Hip Hop Congress

Weekly Update 12.27.o6

Yo this update is massive and has tons of great info in it about what has gon down the past 6 months at our chapters across the country. I warn you that it will take a minute to get through but its well worth it. Thanks to everyone who made 2006 a tremendous year for Hip Hop Congress. Shouts to Shamako, Ron, Jordan, and Reali for starting this organization. 2007 will be just as crazy!

CHICAGO:
2006 has been a monumental year for Hip Hop Congress Chicago. The first half of the year was spent organizing for the National Hip Hop Political Convention and making it out to the HHC National Conference in Boulder, CO. The NHHPC was an experience that helped thrust our local and national efforts forward. One of the best results after the Convention was the establishment of the Cabrini Green Community Chapter. This helped us actualize our Community Development initiative. Since then, we have really been able to start piecing together HHC Chicago as a multi-faceted Hip Hop Community Organization. Over the last few months, we have taken another major step by establishing the HHC Chicago Council representing our chapters, community development, education, health and wellness, media, art, and culture.

As we wrap up 2006, we have college chapters established at University of Illinois at Chicago and U of I at Urbana-Champaign, Columbia College, and Wright College; a high school chapter at Morgan Park, and community chapters in Cabrini Green and Englewood. Chapters promise to grow in 2007. Of course, most of the active HHC members and artists belong to HHC Chicago as a whole. We also have had some very recent events that have been great successes. An all elements, theatre Hip Hop show called “Return of the Masters” was a spectacular demonstration of masterful artistry and allowed people to witness the amount of skill that HHC and extended family posses. This past weekend, our Hip Hop Holiday Kitchens took place in Englewood and Cabrini Green. We used all HHC volunteers and donations to feed the homeless and needy. Both Kitchens were attended by many people from the respective neighborhoods and reflect HHC’s dedication to the community.

In 2007, HHC Chicago Headquarters will open in our first physical location! This will be a big move as our goals for 2007 are to be more formally structured and to start raising some real funds to support all the good work HHC is constantly doing. We will also be making sure HHC is represented to the fullest through out Chicago and across the Midwest.

If anyone wants to build on the above or anything in general, please do not hesitate to call or e-mail me: 773-600-9889, asad@hiphopcongress.com OR manowax@gmail.com.

I’ll leave with an indirect quote from D’Labrie – You don’t join Hip Hop Congress, Hip Hop Congress joins you!

PEACE and BLESSINGS everyone

Asad

SACRAMENTO STATE and COMMUNITY:
What thizzzz it? Hope all the chapters had a koo semester throwin’ mad hip-hop eventz. The wrap up for this semester is that we formed a strong presence in Sac-town’s hip-hop community by bringing together some key people that have been involved in the hip-hop community for a long time. D-Labrie got me in contact with a woman by the name of Lady Vex who has been involved with promoting and MCing events in Sac for a minute and I had a few connections at Sac State with some peeps that were down to form a chapter on campus so I helped this cat named Chris Santos as far as what he will need to do to form a chapter at school. Bringing the Sac State connect and community connect together we were able to form a strong core of people that are passionate about forming a Hip-Hop Congress chapter together. We’ve had 2 meetings so far and it seems like we’ve accomplished a lot. We’ve got our logo on flyers at events that are coming up in January and we’ve been hittin up shows like Nas and Prince Po of Organized Konfusion that have come to Sac. At our last meeting we’ve decided to plan for our Awareness Festival for next year sometime and coming up with a letter to ask businesses for donations, since we aren’t official at Sac-State to pull funds. Other then that we’ve been holdin it down in the 91sicness. yadadamean. aite well hope all you hip-hop heads have a safe and nice holidays. stay up, one. Wes Kuruhara.

INDY COMMUNITY:
The Indianapolis community chapter is currently developing a strong network of highly interested members, but also establishing the strengths and resources within the group. We have roughly 15 active members at each bi-weekly meeting and will be holding “elections” in January to overhaul the group’s efficiency. We are also currently running a petition/campaign to “Stop Violent Radio” as our primary task at this time. More developments coming in mid-January.

Peace, Nick Saligoe (MetroGnome)

WRIGHT COLLEGE:
This semester was our first sem up and running and a lot of the beginning of our club was just trying to get it established within the school, many technicalities put us on hold and a lot of processing paperwork set us back. We didn’t get to really start up our club until around halfway thru the semester and having people interested/in the club was no problem. I realized a few things: since our school is a community college no one really wants to spend their extra time being there, our school’s entire club system is built on liabilities and technicalities (I can’t even breathe without having to ask permission), we needed a room badly in the beginning (didn’t get one until a couple weeks from the end of the semester), half the club’s members had one schedule, the other half a completely different one, and a few other things that would have come in handy to know before the club was starting. Uhmm all in all, I know we could have done more, but learning the process of how our school works helped for future reference. Now the problem I left with is the budget office not recognizing us as a club. That won’t be worked out til at least Jan 3rd. I can say that we ended the semester with a show that had a better outcome than what we were given, but yea this first semester was very educational. lol, i’ll leave it at that.
peace and respect,
-Jet

USC:
This year USC was in a rebuilding phase. We had two general body meetings and had little to no success bringing bodies in.

