Put ‘Em In The Glass

Hip-Hop At the Experience Music Project

(Note: This article was originally commissioned in 2000 by the now-long-defunct 360hiphop.com, an early Web 2.0 venture by Russell Simmons and others that shut down during the the first dot-com bubble burst. EMP turns 15 years old this summer and since this isn’t available online anymore, I decided to blow the dust off it and repost.

Keep in mind: much of what I write about here probably doesn’t exist anymore. The EMP has gone through countless permutations and reimaginings (to put it politely) over its 15 years. Treat this as a snapsnot of a moment in time. Thanks to Joseph Patel, the original assigning editor for the piece. — O.W.)

The hip-hop exhibit at Seattle’s Experience Music Project occupies a prominent corner of their second floor “Milestones” hall. Walking into the space, two objects grab your attention immediately. The first is a huge display case with over a dozen costumes and outfits worn by hip-hop pioneers over the years, starting with an elaborate Zulu Nation get-up formerly worn by Afrika Bambaataa and trickling down a Yo! MTV Raps leather jacket. Above this is a full subway car graffiti piece — literally, it’s an entire subway car — inked by Zepyhr, a striking visual icon of New York’s past, relocated 3,000 miles to Seattle.

The idea behind the exhibit was initially shaped by EMP curator Jim Fricke who saw hip-hop and punk as necessarily corollaries to the museum’s rock-inspired focus. Says Fricke, “If you want to convince people that there is sort of an unbounded drive to self-expression, the whole DIY concept can bear fruit. It’s like hip-hop and punk are two great examples.” Early on, Fricke reached out to journalist Bill Adler, who had a considerable personal archive collected during his days as Def Jam’s publicist. “The idea always was that at some point down the line…this stuff would have value. And if nobody else was gonna hold on to it, well fuck it. I’ll hold onto it,” Adler shares.

The EMP actually boasts two hip-hop exhibits. Their “Northwest Passage” hall, dedicated to the music of the Pacific Northwest, boasts an impressive display of Seattle’s hip-hop heritage, exhaustively put together by local rapper/producer Wordsayer (Source of Labor) and ethnomusicologist Joseph Schloss. However, the main exhibit commands the lion-share of hip-hop eye candy. Handwritten lyric sheets by Public Enemy are encased in plexiglass, one of Marley Marl’s old 2-track tape machines from his House of His is close by, and across the room is a collection of old spray caps from Pink Lady’s personal stash. In comparison to other large exhibits at the EMP, such as their Guitar Gallery or the centerpiece Hendrix Gallery, the hip-hop room is modest at best but still offers an engaging immersion for fans and curious tourists alike.

Following the now-familiar “4 elements” paradigm, the exhibit tries to give proper due to graffiti writing, DJing, MCing and b-boying. The back wall traces a timeline for each element, stretching back to the mid ‘70s and tracing the culture’s progress until present. There’s a decidedly old school focus to the whole exhibit as hip-hop’s early years gets much attention but scant mention is paid to hip-hop’s dominance and diversification in the ‘90s. That being said, the attention to detail is nothing if not thorough, with audio narration (by Grandmaster Caz, Bill Adler and others) complementing almost every object on display.

One thing that might grate hip-hop heads is how the exhibit tries to position rap music as “the new rock”, as if suggesting that hip-hop hasn’t had its own trajectory independent of any larger schema. Fricke defends the allusion and tries to explain the larger vision for the exhibit. “Wouldn’t it be great if mom came in with her daughter, and her daughter loved Public Enemy and she loves Bo Diddley?,” asks Fricke, suggesting, “and somehow the exhibit convinced her daughter that Bo Diddley was actually no a boring old fart, and convinced mom that somehow there was a parallel between Chuck D and Bo Diddley. That was sort of the lofty goal there.”