9th annual Hip Hop Appreciation Month spotlights musical culture

Hip-hop culture will take center stage as graffiti artists, beatboxers and rappers perform and pump up the crowd in Bruin Plaza today.
Hip Hop Congress, a part of the Undergraduate Students Association Council’s Cultural Affairs Commission, will host the ninth annual kickoff for Hip Hop Appreciation month. The theme this year is ORIGINality Redefined, as Hip Hop Congress will focus on the new aspects that young, on-the-rise artists are bringing to hip-hop, while still staying true to their hip-hop roots.
All month, Hip Hop Congress will dedicate several events, such as DJ workshops, fashion shows and concerts to the culture of hip-hop.
Isaiah Lauwerys, a fourth-year political science student and director of Hip Hop Congress, said it is important to emphasize a culture that has such a large presence on campus.
“There are all these different aspects, like dancing, rapping, DJing and graffiting to hip-hop, and we want to highlight all these different pillars so that people can find out something deeper that they didn’t know about hip-hop,” Lauwerys said.
Ramanveer Virk, a third-year anthropology student and member of Hip Hop Congress, said the point of the kickoff is to showcase a little bit of everything, from beatboxing and DJing to graffiting and dancing, as well as student talent.
Three UCLA students, including rappers Terry Gray, a third-year African American studies student, and Camden Anderson, a fourth-year psychology student, will perform at the lunchtime event. Lauwerys said Gray, who performs as TGray, has a strong heavy flow and emotional lyrics, while Anderson, who raps as Internal Definition, is versatile and mixes up punchlines in his raps about his home and life in Rancho Cucamonga.
Additionally, fourth-year political science student Allen Aguilar, who has performed around Los Angeles as DJ Addict and has been a part of Hip Hop Congress in the past, will DJ at the event.
“Every February we show the UCLA community that hip-hop is a way of life,” Virk said. “With creative and artistic elements like beatboxing, DJing and beat boy/beat girl and graffiti art, we are raising awareness that hip-hop is more of a poetry than just a type of music.”
Marjan Goudarzi, a fourth-year political science student and director of Hip Hop Congress, said ORIGINality Redefined is a tribute to the history of hip-hop, and the way new artists are reshaping the culture and turning it into something new.
“Recent artists are influenced by historical artists, as far as their style, flow, and style of rhyming, but now they are speaking on new issues relevant today that weren’t necessarily around in the ’70s,” Goudarzi said. “For example, music from Kanye West wouldn’t have been heard 20 years ago.”
Virk also said the content of hip-hop has changed dramatically with new, computer synthesized sounds that people have not heard before. People are attracted to the new sound that they are not accustomed to.
“Rappers are lyrically more complex, beats have gone through an evolution and are more intricate – they incorporate a lot more sound like sampling and ad-libs,” Virk said. “Hip-hop topics are more diversified now than they were in the ’70s because rappers have become more conscious, and rap about everything from violence … to money and parties.”
Goudarzi said hip-hop stays the same in that there will always be artists that have a lot to say about issues like gender, race and poverty, which they may have experienced in their youth. Their raps can be dark and cynical, or fun and upbeat, depending on if they are rapping about the issues or the party sphere.
“Today’s hip-hop is about people taking risks with lyric complexity and beats, which may be risks that artists didn’t take before,” Goudarzi said.
Lauwerys said one artist who is switching up rap is Brooklyn’s 17-year-old growing success, Joey Bada$$, who has recreated Boombap, a ’90s form of hip-hop with a bass drum followed by a snap. Bada$$ takes original ’90s mixes and raps along with the classic, creating a mixtape that incorporates his style on the ’90s classics.
Hip-hop began as a casual way to socialize in the 1970s in African American neighborhoods in the Bronx, New York, Goudarzi said. From there it became a culture, and as it spread across the United States, people in different parts of the country began to put their own twist and style into it. Many people fell in love with hip-hop as its popularity exploded across the U.S.
“Hip-hop started from very humble beginnings, and became very mainstream in the ’90s,” Lauwerys said. “Now it’s stadium status.”

Contact Alicia Sontag at [email protected].