Hip-Hop Club’s treasurer, Ben Walls and primary leader, Jacob Kogan. Credit: Courtesy of Jacob Kogan
Established in October, a group of first-year students set out to create Hip-Hop Club — a place for students to come together and learn about the genre in an engaging way.
According to Hip-Hop Club’s student organization page, the club was made as an ode to the hip-hop genre and now serves as a place for students to nurture their love for the genre by talking about different songs, artists and albums.
Jacob Kogan, a first-year in biology and primary leader of the club, said the idea for the club stemmed from hearing discourse about the hip-hop genre, and he realized that there can be a place to nurture the discussion.
Ben Walls, a first-year in computer science and treasurer of the Hip-Hop Club, said the club’s first meeting was a success, and he’s looking forward to its plans for future meetings.
“We did a thing called the ‘versus battle,’ where we compare two really popular rappers — we did Kanye [West] versus Kendrick [Lamar] — and actually, it got pretty heated,” Walls said. “As far as future meetings: versus battles, freestyle competitions, presentations on different subgenres, artists, albums.”
Kogan said along with its future plans, he hopes to use the club’s impact to take on something bigger.
“In the future, when the club starts to grow, obviously, we’re in the beginning stages of it, but we want to start raising money for this nonprofit called Hip Hop For Change,” Kogan said. “It kind of breaks down the social justice barriers between underrepresented and historically marginalized communities. So, it breaks down those barriers through using hip-hop as a vehicle.”
Kogan said joining the club does not require any previous musical knowledge, as the people who came to the first meeting all had different backgrounds with hip-hop — some with a lot of knowledge and others with less.
“There was some, like one of the members — and he ended up being the judge for our versus battle — had never heard a Kanye song or a Kendrick Lamar song,” Kogan said. “You do not need any experience, anyone can come, and you’re going to enjoy it.”
Walls said he wishes people knew the deeper meaning of what hip-hop really is and hopes people consider joining the club to learn more about this topic. He said some may view all rap as aggressive or violent but could enjoy other subgenres if exposed to them through the Hip-Hop Club.
Since the idea for the club was made in the middle of the semester, Walls said the founders considered waiting until the spring semester to start it but were all so eager to create and grow a community that they decided to start right away.
“We were, like, gonna push it off spring semester and just, like, start it then when we could do the involvement fair,” Walls said. “We realized that we wanted to start this as early as possible and just get on it, even if we only had seven people at the first meeting.”
Kogan said the club’s leadership is still figuring out a concrete schedule, and updates about future meetings are usually sent within the club’s GroupMe.
“For everyone that’s interested in joining, everything, all the information is sent out through our GroupMe,” Kogan said. “All of our information, where the meetings are, like any updates on the meetings that we’re going to be doing, in the future, etc., is all in the GroupMe.”
