Hip Hop 50 Boombox is a series of monuments, public events, & mixtapes that examine Hip Hop as a global liberation movement rooted in the history of the sugar, tobacco and cotton industries; and resistance to colonialism. These site-specific sculptural monuments are constructed out of sugarcane and cotton boomboxes. They play mixtapes made of people’s favorite freedom songs, their personal stories and interludes from historians discussing the history of the sugar, tobacco and cotton industries and their impact on the Americas, Europe and Africa. Sugarcane and cotton represent two of the largest cash crops that built the billion-dollar economies of the Americas and the European colonial powers. As icons of Hip Hop, the boomboxes represent a parallel between Hip Hop’s role in the entertainment industry and sugar & cotton’s role in building the wealth of “Western Civilization.” Each of these billion-dollar industries can be traced to the labor and ingenuity of Black and indigenous bodies. However, Black communities have received minimal intergenerational wealth from these industries. These new monuments will play a mixtapes comprised of favorite Hip Hop songs, oral histories of liberation, and historians discussing the significance of sugar and cotton in creating wealth extracted from the Americas.

The mixtapes tell a more accurate history of European colonialism and the wealth that was extracted from the Americas through the sugar and cotton industries. These monuments will also exist as public art installations that engage the public in music and narratives related to their daily lived experiences but more importantly the historical narratives broadcast by these mixtapes and podcasts will directly counter the current attempts to legislate sanitized history, which is all a direct threat to our experiment in democracy. The ultimate goal is to create impact locally and globally through the use of sculpture, music and technology in an accessible, entertaining way, and connect communities in diverse geographic locations in their efforts to reclaim history and access to natural resources.