Your New Hip Hop Year's Resolutions
Plus, a new place for us to be in community and updated event listings
🎉 Happy Slightly Belated New Year to friends, neighbors, supporters, and haters! I wanted to start 2025 by giving you my hopes for this upcoming year, as it relates to us anyway. I really do appreciate you being on this newsletter list and am always thinking about ways to bring value, like:
sharing innovative and inspiring Hip Hop news you likely aren’t hearing about elsewhere;
providing a calendar of dope, interdisciplinary Hip Hop events and important dates you won’t find compiled anywhere else (some good ones below);
penning a (hopefully) thought-provoking and compelling editorial here and there;
occasionally sharing some new and/or notable music releases;
adding new features/sections/interactivity in the (near) future (short artist interviews?);
…all in the service of amplifying the idea that Hip Hop music and culture possess incredible characteristics that, when authentically tapped by honorable stewards and advocates, hold unique keys to improving society — particularly the lives, livelihoods, and communities that have been historically under-served, under-resourced, and under-loved by the powers-that-currently-but-hopefully-won’t-always-be.
As I said in a previous edition, Hip Hop for the greater good!
If you’re here, this is something you’d probably like to see happen more often, but I believe it’s going to take a bit of work from us — and some original thinking — since those in power have never been very keen to revolutionary ideas that promote equality, equity, and freedom from oppression.
So as we start the year, I want you to think about what your New Hip Hop Year’s Resolutions might be. Not the things you might want FROM Hip Hop — but what you plan to do FOR Hip Hop. Things that WE can do that can help the culture live up to its full transformational potential.
🤔 YOU GO FIRST, MANNY…
Sure! For me, I have a bunch of things in mind and in play, but a main goal this year is an intentional focus on facilitating community. We have so many like-minded folks in our various personal and professional circles — friends, colleagues, educators, artists, nonprofit leaders, and members of the general public, whether they are Hip Hop’s cultural participants or otherwise. But ugh, there are so many PLATFORMS out there, and so much of the online dialog is engagement-bait, bots, and people who claim they care about “the culture” but honestly, have nothing worthwhile to contribute to it at all.
Not to mention the constant migrations from places like X to Threads to BlueSky, or Meta going MAGA, or TikTok being banned, or just having to glom on to whatever the next THING might be can all be utterly headspinning — breaking pun intended. 😁
We saw this happen with our friends at #HipHopEd and their weekly Twitter/X “Spaces” chat. I always wanted to host something similar, on Clubhouse or Twitter or X or whatever... But perhaps holding off was wise. After all, we’ve now seen #HipHopEd sunset those meetups as they too look for a place to coalesce around that isn’t as problematic as Elon’s Playland.
Some of you reading this are in the #HipHopEd circle. Many aren’t, but are aligned to these ideals in your own way, in your own field, or in your own lifestyle. Wouldn’t it be cool to be in the same space somehow? To be able to talk more amongst ourselves, sharing in this Hip Hop-inspired worldview in a safe place, shielded from the chaotic madness of public social platforms.
I’ll be honest. I don’t know how many of you will participate. 🤷♂️ But I wanted to put it out there and see if it was built, who might come. So, with that said…
The best I could come up with as to what and where this should be, is on Discord. For those familiar with the platform, this should make sense. It provides a private, easily managed, customizable, interactive, and accessible community platform, with a certainly-not-insurmountable learning curve for newbies. And while no online platform is perfectly unproblematic, I think we can feel fairly OK about this one.
(For those NOT familiar, Discord is actually something you might want to know about. Here’s a quick “what the hell is Discord” video. Here’s an article about Discord for teachers.)
Anyway, I’ve set up a Discord server for us, and I’ve invited some friends as early adopters so it won’t be totally empty. I would love to see you all swing by and see if this can become a thing for us like-minded folk who want to see the world made into a better place and feel that Hip Hop can play a part.
No obligation of course. We can keep our communications here. Or on Instagram. Or BlueSky. Or telepathy 💭.
But this might be cool. Check it out if you can!
📅 THE RESOLUTIONS WILL NOT BE TELEVISED
With that out of the way, I’d love to know some of YOUR Hip Hop resolutions for ‘25. I asked my Facebook folks and got some really cool, inspiring responses. I love the idea of resolving to do something FOR Hip Hop this year — whatever that might look like to you.
It could be as simple as sharing this newsletter or subscribing to the YouTube channel! 😁
Here’s what some of what my FB friends had to say:
LET ME KNOW YOURS SO I CAN SHARE IN THE NEXT NEWSLETTER!
🙏 MANNY THANKS
❤️ As always, thanks to our most recent supporters: Latoya P., Teremoana R., and Randy S. and huge shouts to the OGs of the supporting fam: Silent Knight, Mark E., Jesse G., Toast, Nicholas S., Briana C., Stephie, Cath, Morgan, Andrew Wang, Raphael Travis, Patrick, Chris J, Adam K, Tony P., Jaime F., Austin R. (from the Too Pretty band), Sarah R., Dr. Elliot Gann and AJ Woodson!🙏🙏🙏
All paid supporters receive discounts on HHCSA merch, freebies & other perks!
Help keep this newsletter aliiiive by upgrading here ⬇️
📅 INTERDISCIPLINARY HIP HOP EVENTS & IMPORTANT DATES
(This section brought to you by our brand new Discord community! Join the ongoing conversation today!)
Jan. 11, 2025 [D.C.]: Club Quarantine Live with D-Nice at The Kennedy Center
Jan. 15, 2025: CALL FOR PROPOSALS DUE for the 2025 Hip Hop Literacies Conference at The Ohio State University
Jan. 17, 2025: APPLICATIONS DUE for the Hip Hop Youth Research and Activism Youth Leaders Fellowship
Jan. 31, 2025: 🎂 MANNY FACES’ BIRTHDAY!!! 🥳
Jan. 31, 2025: CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS DUE for the next Words Beats & Life: The Global Journal of Hip-Hop Culture
Jan. 31, 2025: APPLICATIONS DUE for the Next Level international traveling artist residency
Saturdays, Through Feb. 22 [NYC]: Hip Hop Literacies Series at New Lots Library, Brooklyn
Mar. 21-23 [Columbus, OH] The 2025 Hip Hop Literacies Conference at The Ohio State University
April, 3-6, 2025 [D.C.]: Words, Beats & Life Festival
April 18-19, 2025 [Hartford, CT]: The Trinity International Hip Hop Festival
June, 2025 [NYC]: #HipHopEd Conference (Email hiphoped@gmail.com to be added to the update list)
November, 2025 [D.C.]: Third Annual Hip Hop Studies Conference at Howard University (More info to come)