Urban Prodigies
By Julian Davis, LaQuayle Gray, Ananth Nandakishore, and Justin Peebles
For a class project in “Hip Hop Informatics” at the University of Illinois, we wanted to showcase and explore the ways that ghetto geniuses combine hip-hop and their chosen medium to create, whether it is rapping, DJing, dancing, education, or other avenues. We decided to make videos about these people’s work and also tell their story so that it might be a source of inspiration for others: Dondre Smith, CEO of Almvghty; Louie Kason and DJ $pen; DJ Chaboi; and DJ Renz. During the course of the spring semester of 2017, the four of us set up interviews, video-recorded our visits in Champaign, Chicago, and Austin, Texas, and then edited the footage into a series we called “Urban Prodigies.” We are still working on another short video about a graffiti artist, so check back on our channel!
Three members of the team interviewed Dondre Smith, a fashion designer, at an ALMVGHTY show. We did another two interviews with Louie Kason, a rapper, and DJ $pen, a DJ , and DJ Chaboi. Justin also went to SXSW, a festival in Austin, TX, that celebrates many different art forms, and collected more footage there. We worked on an interview with a graffiti artist, who will remain unnamed. It was challenging to create a story with just different events and conversations, but we had great conversations with people who are as interested in hip hop and music as we are.
“Hip Hop Informatics” was an experimental course for undergraduates co-taught by Drs. Will Patterson and Sharon Irish at the Champaign-Urbana Community Fab Lab in Spring 2017 at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
