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In 2001, the New York Folklore Society and the Brooklyn-based Urban Think Tank embarked on a collaborative project documenting Hip Hop. The Community Scholars at Urban Think Tank (UTT), a "nonpartisan, community-based home for a body of thinkers in the Hip Hop generation" identified collections important to the development of Hip Hop culture. Vee Bravo, Yvonne Bynoe, and Chic Smith of the UTT recognized the need to document this material, provide access to it, and preserve it for the future.

UTT Community Scholars interviewed collection holders, and archivist Nancy Johnson produced a narrative summary of each collection, and a MARC record. The UTT identified eighteen significant collections of documentation in varied formats: commercial and homemade sound recordings in many different media; photographs, some professionally shot, some amateur, documenting people, fashions, breakdancing contests, subway art; sketchbooks; flyers and posters; interviews; even clothing. The collection summaries are available here:

• Henry Chalfant: Style Wars—documentary film about Hip Hop’s early days
  
  
• DAZE: Graffiti "black book" (sketchbook)
  
  
• DJ Mecca (Jasmin Genevieve Thames): Hip Hop record collection
  
  
• Ivan "Doc" Rodriguez (DJ Doc): Photographs and memorabilia
  
  
• Ivan "Doc" Rodriguez (DJ Doc): Gold record awards
  
  
• DOZE Green: Polaroid photographs
  
  
• Coralee Evans: Hip Hop coats
  
  
• Derek Johnson: Hip Hop sound recordings
  
  
• Kathy Moses: Hip Hop sound recordings and promotional jacket
  
  
• Jorge Pabon (performer known as PopMaster Fabel): Hip Hop videotapes and memorabilia
  
  
• Jamel Shabazz: Photographs for book  Back in the Days
  
  
• April Silver: Documentation for first American Hip Hop conference: "Seizing the Cultural Initiative: Hip Hop at its Crossroads" (1991)
  
  
• April Silver: Hip Hop recordings and promotional materials
  
  
• Thembisa Mshaka-Morris: KRS 1 Interview
  
  
• Thembisa Mshaka-Morris: Marketing plan for The Notorious B.I.G.’s Life After Death album
  
  
• Thembisa Mshaka-Morris: Hip Hop artist photographs
  
  
• Thembisa Mshaka-Morris: Wu-Tang Clan autographed record
  
  
• Thembisa Mshaka-Morris: A Tribe Called Quest Interview (1996)
  
  
• Martha Cooper: Hip Hop Files: Photos, ephemera, books and clippings
  
  

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