(AllHipHop News) A crowd-funded documentary aims to give light to the writers and journalists that have documented the culture of Hip-Hop through the years.
Journalist and film maker Syreeta Gates has three more days to meet her ultimate goal of $30,000 to get the documentary funded by those that support the vision of “Write On! The Legend of Hip-Hop’s Ink Slingers.”
The project must hit a that goal by Fri, March 9 2018 11:01 PM eastern standard time, according to the site.
Gates explained in a statement what prompted her to initiate this weighty project.
“A few years ago, I was the Editor-in-Chief of an online hip-hop publication and realized that I didn’t know any of the journalists. My mental at the time matched a few names with faces, but there wasn’t substantial information about these people to be found. I went to Google and practically fell down a rabbit hole trying to find out more information about the people behind the pen. Things like, what they looked like, what they sounded like or why they started writing in the first place. I had so many questions about them personally and about their love for hip-hop. But unfortunately I couldn’t find anything online.This led me on my own journey to start collecting magazines. I was born in some say the greatest year of hip-hop, 1988, so with that said it wasn’t like I was reading Rap Pages or Stress Magazine. I wasn’t buying those magazines back then, but I do remember seeing them around when I visited my uncles and cousins, because that’s what they were reading. And that’s when hip-hop chose me, I didn’t really have a choice.”
At the time of this writing, the project had raised $22,491.
Gates has already conducted about 33 interviews that include scribes like Minya “Miss Info” Oh, Miles Marshall Lewis, Elliot Wilson and others. She will be working with journalist, author and former AllHipHop editor Kathy Iandoli, the screenwriter. She said the support is needed for music rights and other clearances.
Continuing, Gates said that the writers and scribes held a unique, dual role in the annals of Hip-Hop as history and also historians.
“These journalists captured so much history and information with their pens and pads. They had connections to musical history that my generation would never understand, but would want to,” she said. “They grew up with people who would become legends. And they too would be legends in their own right. They grew up with Hip-Hop.”
Writing in Hip-Hop is often thankless work, a notion that Gates said further inspired her to forge ahead with her plans.
“Fast forward to today, and this documentary serves as a digital thank you letter to the original historians and ghostwriters of hip-hop as we know it. What we know and love of Hip-Hop comes from the pens of people who dared to give a voice to a culture most thought wouldn’t last. These journalist defied the odds, and the more I said their names and shared their work on social media, these journalists literally started showing up for me. I started interacting with them online and in person, and one by one they said yes to my idea and convinced their peers to say yes as well. I was grateful and surprised by every yes because I knew they were counting on me, even with my limited experience, to tell their stories and get it right.”
To support “Write On! The Legend of Hip-Hop’s Ink Slingers” all you have to do is click here and make an offering by March 9th, a nearly sacred day in Hip-Hop. CLICK HERE.