The Hiphop Archive looks less like a research space and more like a well-kept living room. The walls are lined with numerous display cases, one for VHS tapes, one for books, and one for action figures. Sleeves of old vinyl hip-hop records run along the baseboards.
A big couch and a couple of chairs face a large flat-screen television. A few of the archive’s student research assistants lounge around, writing papers on their laptops or listening to hip-hop. Above the television, on a shelf, sits a collection of iconic hip-hop paraphernalia: a turntable, multicolored cans of spray paint, a boom box. A fully functional DJ station resides in one corner.
The space is, in short, hip. It feels perfectly suited for the work its researchers are doing: It is not so buttoned up as to be stifling, nor is it relaxed enough to imply that what goes on here is anything less than serious scholarship.
It may seem incongruous to devote an academic research center to a popular art form such as hip-hop, but the location of the Hiphop Archive itself is even more so: Harvard University. The Hiphop Archive ultimately raises question about the art form itself. What lies beneath the surface of this popular entertainment to merit such focus? Why does the Hiphop Archive belong within the ivy-covered walls of Harvard?
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