The Hip Hop Hall of Fame Museum, which will be the city’s first institution focused on the popular music genre, is headed for midtown and Harlem.
It will feature memorabilia items such as jackets, turntables and posters donated by artists like Run-DMC, Salt-N-Pepa, Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube, Outkast, Young Jeezy, Common, Eminem, Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataam, according to the museum’s organizer.
“This will be the home of hip hop history,” said JT Thompson, who produced BET’s one-time Hip Hop Hall of Fame Awards show in the 90s.
“People need to understand the importance of hip hop, the elements, the DJs, the B-boys and B-girls and the graffiti writers,” he added.
The Harlem site on 125th St. will include a 12,000-square-foot museum space, a coffee and juice bar, shops and a TV studio.
It will also serve 50 children annually through its youth media program, Thompson said.
The museum’s midtown location, which will be located near Times Square, will boast similar amenities in its 50,000-square-foot space — in addition to 90-minute tours and an interactive exhibit for fans.
The total project costs nearly $80 million, Thompson said.
About $50 million has already been raised, and an Indiegogo crowd-funding campaign has been launched to collect $500,000 more, he added.
Organizers hope to break ground in the summer of 2015 and open the museum to the public in 2017.
The “Four Fathers” of hip hop — Afrika Bambaataa, Grand Wizzard Theodore, Grandmaster Melle Mel and Grandmaster Caz Brown — had pushed for the city’s first hip hop museum to be based in the Bronx, the birth place of hip hop.
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