The DJ was set up in an alcove of the library spinning records – first a Pharrell song, then Missy Elliott.
Most days, the music would have been a distraction to the patrons of the College of William & Mary’s Swem Library, but Wednesday night, it was what they came for.
Swem Special Collections unveiled its latest exhibit Wednesday: “Re-Mixing the Old Dominion: 35 Years of Virginia Hip-Hop History and Culture.”
The exhibit includes artifacts connected to the region’s hip-hop scene dating back to the 1980s, like ticket stubs and demo tapes, along with a vast collection of recorded interviews and playlists of hip-hop tracks from regional artists.
The collection is the brainchild of Kevin Kosanovich, a doctoral student in American Studies at William & Mary and curator of the exhibit. The idea came out of necessity, he said.
Kosanovich’s research focuses on the Bronx River Houses, a low-income public housing project in the Bronx, New York. From the 1970s through the 1990s, the houses were at the heart of hip-hop culture. The Universal Zulu Nation, a hip-hop awareness group founded by genre pioneer Afrika Bambaataa, originated from the project, as did artists like DJ Jazzy Jay, DJ Red Alert and Soulsonic Force.
While working on his dissertation, Kosanovich traveled to Cornell University to research its hip-hop collection – one of the few such collections in the country. Given hip-hop’s sustained popularity, and the lack of archival material on the subject, Kosanovich thought William & Mary could compile its own hip-hop collection focused on the genre’s artists, movements, development and history in Virginia.
The state – and Hampton Roads, in particular – have a longstanding connection to hip-hop culture. Soon after the genre developed in New York City in the 1970s, it migrated south along I-95, gaining popularity among Virginia’s black community.
Through the 1980s and 1990s, hip-hop exploded in the state, ultimately producing well-known artists like Virginia Beach’s Pharrell Williams, Portsmouth’s Missy Elliott and Norfolk’s Timbaland, along with many smaller acts and artists, like Tony B and D’Amour.
Kosanovich said hip-hop is not limited to music, but forms a unique culture, shaped by the artists who write the lyrics and the social and economic conditions that influence those artists. William & Mary’s hip-hop collection examines that culture as it developed in Virginia.
Much of the collection is composed of oral interviews with artists from the region telling the histories of their involvement in the state’s hip-hop culture. These interviews, Kosanovich said, highlight one of the central themes behind the exhibit: Hip-hop has been a force for community building.
For the state’s minority community who were often marginalized due to structural racism and economic inequality, hip-hop was a means of resistance to power, and a means of bringing the community together.
“We really want to show how hip-hop has been a force for good, and also how Virginia born and bred, as well as based artists, have helped drive what we think of as hip-hop for the last 20 to 25 years,” Kosanovich said.
The interviews also reveal another of the exhibit’s themes: Virginia’s artistic diversity. Kosanovich said, in his interviews, artists had difficulty defining a “Virginia sound” in hip-hop.
“Across the board, everyone has said, ‘Sigh, I don’t know, I don’t know if there is one, we’re a melting pot,’” he said. “I think that’s really one of the strengths of Virginia hip-hop and one of the reasons why folks who come from here or relocate here have become so successful.”
That lack of a definition spoke to Virginia’s status as a crossroads for people and cultural movements.
“Virginia is either ‘down north’ or ‘up south,’ depending on your point of view,” Kosanovich said. “It’s a crossroads, and it’s exciting to be a part of. That means, again, just as hip-hop is a moving culture, the fact that so many people come through Virginia, that’s another things we’re showcasing with the exhibit, as well.”
The project is ongoing. Kosanovich said he hoped to add more oral histories to the collection, and the natural developments in the genre would provide additional material in the future.
“As long as the college is around, there will be a hip-hop collection,” he said. “I don’t see hip-hop going away any time soon.”
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