Hop is one of cultural movements that has been shaped and dominated by African American males though female hip hop artists have contributed to the art form and culture as well. Hip hop culture is characterized by the key elements of rapping, DJing and turntablism, and breakdancing. Other elements include historical knowledge of the movement, graffiti, beatboxing, street entrepreneurship, hip hop language, and hip hop fashion.
Togo has very diverse and rich traditions in music and dance, which is in part reflected by Togo's regional hip hop scene. Hip-hop togo is the style of Old school hip hop of America mixing with the traditional music of Togo.
OSGEMEOS are identical twin street artists Otavio Pandolfo and Gustavo Pandolfo. They started painting graffiti in 1987 and their work appears on streets and in galleries across the world.
Clive Campbell, better known by his stage name DJ Kool Herc, is a Jamaican American DJ who is credited with being one of the founders of hip hop music in the Bronx, New York City, in 1973. Nicknamed the Father of Hip-Hop, Campbell began playing hard funk records of the sort typified by James Brown.
Joseph Robert Saddler Sr., popularly known by his stage name Grandmaster Flash, is a Bajan DJ and producer. He created a DJ technique called the Quick Mix Theory. This technique serviced the break-dancer and the rapper by elongating the drum breaks through the use of duplicate copies of vinyl. This technique gave birth to cutting and scratching. It also gave rappers better music with a seamless elongated bed of beats to speak on. He also invented the slipmat.
Hip-hop theater is a form of theater that presents contemporary stories through the use of one or more of the four elements of hip-hop culture—b-boying, graffiti writing, MCing (rapping), and DJing. Other cultural markers of hip-hop such as spoken word, beatboxing, and hip-hop dance can be included as well although they are not always present. What is most important is the language of the theatrical piece and the plot's relevance to the world. Danny Hoch, the founder of the Hip-Hop Theater Festival, further defines it as such: "Hip-hop theatre must fit into the realm of theatrical performance, and it must be by, about and for the hip-hop generation, participants in hip-hop culture, or both."
Graffiti are writing or drawings scribbled, scratched, or sprayed illicitly on a wall or other surface in a public place. Graffiti ranges from simple written words to elaborate wall paintings. Graffiti, consisting of the defacement of public spaces and buildings, remains a nuisance issue for cities.
Tim Conlon is an American artist and graffiti writer known for large-scale murals and works on canvas. He was featured as one of several artists in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery exhibit, Recognize! Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture, which included four large graffiti murals painted by Conlon and collaborator, David Hupp in 2008. This marked the first modern graffiti ever to be in the Smithsonian Institution.
Graffiti in New York City has had a substantial local, national, and international influence.
Graffiti in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, is a cause of much disagreement among its residents. Graffiti is seen by some as an art form adding to the Toronto culture; however, others see graffiti as form of vandalism, viewing it as ugly, or as a form of property damage.
Hip hop feminism is a sub-set of black feminism that centers on intersectional subject positions involving race and gender in a way that acknowledges the contradictions in being a black feminist, such as black women's enjoyment in hip hop music and culture, rather than simply focusing on the victimization of black women in hip hop culture due to interlocking systems of oppressions involving race, class, and gender.
Aniekan Udofia is a portrait artist known for his large-scale paintings and murals in the Washington, D.C. area. His art work familiar to the community of northwest D.C, came to prominence after a mural tribute to American icon Duke Ellington. Udofia garnered national attention with his caricatures and photorealistic illustrations for publications such as XXL, Vibe, DC Pulse, and The Source.
Sacha Jenkins is an American television producer, filmmaker, writer, musician, artist, curator, and chronicler of hip-hop, graffiti, punk, and metal cultures. While still in his teens, Jenkins published Graphic Scenes & X-Plicit Language, one of the earliest 'zines solely dedicated to "graffiti" art. In 1994, Jenkins co-founded Ego Trip magazine. In 2007, he created the competition reality program ego trip's The (White) Rapper Show, which was carried by VH1. Currently, Jenkins is the creative director of Mass Appeal magazine.
Cey Adams is an American visual artist, graphic designer and author. He was the founding creative director of Def Jam Recordings and is known for his work with Beastie Boys, Public Enemy, LL Cool J, Jay-Z, and Mary J. Blige. He has been described as "legendary" for his work in hip-hop graphic design.
Hip Hop Family Tree is a series of educational and historical comic books written and illustrated by Ed Piskor that documents the early history of hip hop culture. Originating online with Boing Boing, the series was published in print form by Fantagraphics Books. The first collection was a 2014 New York Times Graphic Books Best Seller (#7) and was listed in The Washington Post Top 10 graphic novels of 2013. The second collection won the Eisner Award for Best Reality-Based Work in 2015.
The Legend of Cool "Disco" Dan is a 2013 American documentary film written and directed by Joseph Pattisall. The film was released on April 15, 2013 in conjunction with the release of the book Pump Me Up: DC Subculture in the 1980s. The documentary was narrated by Washington, D.C.-native Henry Rollins. The Legend of Cool "Disco" Dan provides a documentation of Washington, D.C. during the 1970s and 1980s from the perspective of Cool "Disco" Dan, and blends commentary by local Washingtonians combined with archival footage, forming a comprehensive portrait of this time period.