“Virginia isn’t looked at as a hip-hop capital, but our influence and our presence is forever present,” says Vaughan Moss, co-founder of the newly-created Virginia Hip-Hop Foundation. “You can’t talk about this sector of music without including Virginia.”
Moss co-founded the Virginia Hip-Hop Foundation along with Linwood Johnson, Chauncey Jenkins, and Ricky Parker as a way to celebrate and preserve the rich hip-hop culture of Virginia. The group’s mission is to celebrate Virginia’s historic global influence on hip-hop culture through cultural talks, educational programming, digital content, archival preservation and community engagement.
For those unfamiliar, Virginia is home to many major names in the hip-hop world including Pharrell Williams, Missy Elliott, Timbaland and Clipse, but Moss feels that many other names go unnoticed.
“I think people don’t really know or give credit that The Lady of Rage is from Virginia,” he says. “We know her to be part of the Death Row crew, which is West Coast, but yeah, she’s from Virginia. That’s just one example.”
“Do people even know how many folks from here have had a major impact in hip-hop culture?” Jenkins asks. “Mad Skillz [nominated for a Grammy just last week for Best Spoken Word Poetry album] got his start here. We got Lonnie Liston Smith here. Harold Lilly wrote songs for Alicia Keys, Luther Vandross and Kanye West, and he’s this guy who plays piano at a local church. There’s just so many of these kinds of secrets of popular music we have in Virginia.”
The Virginia Hip-Hop Foundation began when Johnson and Parker were developing a hip-hop studies program at Virginia Union University around the same time Moss was working on a podcast that specifically focused on music from the Neptunes. They naturally came together, bringing in Jenkins, who also performs under the name Chance Fischer, to collaborate and ideas on cultivating a statewide hip-hop exhibition with a local museum began to form.
“We quickly learned that putting together a museum exhibit takes years,” Moss laughs, adding that while those pieces were being put in place, the group decided to build its own entity and use it as a way to celebrate and execute their bigger ideas.
“In our talks, we kept saying this thing is bigger than one artist. It’s fashion… it’s lyricism… it’s the culture,” Johnson says. “Virginia’s role in hip-hop is so major, yet low-key understated when we look at the conversation as a whole. So this is our opportunity through this program that we’re doing, culminating with this exhibition, to show the breadth of it.”
The Foundation’s first event, in partnership with the hip-hop studies program at Virginia State University, is a conversation about writing and hip-hop featuring local legends Mad Skillz and Nickelus F. Future programs plan to focus on the breadth and diversity of the various communities involved in hip-hop, including an event to celebrate women in hip-hop in March for Women’s History Month and an event to celebrate Asian Americans in hip-hop for Asian and Pacific American Heritage Month in May.
“That’s kind of our vision,” Moss says. “When people think of hip-hop, I think it’s easy for people to put it in a box, but our goal is to kind of break that kind of stigma. At the same time, we want to show the diversity in the communities that are involved. We are really intentional about making this a thing that’s going to be about the past, present and future.”
The Virginia Hip-Hop Foundation says the hip-hop museum exhibition will open in 2030 and details on that, including the museum partner, will be announced early next year.
“The idea is that as we continue to build toward a larger exhibit, we create opportunities for people to share their stories and create content so that we can start to essentially develop what are like living archives,” Jenkins says. “But having the opportunity to do that homegrown and be part of a living history, I think is extremely important to us.”
The Virginia Hip-Hop Foundation says the hip-hop museum exhibition will open in 2030 and details on that, including the museum partner, will be announced early next year. Also the group is in the early stages of building an advisory board with connections statewide, and encouraging community participation to help properly tell the story of every level of Virginia hip-hop culture.
“The Foundation is built not just for us, but it’s built to include everyone,” Johnson says. “From the super lyrical artists to the trap artists, this thing is built to celebrate us.”
Parker thinks the world is really paying attention to Virginia right now.
“Look at Pharrell with his Louis Vuitton line or Clipse putting out an album after 15 years or Timbaland having a street name after him,” he says. “I think this is just the beginning of something that’s going to be really big.”
The Virginia Hip-Hop Foundation presents “Pen Game: A Conversation About Writing in Hip-Hop” at Virginia State University’s Davis Hall on Wednesday, Nov. 12, 6-8 p.m. featuring Mad Skillz and Nickelus F. Tickets are $10 and free for current VSU students with valid ID. For more information on the Virginia Hip-Hop Foundation, visit virginiahiphopfoundation.org.