We attempted to change our path by hosting a dope concert in USC’s acclaimed Ground Zero Coffee house. We had close to 100 people show up to watch such artists as The Pozerz and Los Angeles’ own Custom Made for a night of fun. Overall, the concert was a big success with people coming up to me after congratulating our chapter on a job well done. From this concert, USC was able to find a young man who will now take over Concert Operations for the USC chapter (something we hadn’t had in the past two years).

We were to have another concert with the nationally known breakdancing group “Massive Monkees” and One.Be.Lo, but our funding board backed out at the last minute hoping we do it next semester – LOOK OUT FOR RED TAPE!! So we are in the process of rescheduling this act for spring semester.

With the few Facebook shout outs, concert, and general body meetings, USC is on its way to rebuilding and bringing hip hop back to campus.

CAL STATE FULLERTON:
We got accepted back into the Association for Inter-cultural Awareness (AICA) and have been working on building and collaborating with some of the organizations in AICA.

We held a production workshop on with DJs: Nevi Nev (Soul Rock Affiliates), frank(e) (Fresh Air) and Choice37 (Captions) on September 18th and an emcee workshop with Congress artists: Rahman Jamaal and DLabrie on October 16th.

We participated in the Rally Against Hate on October 4th with various clubs and organizations on campus, as well as the Greeks, in response to a hate crime that involved CSUF students from the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Queer and Greek community.

We started a weekly jam called All Your Bass are Belong to Us (Kuddos to the nerds who get the reference), which is held in the Titan Quad every Thursday from 12noon – 1pm.

Friday, November 10th, we held Slow Your Role, a night of live bands, spoken word, and art with Mike the Poet, Blue Key Coretet, Kane, Brandon Francis, Kareya, Casablancas, and HHC DJs. It was held in the Titan Student Union Underground Pub from 8pm – 12midnight.

We had our end of the semester event on Thursday, November 16th, Revival of the Fittest 2 featuring performances by Brawdcast ( myspace.com/brawdcast) and Gio ( myspace.com/gioforadvice). Breaks were provided by our DJs frank(e), Soulfunky, and special guest Analog. We also had an open floor for our very supportive bboy community.

We also had an end of the semester banquet, where we dressed in suits and dresses and had all-you-can-eat sushi. We’re already planning our events for the the Spring semester, which will include a Hip Hop film festival, in addition to a ginormous show, which has yet to be named.

See y’all next semester. Peace.

UC IRVINE:
Heeey! long time! Hows everyone and everything….Hope you all are having a slammin’ winter break…Southern California is sunny still…but the ladies have busted out their Ugg boots and are wearing em proud. It’s so awesome. You guys just HAVE to be here. hahhaa…SIKE!. Now lets get to B-I-Bizness:

Fall Quarter at Irvine was real interesting, the administration has changed the funding application rules to where clubs and orgs have to propose an event and then ask for money in front of the funding board, instead of receiving a set budget for the quarter…and it’s like a jungle now. Clubs are up against other clubs for the available money, and no one is getting full funding or timely notice of funding for their events. So for our Back to the Roots event to celebrate Native American Heritage Month with Culture Shock Camp…we didn’t receive our allocated amount until the day before the actual event! Luckily we were in it with the American Indian Student Association who had received their funding before us so they paid for everything first…but I’ve about had it with the admin here at Irvine.

There’s so much red tape that we’re dealing with now…it’s whacktastic. Amplified sound is limited to one hour and you have to apply to play music and get interviewed for why you want to make noise pretty much. They’ve also forbidden bike riding and skateboarding on campus, what more can they say no to? So Hip Hop Congress will be fighting all this, we’re going to TAKE BACK THE POWER and we’re gonna make more noise than ever. This campus isn’t gonna know what hit em.

Enough of the frustration though, there’s hope for more great events…there’s some really dope first and second year kids who have been asking about how to keep HHC @ UCI going for their years, We’ve lost our core group of homies though…and me and Steven really miss you fools. You know who you are. Big ups to UCLA for starting HHC at their campus…and Gopi and UCR…you guys are holdin’ it DOWN!!! woot woot! All of us in Southern Cali are getting hooked up with free tickets for House of Blues shows, and we all got to witness Flavor Flav embarrass himself when Public Enemy came through…hahaha…it is what it is….

Mad love to the rest of you, I’ll keep up with them updates next quarter for sure Berko!
-anh-

J’s NEWS from the NORTHWEST:
*Due to the length I have posted this entire Northwest Update to this link: Here
If the link doesn’t work just hit up myspace.com/hhcongress and check the blog

Peace, and a pleasure to be in the loop with everyone!
Just wanted to pass this along.
Hollar!
-Jules C

UCLA:
We started off the quarter with the basic logistical work: rechartering our club, assembling our staff, etc. Once everything was in place we began the planning of our third annual Hip Hop Appreciation Week. The past two years we featured the likes of The Roots, Talib Kweli, Crown City Rockers, and One Man Army.

