Houston Hip-Hop Author to Visit UH
On October 17, the University of Houston Libraries and UH Bookstore will co-host a book event.
The public is invited to a book talk and signing of Hip-Hop in Houston: The Origin and the Legacy, with author Maco Faniel on October 17 at 5:00 p.m in the University of Houston Honors Commons, MD Anderson Library.
Book cover image courtesy of The History Press.
Author Maco Faniel will discuss his recently published work Hip-Hop in Houston: The Origin and the Legacy, a history of the city’s unique role in the rise of rap music.
The book’s afterword was penned by Julie Grob, coordinator for digital projects and instruction in UH Libraries Special Collections. The department collects archival material which documents Houston history and culture, including creative writing, architecture, and performing arts. Grob introduced the idea of a hip-hop archival collection at UH a few years ago.
Houston is a major hub of hip-hop. Influential artists in the genre have attended UH, like Paul Wall and Chamillionaire, and the University’s juxtaposition with neighborhoods in which hip-hop was born make it a natural repository to preserve a significant aspect of Houston’s culture.
“I felt that [hip-hop] is a nontraditional area of the arts that we weren’t collecting and there was no good reason why we wouldn’t be collecting that too,” Grob said. “It’s an important thing to document socially, but it’s also a way to connect the archives with our students and community.”
The Houston Hip Hop collecting area at UH began with the DJ Screw Papers and DJ Screw Sound Recordings, which paved the way for a gathering of other materials, including the Hawk Papers; Pen & Pixel Graphics, Inc. Records; Samplified Digital Recording Studios Records; and Houston Hip Hop Recording Artists Collection.
“DJ Screw developed his own innovative production style called ‘chopped and screwed’ which is associated with Houston, and important to document,” Grob said. “I was interested in the underground aspect of what he did. He did this without the backing of a big record label or commercial radio.”
DJ Screw’s family, primarily his father Robert Davis Sr. donated much of the material. Additional donors include Nikki Williams, DJ Chill, and DeMo.
The heart of the DJ Screw collection is its sound recordings, some 1500 12-inch vinyl records which he used to make his screw tapes. Photos and memorabilia, handwritten lyrics, video and audio recordings, posters and album cover artwork round out the composite hip-hop collection.
Grob met scholar Maco Faniel one day in the Special Collections reading room, when he was at work on the book as part of his Texas Southern University history master’s thesis. Grob learned about his project and the two began collaborating. She invited Faniel to moderate a panel at a 2012 Houston hip-hop conference, and he asked Grob to write the afterword for his book.
Grob noted that her interest in learning about hip-hop was driven by enthusiasm. In building the collection, she learned a lot from the people involved in the hip-hop community, which she cites is the basis of its success. “I just went to them and said ‘teach me what you know – tell me your story,'” she said.
The community’s response to the acquisition of the hip-hop collection has been overwhelmingly positive, said Grob. “People are incredibly excited that the material is being preserved, and the culture is being recognized. I’ve never worked on a collection that has had this much excitement.”
One of the more interesting aspects of Houston hip-hop is how it reflects the people and culture where it originated. In learning about the place and culture of hip-hop, “that was really exciting to me as an archivist,” Grob said. “I think that, in a lot of neighborhoods where hip-hop originated, the people have a limited voice, and the culture isn’t heavily documented in other ways. Hip-hop gives a voice to the life and culture of people in those neighborhoods.”
The public is invited to a book talk and signing of Hip-Hop in Houston: The Origin and the Legacy, with author Maco Faniel on October 17 at 5:00 p.m in the University of Houston Honors Commons, located on the second floor of MD Anderson Library.