Chattanooga Hip-Hop Week brings national figures to celebrate local scene | Chattanooga Times Free Press

At Chattanooga Hip-Hop Week and Hip-Hop Summit, the city’s hip-hop community is coming together for a week of events to celebrate the dynamic cultural movement and some of what it’s influenced in the wider culture.

Starting Sunday and running through Oct. 13, multiple events are scheduled throughout Chattanooga, focusing on music, fashion, dance, basketball, poetry and art. Seminars to educate people about the business of music are also scheduled.

“We’re trying showcase that it’s not just music,” Sammy Loudermilk, a co-founder and board member of Hip-Hop Week, said in a phone call about the cultural movement. “There are other things that are related to the hip-hop culture that we take for granted sometimes and don’t really appreciate as much as we should.”

On Friday night, the event’s keynote speaker is Bun B, a rap artist based in Houston who was part of the legendary UGK rap group, Loudermilk said. Bun B is also an entrepreneur and co-founded Houston-based restaurant Trill Burgers. He was a judge recently on “Bet on Black,” a television series similar to “Shark Tank” that invests in business ideas.

“We have some workshops on Saturday as well, focused on financial literacy, the music business, careers in the music business industry, resources for the music business,” Loudermilk said.

(READ MORE: Chattanooga Hip-Hop Week closes Saturday with day of events and education)

This is the sixth Hip-Hop Summit, Loudermilk said. The event began with a collective called Hip-Hop CHA that hosted local showcases and classes in Chattanooga. There was a lot of musical and creative talent in the Scenic City, he said, but turning that talent into a career requires an additional set of skills.

“They were lacking some of the business acumen,” he said of the hip-hop community at the time. “And so we decided to pivot away from doing shows and all the fun stuff to really focus in on helping our local artists create themselves as entrepreneurs.”

The first summit attracted about 20 people, but now the gathering has multiple events throughout the city, high-profile sponsors and support from the business community, as well as recognition from the city.

HIP-HOP EVENTS

Erika Roberts is a poet, Hip-Hop Week committee member and lover of all things hip-hop.

In a phone call, she said she remembers crying as a child when a neighbor said hip-hop was just a fad. But after 50 years since its birth on the streets of New York City, she said she loves how the culture is still going strong and continues to widen its reach and influence.

The Hip-Hop Summit engages participants in the hip-hop community — including dancers, lyricists, rappers, DJs and digital creators — for educational sessions, Roberts said, while Hip-Hop Week is an extended way to celebrate hip-hop throughout Chattanooga.

She encouraged people to visit the event listing on Chattanooga Hip-Hop Week’s website and use it like a map to explore what’s happening.

Organizers are also bringing in national talent, she said, including Hype Williams, a director who rose to fame in the 1990s producing videos for Missy Elliot, TLC and many other big names, and Obbie West, a spoken word poet and entrepreneur.

(READ MORE: Chattanooga Hip-Hop Week to showcase local art form)

There’s something for everybody at Hip-Hop Week, she said, from bar crawls to poetry to clout trap, a local artist showcase competition. Even people who don’t think hip-hop is for them have probably been influenced by hip-hop, she said, and could find something to enjoy at one of the events.

“There’s a crazy creativity throughout the entire week that’s so amazingly on-brand for Chattanooga, especially the creatives,” she said.

HIP-HOP VALUES

Similar to how hip-hop uses audio samples from all genres of music to make something new, Roberts said, hip-hop (art)chitecture is a mindset that repurposes old buildings for new uses. On Oct. 9, there will be a (art)chitecture museum pop-up at StoveWorks, according to the event listing.

The exhibit will feature the work of young people from Chattanooga Hip-Hop Architecture Camp 2024, where they tell their “sole stories” by redesigning shoes, according to the event’s flyer. The exhibit honors Dapper Dan, Roberts said. Dapper was a Harlem hip-hop pioneer who redesigned knock-off fashion brand clothing to make something new and more fabulous.

“Hip-hop is that quintessential, of taking what they had and making it new. Taking parts of disco, the get-down part, taking the part of the break that was the good part and using it, looping it in,” she said. “In hip-hop, that’s what we’ve done.”

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Making the best out of what you have is another principle of hip-hop, she said, giving the example of her brother and his friends making their own knee pads and linoleum dance floor for the acrobatic spins in break dancing.

Much of New York City was dilapidated in the 1980s, so hip-hop artists used spray paint to express themselves on their surroundings through graffiti. Now that impromptu art adorns the walls of top museums like Hunter Museum, she said.

In hip-hop’s early days, it was hungrier and more grassroots, Roberts said, eager for the street stories of poverty, racism and oppression to be heard. Those stories still needs to be heard, but she said hip-hop keeps evolving and reaching into more communities and aspects of life.

“We still represent what stays trending,” she said of the hip-hop community and all that it’s influenced. “There are even country rappers. That’s bananas, but I’m here for it all. I love every single bit of it.”

In 2017, the event was held at the Chattanooga Choo Choo, she said, but now it has spread out all over the city. Due to her love of hip-hop, it just made sense to get involved, she said, when Loudermilk first asked her to participate.

The same age as hip-hop, Roberts said she can’t imagine where hip-hop will be in it future but seems certain its legacy will continue to grow — and that she’ll be a part of that effort.

SINCE THE BEGINNING

Shoey Russell said he’s been attending Hip-Hop Week since the beginning, and this year he’s looking forward to the chance to meet Bun B and attend all the events.

“It’s always been very informative as far as giving information to artists or managers or anybody that’s in music,” he said about the event in a phone call. “What I usually take away is all the knowledge.”

Born and raised in Chattanooga, he said the event helps bring everyone in the local hip-hop scene together.

As part of the Chattanooga hip-hop community, he said he’s a DJ who performs locally and regionally and also manages a collective of artists called TheHouse, including YGTUT. Isaiah Rashad, who is signed to Kendrick Lamar’s Top Dawg Entertainment label, is a co-founder of the collective.

Russell encourages anyone interested in the music industry to come to Hip-Hop Week events as a way to network and learn more about how the business works. He also said he’ll be DJing the mixer/after-party Oct. 11 at No Hard Feelings after Bun B’s event at the Bessie Smith Cultural Center. He invited the public to attend.

Contact Andrew Wilkins at awilkins@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6659.

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