Hip-Hop Hall of Fame Launches Fundraiser for New York Museum

A long-in-development Hip Hop Hall of Fame and Museum hopes to raise $1 million to open its first-ever location and a Youth Media Education center in Harlem. To get there, it has announced an initial $500,000 Matching Challenge Grant to kick off a new IndieGoGo campaign.

If raised, the $1 million dollars would allow the Hip Hop Hall of Fame and Museum satellite location to open on 125th St. in April 2015, before eventually moving to its permanent home in Midtown when construction is completed. (The museum is scheduled to open in late 2016 or early 2017). While the Hall of Fame and Museum itself will relocate, the Harlem location will continue to house its permanent offices, as well as television and radio broadcast studios for the the Youth Media Training & Education Academy.

The Hip Hop Hall of Fame and Museum was established in 1992 by Chairman J.T. Thompson, who produced the first Hip Hop Hall of Fame Awards TV show, which ran on BET in the Nineties. The show returned this year – inducting the Sugarhill Gang, the Sequence, Busy B, the N Twins, Mr. Magic, photographer Ernie Paniccioli and Wild Style director Charlie Ahearn – and the forthcoming museum will present exhibits that trace the history and development of hip-hop music and culture.

According to the New York Daily News, the Museum has already acquired a number of pieces of memorabilia like jackets, posters and turntables, which were donated by rap luminaries Eminem, Run-D.M.C., Snoop Dogg, Salt-N-Pepa, Grandmaster Flash, Ice Cube, Outkast, Young Jeezy, Common and Afrika Bambaataa. The Museum will also feature items from both their own collection and others like the Grammy Museum, HarvardU Hip Hop Archive, Smithsonian Museum, the 2Pac Center, the Zulu Nation, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and more.

As for the Youth Media Training & Education Academy, the program will enroll 50 kids each year and teach them everything from scripting and storyboarding to staging, sound and editing. The Academy will continue to help its students with peer-to-peer training, internships and job referrals over the next five years.

Supporters of the new campaign, which will run for the next 60 days, will receive various incentives depending on the size of their donation. For instance, the first 10,000 people to donate $35 or more will receive lifetime passes to the Hall of Fame and Museum, while $50 donors could get tickets to a fundraiser concert next year, and $225 donors could receive two tickets to the Hip Hop Hall of Fame Awards TV Show or Festival, plus shirts, VIP Fan Memberships and more.