{"id":17011,"date":"2025-10-23T06:04:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T06:04:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/17011\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T06:04:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T06:04:08","slug":"the-mixtape-exhibit-comes-to-lbj-library-the-austin-chronicle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/17011\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mixtape Exhibit\u201d Comes to LBJ Library\u00a0 \u2022 The Austin Chronicle"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hip-hop is officially middle-aged, but its mortality is hardly in question. Half a century after the genre\u2019s birth, the GRAMMY Museum celebrated the lovechild of funk and DJ culture with an expansive exhibit at its Los Angeles home base. Now, the Recording Academy is keeping the party going, sending the collection out on the road. Until Jan. 4, poignant artifacts of hip-hop\u2019s cultural influence on music, fashion, dance, street art, and activism are on display at the LBJ Presidential Library<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Walking through the display starts as it should: with sound. L.A. dance pioneer Egyptian Lover\u2019s original Roland TR-808 drum machine, adorned with his customized hieroglyphics, is the first thing you see upon entry. The tremble of an 808 beat has been recorded, re-digitized, and reused so many times that it\u2019s a household name. If you haven\u2019t heard of it, you\u2019ve certainly heard its bass-blending, boombox-quaking sound in hip-hop songs and beyond. Still, as my tour guide points out, many people have never been face-to-face with the machine behind the sound. Introducing audiences to the material culture behind sounds and trends is the name of the game for this exhibit.<\/p>\n

As you step further into hip-hop\u2019s history, you\u2019ll brush up on its great coastal feud and the early record labels started by Dr. Dre and Jay-Z. Nearby, the young genre\u2019s interminable struggle against the music industry\u2019s maligned treatment of their artwork peeks through in notes on Wu-Tang Clan\u2019s label-lassoing power moves. Further in, an essay by Tupac and Chuck D\u2019s handwritten lyrics\u00a0to Public Enemy\u2019s \u201cFight the Power\u201d pull the scope back, reminding audiences that hip-hop was born of resistance to racism and bigotry everywhere.<\/p>\n

\"\"Chuck D\u2019s \u201cFight the Power\u201d lyrics Credit: Jay Godwin \/ LBJ Presidential Library<\/p>\n

Among the musical artifacts, influential fashion pieces serve as colorful reminders of beloved music videos and GRAMMY performances. Most strikingly, custom designer suits worn by Biggie Smalls and Tupac in music videos stand side-by-side. My tour guides tell me their position is at the request of the rappers\u2019 respective families \u2013 whatever that means for their families\u2019 retrospective feelings on their rivalry.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy hosting Hip-Hop [America]: The Mixtape Exhibit, the LBJ Presidential Library is opening our doors to wider audiences and celebrating the power of music as history,\u201d writes Lara Hall, head museum curator at the LBJ Presidential Library, in a press release. \u201cThis exhibit helps us connect with new communities and share stories that reflect the breadth of the American experience.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

In many ways, connecting and sharing is what hip-hop, and the many subgenres that have spun off of it, is all about. The exhibit links sound to object, ideas to artwork, album covers and music videos to the cars and clothing that cemented them in cultural memory.<\/p>\n

\"\"Tupac and Biggie outfits stand side-by-side at \u201cThe Mixtape Exhibit\u201d Credit: Jay Godwin \/ LBJ Presidential Library<\/p>\n

The GRAMMY Museum\u2019s chief curator and VP of curatorial affairs, Jasen Emmons, and his team came to explore hip-hop regionality by necessity \u2013 place has always played a huge role in the artists\u2019 identities and lyrics \u2013 and, almost, by accident. Faced with incorporating a giant map of the United States in the exhibit\u2019s original L.A. location, the GRAMMY Museum curators were inspired to tackle hip-hop\u2019s locale-specific sounds.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of our advisors, Davey D, said something during a meeting one time that always stayed with me, which was: \u2018Acknowledging people in a scene is as important as artifacts,\u2019\u201d Emmons says. Consequently, a digital map on display at LBJ contains a list of acts broken down by region, contributed to by industry insiders and exhibit visitors across the nation.<\/p>\n

Austin may not have a scene historic enough to be on the map (yet!), but clicking through Houston\u2019s list \u2013\u00a0or wherever your second home city may be \u2013 it\u2019s easy to get swept up in the mixture of pride and curiosity that underlies this exhibit as a whole.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Whether you\u2019re a beatboxing pro or a rhyme and rhythm novice, you\u2019ll find something to appreciate in this lowrider nostalgia cruise through five decades of beat-breaking cultural flow.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201c[Hip-hop] has somehow been a form that\u2019s allowed a lot of flexibility, and it\u2019s built all this other culture around it that has continued to resonate with people,\u201d says Emmons. \u201cFor us, as part of the Recording Academy, it was really important to try and tell the story in a broad, multifaceted way and try to reflect how important it is,\u201d Emmons says. \u201c[Hip-hop] is not only not going away, it\u2019s continuing to have this incredible vitality.\u201d<\/p>\n

This article appears in October 24 \u2022 2025<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A note to readers:\u00a0Bold and uncensored,\u00a0The Austin Chronicle\u00a0has been Austin\u2019s independent news source for over 40 years, expressing the community\u2019s political and environmental concerns and supporting its active cultural scene. Now more than ever, we need your support to continue supplying Austin with independent, free press. If real news is important to you, please consider making a donation of $5, $10 or whatever you can afford, to help keep our journalism on stands. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hip-hop is officially middle-aged, but its mortality is hardly in question. Half a century after the genre\u2019s birth,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17012,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,13366,13367,13368,13369,13370,13371,13372,13373],"class_list":["post-17011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-biggie-smalls","tag-chuck-d","tag-dr-dre","tag-egyptian-lover","tag-jasen-emmons","tag-lara-hall","tag-lbj-presidential-library","tag-wu-tang-clan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17011\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}