美国国家公共电台 NPR Keepers Of The Underground: The Hiphop Archive At Harvard

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Today we begin a new series with our friends The Kitchen Sisters, producers Nikki Silva and Davia Nelson - stories of activist 1 archivists, rogue 2 librarians, curators, collectors and historians, keepers of the culture. The first one is called "Archiving The Underground," and it takes us to the Hiphop Archive and Research Center at Harvard.

9TH WONDER: Every artform has their standards that they've placed in the canon. Mathematics, science - everybody has their greats, and somebody placed them there. People in visual art world say, hey, OK, this is what's going in the Louvre. This is it. And I think hip-hop needs the same thing. This is the archive.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "EVERYTHING IS EVERYTHING")

LAURYN HILL: We 'bout 3 to set...

MARCYLIENA MORGAN: Archiving the underground is what we do. The Hiphop Archive began at UCLA - late '90s. I taught urban speech communities there. Students said, we want to do work on hip-hop. I said, that's performance, but it's not a speech community. They said, we'll be back.

They came back with the most amazing projects. They showed the elements of hip-hop - rapping, MCing, poetry or rhyming, B-boy, B-girl dance and graffiti art - and what it meant to their lives.

I'm Marcyliena Morgan, founding director of the Hiphop Archive and professor of African and African-American studies at Harvard University.

My students, when they were graduating, would say - I collected this. This is from hip-hop.

9TH WONDER: Boombox.

MORGAN: You have to keep it.

9TH WONDER: Turntable.

MORGAN: I'm a linguistic 4 anthropologist 5. Anthropologists love material culture.

9TH WONDER: Adidas.

MORGAN: I couldn't throw it away.

9TH WONDER: Spray paint they use to graffiti.

MORGAN: So I started having all this stuff. Then all these students were like, well, I think it should be called an archive because an archive is important.

9TH WONDER: Pieces of hip-hop history.

(SOUNDBITE OF NAS SONG)

HENRY LOUIS GATES JR.: I remember when Marcy shared her idea with me. And I thought, oh, my God. I'm no fan of hip-hop. But you didn't have to be Albert Einstein to realize that this was a brilliant idea, the world's first archive of the hip-hop and rap movement. Imagine if someone had thought of this when jazz was at its zenith. Why don't we have the Jazz Archive at Harvard? Of course, it would have been turned down. But in retrospect 6, they would have been a genius. I'm Henry Louis Gates Jr. professor at Harvard, director of the Hutchins Center for African & African-American Research.

9TH WONDER: Why hip-hop at Harvard? Harvard is a high level of genius, so is hip-hop to me. My name is Patrick Douthit. My stage name is 9th Wonder. I am a DJ, music producer, college professor and Nasir Jones Hiphop Fellow at Harvard. This global phenomenon needs to be studied.

ROBERT RUSH: Hip-hop music is a form of keeping records and a form of archiving culture.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THIS IS HOW WE DO IT")

MONTELL JORDAN: (Singing) This is how we do it.

RUSH: My name is Robert Rush, from the South Bronx, intern 7 here at the Hiphop Archive. My earliest hip-hop memory would be at my mom's house in the crib. She used to play Montell Jordan's "This Is How You Do It," The Notorious B.I.G.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "JUICY")

THE NOTORIOUS B.I.G.: (Rapping) One-room shack 8 - now my moms...

RUSH: Those were the sounds that soothed 9 me. They were lullabies that spoke 10 to the experience that I was having. I remember when Biggie said the line, Christmas missed us. Me and my mom, we used to go through struggles. We didn't necessarily have all the material resources.

(SOUNDBITE OF THE NOTORIOUS B.I.G. SONG, "JUICY")

BRIONNA ATKINS: My name is Brionna Atkins, media and publications coordinator 11. Besides collecting memorabilia and caring for it, we also have a Classic Crates 12 project archiving 200 classic hip-hop albums curated by 9th Wonder.

9TH WONDER: Classic Crates - we'll have the album in question, Nas' "Illmatic," all the participants. Then on top of that, you have all the samples and the records that they came from - the Stanley Clarke record, the Michael Jackson "Thriller 13" album, Joe Chambers 14' "Mind Rain." In order to be well-versed in the culture, you have to be an encyclopedia 15. The Hiphop Archive - what we're doing is creating a family tree.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

JUSTIN PORTER: The archive, I would label it as a living, breathing, evolving analysis of hip-hop. My name is Justin Porter, senior at Harvard College, doing research on the Fugees' "The Score" album.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE BEAST")

FUGEES: (Singing) Warn the town the beast is loose.

HAROLD SHAWN: We are in the heart of Harvard Square, a cross-campus walk away from the Hiphop Archive. We have formed a partnership 16 with the Loeb Music Library to house the Classic Crates collections. I'm Harold Shawn, program director of the Hiphop Archive.

JOSH KANTOR: My name is Josh Kantor, assistant keeper, special collections for the Loeb Music Library. On display here is a 12-inch vinyl, 33 1/3 RPM pressing of the "The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill" selected for Classic Crates in the display case next to a handwritten copy of Mozart's "Figaro."

(SOUNDBITE OF TURNTABLE NEEDLE LIFTING)

KANTOR: Play it, Side B - Kendrick Lamar, "To Pimp A Butterfly."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I (ALBUM VERSION)")

KENDRICK LAMAR: (Rapping) N-E-G-U-S - say it with me, or say it no more. Black stars can come and get me. Take it from Oprah Winfrey. Tell her she right on time. Kendrick Lamar, by far, realest Negus alive.

MORGAN: Hip-hop is more like the canary in the coal mine. When hip-hop starts talking about it, something is going on in society that we need to pay attention to.

HARRY 17 ALLEN: The average black male is probably not going to, in his lifetime, hear his voice amplified 18, tell anyone what to do or get to talk about his strengths or powers. But in hip-hop, you do all of that in a way that's romantic, captivating. And this has great power. My name is Harry Allen, Nasir Jones Hiphop fellow, Harvard University.

(SOUNDBITE OF PRESS CONFERENCE)

UNIDENTIFIED JOURNALIST: Mr. Nasir Jones, how do you feel that the creation of this fellowship will inspire other audiences to promote this culture?

GATES JR.: What do you think, Nas?

NAS: It's going to make them want to appreciate the culture. It's starting to open a lane in America. They're starting to want to see other American stories.

MICHAEL DAVIS: I think of the keepers as the ones who are on the ground right now. We're collecting the era and the zeitgeist, the spirit. And we're bottling it up for generations that we'll never see.

9TH WONDER: I'm trying to keep the torch lit that was passed from Tribe and Pete Rock and Lauryn and Queen Latifah that was passed to them from James Brown and Marvin Gaye and Steely Dan...

DAVIS: I see a lot of young people come through here.

9TH WONDER: ...Motown...

DAVIS: They see all this history...

9TH WONDER: ...Beach Boys...

DAVIS: And it just makes them dig more and more, more.

9TH WONDER: ...Muddy Waters...

DAVIS: Then they become the keepers. I mean, this could be the seed.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "EXCURSIONS")

A TRIBE CALLED QUEST: (Rapping) Back in the days when I was a teenager, before I had status and before I had a pager, you could find...

MARTIN: "Archiving The Underground" was produced by The Kitchen Sisters, Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva, along with Nathan Dalton and Brandi Howell. It was mixed by Jim McKee. You can hear more stories from "The Keepers" on their podcast The Kitchen Sisters Present.