We also have had a panel discussion, movie screenings, a b-boy/b-girl competition, and a freestyle battle. Not only did we want to bring some of those events back this year, but we also wanted to add on to it. Our members wanted us to focus on the traditional four elements; therefore, we decided to keep the b-boy/b-girl competition, the freestyle battle, and add a DJ Exhibition and Art Show.

We also plan on keeping the panel discussion where we would bring UCLA professors, including Cheryl Keyes author of Rap Music and Street Consciousness, as well as other notable scholars of Hip Hop. We wanted to have a theme and we came up with “How the West was Won” focusing on West Coast artists, where we would feature those from Southern California and the Bay. It was then when we decided to start a Hip Hop Congress chapter. We believed that it would help us when contacting artists because of the large network base as well as give us more credibility when promoting events.

We also wanted to be involved in the Hip Hop community and it helped get our voice heard. Once we were in, we were able to get in touch with several people that could help us in search of a headline that would fit our theme. We decided on Jurassic 5 and began the works to bring them here. However, after we contacted them, we discovered that they would be in Tokyo, Japan the day of, and decided to nix that idea. We then went after Cypress Hill; however, they didn’t fit our budget. We finally settled on Ghostface Killah as our headline; and thus, put an end to our theme. However, we decided on Zion I & The Grouch to open for them, and possibly bring back Crown City Rockers or maybe even have Pigeon John for a noontime show earlier on in the week to keep that California representation.

For our DJ Exhibition we contacted DJ Icy Ice of the Beat Junkies and he has agreed to do something and bring some of the guys with him as well. Our b-boy/b-girl competition and freestyle battle will feature primarily students and possibly some guys from Project Blowed. Our Panel Discussion will relate to our original theme as we will discuss topics of gangster rap as well as Asians in rap and the influence of the Latino community. Next quarter our focus is to finish booking all of our acts, try and maybe work on some sponsorships, and promote as early and as often as possible for the big week of February 19th.

WASH U:
We successfully put some new life in the chapter in the form of fresh blood, and a budget request. Not so much has happened in the way of programming for this semester, but an ambitious number of things are in the works for next semester

U of COLORADO DENVER:
Well we started the chapter this past semester. It was a great beginning. Our first event sold out and was the most successful event an organization ever put together on campus. We raised lot of canned food and money for the homeless in Denver. If you would like to view the event trailer here is the link:HTTP://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1Zm72NFElw

Our current membership list is growing so there seems to be no limit to what we can do next semester. That it til then.

WILLAMETTE:
*Congrats to Gibbs for graduating*

This is the last update from Gibbs up here in the Willamette, the first chapter in the Northwest. Fall semester rolled right by, damn… We’ve been busy in our second year because fools know we do it big! And this is how we do.

October 19th we had our Awareness Festival at Lefty’s Pizzeria featuring Grayskul, Illmacullent, Braille Brizzy, and our Chapters own Hot in Pursuit (www.myspace.com/hotinpursuit). JG, our events chair, is the bearded fool in the video). The turnout was nice and the owner of the club let us book another date.

November 23rd JG and his crew HIP along with the HHC brought Lucky I Am and Acruze of Living Legends back up to Lefty’s. The show was hella tight, we had near capacity turnout (which saved JG’s butt) and the Salem crowd was feeling it. Yours truly ended up being Lucky I Am’s impromptu hype man on stage. It’s a long story….

December 1st we hosted Breakin ‘n Beats here at Willamette University featuring Defcom 5. B ‘n B was a break dancing exposition and teaching seminar. RoShawn (the illest Bboy in the NW hands down!) and his crew talked to over 100 people about why they got into Bboying and showcased their moves. The displayed over 15 moves, taught some basics to willingly volunteers, and then held down a 30 minute 5 on 5 Bboy battle for the crowd. The students we showing the Bboys some love. Good night.

December 8th we hosted the TIUA (Tokyo International University of America) farewell party on campus. THE TIUA students take all their classes on WU’s campus and are some cool peeps. We had DJ Shumpei and DJ UuGee spinning the ones and two’s, and had some performances by other TIUA students. Another good event, the TIUA students had a REAL good time. And that is what its all about.

I will say if y’all want to make events like these, fund raising and knowing the campus student club budget system are crucial. When I say fund raising I am referring to giving proposals to the President and Dean’s offices, not bake sales. That is where you will find the big money. Knowing the student club budget allocation process is also crucial as matching funds make fund raising easier. If y’all ever need any help with that, hit me up, I’ll drop the blue print on ya.

If we can get our fund raising goals met for next semester we have Dead Prez in February, and Seattle’s best The Blue Scholars for Conscious Overdose in April. Stay tuned

LINK OF THE WEEK:
This article was referred to me from DJ Trackstar. Check it out