Ten years ago, Hil Hackworth, emcee for DysFunktional Family, was struggling to find an outlet until he discovered Athens’ own Hip-Hop Shop. Now, he runs the show.
“The idea was really to get a place where hip-hop was accepted,” Hackworth said. “It’s an open stage where anyone can play hip-hop music, but that doesn’t mean you’re not going to get judged.
“If you suck, you will be let known.”
This month’s Hip-Hop Shop will be held Thursday at The Union, 18 W. Union St., with DJ Comp-B spinning and featuring group Grey Market.
The Hip-Hop Shop is meant to represent the four main tenets of hip-hop: the DJ, the emcee, graffiti and break dancing, Hackworth said.
“Hip-hop is not what is on MTV or BET,” Hackworth said. “Hip-hop shop is not about smackin’ hoes, and getting ice and jewelry on your neck ... It’s about hip-hop music, it’s about poetry, it’s about fun and it’s about art.”
Comp-B also added that the Hip-Hop Shop represents a fifth element, which is the music’s history. While the event’s acts get ready for their performance, Comp-B gives the audience a little history lesson, Hackworth said.
“I like to play the original funk song or jazz song and then play the song that had sampled it,” Comp-B said. “People can see where the songs originally came from.”
What makes this shop so special is that it will be Hackworth’s 30th birthday celebration during which he will also release a digital copy of his first solo record, Hidden in Lyrics — HiL.
Hackworth and Comp-B engineered the tracks but it was entirely mixed, mastered and written by Hackworth.
“The DysFunktional Family has always been about collaboration and I just wanted to have fun on my own for a second,” Hackworth said.
He added that the album was inspired by some emotional trouble as he had just broken up with his girlfriend of three years right around the time DysFunktional Family’slast album dropped.?“I found myself living in abig house that I couldn’t really afford,” Hackworth said. “With all of that brings self-loathing and more thinking and before I knew it, I had five songs written.”
Hidden in Lyrics has a theme of loss, contemplation and realization, which are the three phases Hackworth went through after his breakup.
“People believe that playing a solo lick on a guitar is somehow more talented than playing a verse from a rapper, which is not true,” Hackworth said. “This is a thing that can be taken seriously.”
