Underground Kingz (UGK), from the Houston Hip Hop Recording Artists Collection at the University of Houston Special Collections

The University of Houston Special Collections is pleased to announce that the finding aid for the Houston Hip Hop Recording Artists Collection has recently been published and is now available online.  Incorporating a number of smaller collections donated by local rappers, DJs, businesses, and other members of the hip hop community, the Houston Hip Hop Recording Artists Collection contains promotional materials, photographs, and publications documenting the unique Houston hip hop scene from the 1990s through the present day.

Back in 1991 Chuck D was quoted as saying “Rap is CNN for black people,” expressing the frustrations of communities bewildered by the lack of attention or concern from the mainstream media.  These untold stories would take root in freestyles, find themselves scribbled in notebooks, and performed on stages in front of audiences of different sizes and, eventually, different colors.

Music like hip hop, that establishes its presence organically outside of mainstream radio and record labels, is typically of interest in what it has to say not only in and of itself, but also what it has to say about the community from which it originates.  Much in the same manner that scholars and researchers flocked to the study of jazz as a means of shedding light on the Great Migration of the early twentieth century, those interested in what CNN (and the others) missed along the way have turned to the study of hip hop.  Unseen or unspoken in Chuck D’s quote is that hip hop became not only a national news network for otherwise uncovered topics, but it also became a local or micro news network, reflecting the specific anguish and joy of the individual communities which molded and shaped this genre to fit a particular need.

K-Rino, from the Houston Hip Hop Recording Artists Collection at the University of Houston Special Collections

While the hip hop scenes of the West and East Coasts have received most of the limelight (and now study), the hip hop scene of our Third Coast or Dirty South might find itself shortchanged.  Our Houston Hip Hop collections help to fill that void, promising some exciting research potential.  In looking at the Houston Hip Hop Recording Artists Collection, coupled alongside the DJ Screw Papers, researchers are able to gain an understanding of how and why this particular, regional scene evolved in the manner it has and the myriad of ways it differs from its brethren on either coast.

Please give the new finding aid a look and come visit us when you are ready to take advantage of these uniquely Houston resources.