The Universal Hip Hop Museum Presents Rakim with Host Roxanne Shante The Universal Hip Hop Museum In Association with the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) Presents The Peace, Unity, & Love Free Outdoor Concert featuring RAKIM Renee Neufville (Formally of the group Zhane) T Ski Valley Original B Fats Reggie Reg of...
4 DAYS OF FRESH The Hip Hop Film Festival takes place August 3rd – 6th at the National Black Theater in New York City. The festival is the first of it’s kind, showcasing the talents of filmmakers from all over the world who are the sons and...
The Universal Hip Hop Museum 501 (c)(3) Women's Hip Hop preservation committee presents " The Women of Hip Hop 3 Day Celebration Weekend". A (3) day historical weekend filled with excitement, fun, social gathering, fundraising, informative/educational forum's and a healthier approach to every day living....
UNIVERSAL HIP HOP MUSEUM CYPHER OUTLINE Agenda April 21st to April 23rd 2016 Day 1 Thursday, April 21st 10:00 am Start up The Old Bronx County Courthouse o Rocky presents history of the project o Tour of Bronx County Courthous o The legends of Hip Hop speak about their personal stories o First Wave o...
This week on the Final Level podcast with Ice T and Mick Benzo, the two legends are joined by two hip hop innovators, Rocky Bucano and Cutman LG. The four discuss unheard recordings of the late Notorious B.I.G, history of promoting hip hop records on...
Now more than three decades old as a recorded medium, hip-hop is deeply embedded in popular culture – to the point where its stars seem not only larger than life but also, as Rick Ross once put it, “deeper than rap.” But even as they sell out arenas and top the pop charts, rappers still court the respect and esteem of their hip-hop peers. The title King of Hip-Hop still means something.
In that spirit, just as we did in June with the Queen of Pop, we’ve crunched a pile of data to try to determine who is the current King of Hip-Hop.
As with our Queen of Pop tally, in naming the King of Hip-Hop we focused on the very recent past: from 2009 
through the first seven months of 2011. We ranked 20 solo rappers (no groups – sorry, Beasties) who have dropped an album during that time. We looked at album sales, rankings on the R&B/hip-hop and rap charts, YouTube views, social media, concert grosses, industry awards and critics’ ratings. In alphabetical order, our contenders are: Big Boi, B.o.B, Diddy, Drake, Eminem, Fabolous, Lupe Fiasco, Gucci Mane, Jay-Z, Kid Cudi, Lil Wayne, Ludacris, Nicki Minaj, Pitbull, Rick Ross, Snoop Dogg, T.I., Waka Flocka Flame, Kanye West and Wiz Khalifa.
All of our contenders are men except for Minaj, who reappears from our Queen of Pop survey. We like to think of “King” as a gender-neutral term, and the fact is that Minaj has earned the right to compete in this arena. It would feel strange to leave her out – as a rapper, she’s had a world-beating couple of years, with a chart-topping album, block-rocking singles and a slew of killer guest appearances. Frankly, she deserves to be called a hip-hop king just for her giant-killing appearance on West’s hit “Monster,” in which she crushed West and fellow guests Rick Ross and Jay-Z with one blow.
Fans of the rappers, and the acts themselves, take these sorts of rankings pretty seriously. (We learned that firsthand in the comments section of Queens of Pop.) We stand by our data, but of course we know that no King of Hip-Hop index can capture swagger or flow – if it could, the all-time title might go to Q-Tip or Rakim. As you’ll see, it turned out to be a fairly exciting contest. Our top overall contenders were pretty evenly matched, with five different rappers leading at least one tally each.
Let’s start with the tally that comes with the biggest bragging rights: album sales.
Power On The Block with Kim Kane Interview with UHHM Chairman Rocky Bucano For the LOVE of #HipHop -- Tomorrow morning on POTB, we're joined by Rocky Bucano, President of the Universal Hip Hop Museum: the official museum of hip-hop. Founded by hip-hop pioneers, the long-awaited...
Obscurae Special Edition Interview with UHHM Chairman Rocky Bucano Click here to the read the digital magazine version of Obscurae...
New York Beacon Feature about the Universal Hip Hop Museum Click link to read paper...
Afrika Bambaataa: one of the hip-hop pioneers being honoured at the museum Photograph:
But perhaps it’s time for rap fans to stop hoping for validation from the out-of-touch Cleveland institution. Hip-hop clearly needs its own hall of fame. And that’s exactly the idea behind something called the Universal Hip-Hop Museum, which counts among its backers many important hip-hop pioneers, including Afrika Bambaataa, Grandmaster Melle Mel and Kurtis Blow.
But though the spot was announced with fanfare about two years ago, it still lacks a physical home. Its organizers would prefer a location in the Bronx – where hip-hop began – and the museum was originally slated for the Kingsbridge Armory, a historical site that has remained vacant for decades. But its renovation has stalled, and the museum’s chairman Rocky Bucano says they now have their eyes on another location, called the Old Bronx Borough Courthouse.
In the meantime the museum is focused on its virtual space. They’ve teamed up with a visual effects company called Framestore, which is helping them develop virtual reality projects. Their first offering? A tour of the Rawlston Recording Studio in Brooklyn, where early New York artists like Whodini, the Fat Boys, and Doug E Fresh laid down tracks.