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There are a lot of academics that are thinking about how culture affects the world.
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Hip-Hop Think Tank was organized by students in 2005.
Dr. Karin Stanford was actually the originator of it.
Her and number of her students wanted to organize an organization that looked at hip-hop not just as a thing of entertainment,
but as something that actually dealt with issues of knowledge and culture.
And trying to see hip-hop from a larger perspective,
not just as something that's commodified or can be bought on the shelf
but an experience where its about break-in, about MC'ing about DJ'ing, about graffiti art,
and also the fifth element about hip hop is knowledge.
And so we felt it was important to bring knowledge, to bring discussion into an intellectual debate, into the realm of what hip-hop is.
These conferences are very important for that, for bouncing ideas off of each other.
I think into this void, the absence of a movement, comes hip-hop.
Spitting out the rage and the words of the voiceless.
So far its not moving along (laughs).
So all we have left of a social, radical, progressive movement in America, is the word,
and the word is hip-hop.
And we wanted to make sure we could bring these different communities, different organizations, different, experiences together, into one place,
and hopefully, through this day, you know, numbers are being exchanged,
people are signing up to join this group over here, do that over there.
Okay, if you are a rapper or an artist, I can rap or write a song, maybe this person and I can work together to make songs.
We want that kind of collaboration to happen out of here. Again, that's bridging the gaps as well.
Not just bridging them, our perception of them, what we do next, what is the take away.
For me it's people taking it away, getting involved, in new movements, but making new music, making new culture,
we hope all that stuff comes out of today, so that's what we really want to do with this.
Thank you very much, thank for for doing this, this is beautiful.