BOSTON, Massachusetts (Achieve3000, May 30, 2018). The music of Boston's early hip-hop and rap scene is being preserved online. The songs were recorded decades ago. It was well before artists such as Drake and Cardi B topped the charts. But the older songs have been brought back by a university and a public library. Their efforts are part of a movement that has researchers and historians studying hip-hop.The project was led by researchers at the University of Massachusetts Boston (UMass) and the Boston Public Library. They created the Massachusetts Hip-Hop Archive. It was launched online in 2016. Now, it's a collection of more than 400 demo tapes. They were recorded by the city's top hip-hop and rap artists in the 1980s. The collection also includes audio from a Boston radio show. The host of the show discovered many hip-hop acts.

Why did UMass create the archive? It was partly to recognize Boston's role in the history of hip-hop. Hip-hop started in New York City in the 1970s. It later spread to Boston. Artists there would record rhymes over danceable beats. Many of the Boston groups or artists in the UMass collection aren't household names. But they're still important. Recordings such as The Almighty RSO and Guru capture a time when artists were seeking a new sound.

"This collection is a very complete look at a scene that nobody has heard about, at a moment when rap was just exploding," Pacey Foster, a rap historian and UMass professor said. "It will have natural interest for academics."

UMass took advantage of that interest in May 2018. Members of Boston's hip-hop community took part in an event called "Show 'Em Whatcha Got." They brought photos and recordings to the Boston Public Library. Staff then digitally added them to the growing archive.

Hip-hop collections aren't new, however. There are other schools with hip-hop archives. They include Harvard University in Massachusetts and Cornell University in New York. A library that serves four historically African American colleges in Atlanta, Georgia, has another. It houses the notebooks and letters of rap legend Tupac Shakur.

Meanwhile, more U.S. colleges are offering classes on hip-hop. This approach to hip-hop as a scholarly subject is fairly new.

UMass offered a course on hip-hop in 2014. That year, New York University's Tisch School of the Arts offered a course called "Sean Combs and Urban Culture." It explores the career of hip-hop giant Sean "Diddy" Combs. Also in 2014, the University of Missouri started a course exploring the work of two rap stars. It's titled "English 2169: Jay-Z and Kanye West."

At some colleges, students can take their study of the genre to a more advanced level. Bowie State University is a historically black college in Maryland. Students there can earn a minor in hip-hop studies. In 2012, the University of Arizona offered the very first minor in hip-hop studies. A year later, rapper Nasir Jones—known as "Nas"—established a fund at Harvard University for scholars of hip-hop.

The idea of studying and preserving hip-hop history is spreading. University presses have published dozens of textbooks on rap and hip-hop's political and cultural importance.

Collections like the Massachusetts Hip-Hop Archive are important. They will allow the history of hip-hop to be studied for generations to come.

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