Contact High at MoPop
I’m in Seattle again, but this time I get to do tourist things so we bulldozed through the main attractions at the Seattle Center. Enter Contact High: A Visual History of Hip Hop, where I “geeked out” for lack of a better word. Music-wise, catch me listening to everything for Bach to Tupac, but Hip Hop and R&B are my top genres so seeing something that has brought me so much joy throughout my life in the wild is the type of serotonin that I can’t get enough of.
One thing I’d like to acknowledge before anything else is how fucking phenomenal it is to have hip hop in a museum. Museums have a history of setting up barriers for people of color alone and content like this would have been turned away at one point so cultural institutions have come a long way. Even recently, I saw that LACMA was showcasing ceramics that depicted pop culture references with an almost low brow aesthetic. I’m happy to see that we are actively witnessing more institutions evolve to highlight works that are beyond the traditional norms.
Navigating through this exhibit feels like opening a box that you came across while cleaning out your garage. I didn’t live these lives, but if you’re into music, you’ll know that feeling at how personal this is. You know how powerful music is and how it’s probably influenced your style, mannerisms, and perspectives. Over half of these artists were famous before I was alive or could even comprehend who these people were, but they feel like my aunties and uncles that raised me.
This exhibit displays an extensive collection of photographs and artifacts from iconic moments in hip hop history, highlighting each regional sound and the most notable individuals. It goes in depth of some of the stories attached to them and places an emphasis on what would be forgotten history that the mainstream neglects to bring to light. It then goes further to address the present state of hip hop, displaying modern day artists such as Nicki Minaj, Cardi B, and A$AP Rocky. I have to say that this collection was extremely well done and I’d love to see more at least on a national level.
