HIGHTLIGHTING HIP-HOP

In a recent night at Teter Quad, rhythmic beats unconsciously slipped into the steps of students walking through the halls. With the grooving noise building and the lyrics growing bolder, students discovered themselves immersed in a strange world at battle with very uncommon weapons directing the flow of punishment -- two turntables and a microphone. These are the weapons of choice used in the underground art of MC battling, where the victor is he who has better mastery of the spoken word.\nThis underground world of indie hip-hop hits Bloomington this evening and will be featured throughout this year's Hip Hop Congress Awareness Festival. Running through March 6, this year's festival will highlight a number of local venues and provide a vast array of performers, both from the national and local level. With the support of numerous campus organizations, this year's event will concentrate on celebrating cultural diversity, educating and encouraging voter registration, promoting campus involvement and, of course, showcasing the appeal of hip-hop. The HHC has harnessed this appeal to set people into action within the community.\n"The HHC is a non-profit, non-partisan organization that was organized in southern California with the main goal to use the power and influence of the hip-hop culture to unite, empower and revolutionize youth," says Aaron Berkowitz, HHC chapterhead at IU.\nFeatured at the Bluebird tonight will be the F5 Records Spring Tour lineup of Jia Davis, DJ Crucial, Toyy and Serengeti. Hailing from St. Louis, these performers have all found their way into the national spotlight.\nFor six years, the St. Louis underground legend Jia Davis has been on the scene as a member of Bits N Pieces, and has recently released his first solo project, Experienced. Toyy has also recently released her debut album, while DJ Crucial spent the last eight years behind the hardware and shared the stage with the likes of The Roots, Outkast, Tone Loc and Crucial Conflict.\nThis F5 Records lineup will also be performing a free show Friday at the WIUS Station House at 8 p.m. This performance will offer a more intimacy as the artists will entertain questions from the audience afterward. This interaction will be an opportunity to discuss hip-hop, its culture and the arrangement of the event.\n"(I) am excited about the show and proud to bring great entertainment to Bloomington," says WIUS Special Events Coordinator Amy Herman. "Basically, situations like this are what hip-hop is all about. It's an opportunity to offer your knowledge and skills to bring something new to the table. I'm just glad I get to be involved in the process."\nThe culmination of the festival, appropriately dubbed "The Culmination," will be a free show on March 6 at the Indiana Memorial Union where the HHC will stage and "bring the element of Hip hop together in a massive forum," as stated in their press release. The featured events will encourage audience participation as two battles will take place, each with a $100 purse.\nThere will be an MC battle staging witty lyricists against one another "8-Mile"-style, and another battle will find limber dancers competing in a b-boy breakdancing battle. This b-boy battle will showcase the skills of the IU Breakers, a breakdancing club, as well as any hidden talent within the community.\n"We encourage anyone else with breaking skills who may not be involved in the club to come out and challenge us," says IU Breakers President Sion Owen. "This will be the first battle in Bloomington that the IU Breakers have been involved in, and we hope to make it a great one."\nThe final event will be a performance by the CunninLynguists, a trio comprised of Deacon The Villain, Mr. SOS and Kno, who, according to its Web site, aims to make music which reminds listeners why they started liking hip-hop in the first place.\n"We're trying to bring back that feeling music gave people not even a decade ago," Deacon says. "When it was about telling the story of your life ... when the focus was internal."\nCunninLynguists has received tremendous press for its two previously released albums. The latest, Southernunderground, was independently released with Freshchest Records last April.\nDeacon says the CunninLynguists are directed its attention to reposition the spotlight from the stereotypical and often negative light cast on hip-hop, and more towards music which is a true expression of the culture. \n"As a hip-hop group, we are trying to utilize music to teach and release," Deacon says. "Hip-hop has been dying, but it isn't the only genre of music that has fallen victim to supersaturation and formula-based artistry."\nThe events kicking off tonight will be jam-packed with non-stop hip-hop and old-school style, incorporating all the fundamental elements which have kept the music pumping. For those wary of the direction mainstream hip-hop is heading, Deacon reaffirms "real hip-hop is coming back … we're not worried"