Hip-Hop Collective is a dynamic University of Illinois-based hip hop community that welcomes and develops artists in a spirit of learning, collaboration, and hip hop innovation. On the College of Fine and Applied Arts’ website, they are described as a “Modern Ensemble.” Graduate student member Stephen Trent Bell describes Hip-Hop Collective as feeling “more like a band,” something he never imagined himself being a part of when he started making music.
The collective accepts experimental approaches, and you don’t even have to be a musician or songwriter to join. All that is needed is some way to know the group exists and a desire to learn more about hip hop expression and collaboration through practice. Or, if you are one of my recent interviewees, Femi Ishola, all you need is a friend to notice your budding musical abilities and an invitation to one of their Tuesday club meetings in the Music Building.
It is really quite easy to get involved. You can check out their Discord server to start meeting people, listening to their sounds, and trying your hand at offering feedback. This is a place where hip hop energy — the creative and enterprising spirit at the intersection of heart and hustle — lives and thrives, and is rewarded in kind.
On Saturday March 15th through the morning of Sunday March 16th, Hip-Hop Collective caravanned to Allerton Park & Retreat Center to have their semesterly lock-in event. Here, the group comes together for a collaborative creation marathon near the end of the school term.
The first evening at our remote-feeling location in Allerton was cloudy and cool. There was an air of open-mindedness (and uncertainty, even) as members hauled all manner of studio equipment into the two story House in the Woods. Bedrooms transformed into studios, living rooms into kitchens, and hallways into dynamic meeting grounds.
As an artist living and performing in Champaign for the past handful of years, I have intersected with HHC’s orbit a few times before this trip. The group’s table stuck out to me on U of I student Quad Day in 2022. I had just moved back into town, having graduated from the University in 2019, leaving as a history graduate, and returning that year as a hip hop creator and rapper.
The group grabbed my attention because, compared to most other registered student organizations campaigning around them that day, HHC presented as refreshingly Black. They had rap music playing, graffiti-style posters, and piercing eyes that caught me from a distance. Back then, they were flyering for their group’s performance at Canopy Club’s yearly Quad Day After Show where a bunch of members would be performing in a set as Hideout (the name under which the collective releases music).
As the full picture of this group began unveiling itself to me, I learned that this was a very diverse band of students, representing all creeds, colors, and abilities. But at this year’s lock-in, senior member Matthew Clayton stressed to me the larger role this music club plays in the institutional story of the University of Illinois. He told me how even though their focus is on connectivity, community, and making music, the organization “stands more for the presence of hip hop within education and within an academic setting.”
Passionate about political efforts to get the University of Illinois to respect and reflect Black culture, this organization has joined with the Hip Hop Innovation Center and other groups to collectively advocate for the instruction of hip hop courses in the School of Music. They want hip hop to be respected as a genre and treated as worthy of study alongside classical music and music education instruction.
The biggest impression that emerged from my interviews was that HHC, this organization and club — this transitory home — is a lab of learning. It is a place where desires meet to be quenched and cared for, where students take turns being each other’s teachers, and where the kinks of collaboration are worked out to produce tomorrow’s most forward-thinking hip hop artists.
Something special is happening in the basement of the Music Building on Tuesday nights at 7 p.m. I experienced it firsthand two Saturdays ago. This is an exciting group of artists, scientists, and empathetic team members who are richly equipping themselves through their experiences within Hip-Hop Collective for all manner of positive artistic disruption in this world, no matter what field of work they end up impacting after college.
Check out Hip-Hop Collective’s latest EP as Hideout, Keepsakes 03, and give their other releases a listen on any music streaming platform.
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