Hip-Hop 101.. and then some

Because hip-hop isn't the type of music I generally like or listen to, I decided to look at and evaluate Wisconsin State Journals interactive website Hip-Hop 101 and see how much time I would spend on the page. Hip-hop 101 won the Online News Associations Journalism Award for Outstanding Use of Digital Media for a small publication in 2007.

Hip-Hop 101 is a page intended to educate people about hip-hop and the activities of the hip-hop community in the Madison area. On the site’s home page, hip-hop is described as being more than just music, it is described as a culture. For this reason, I think it is very fitting that WSJ chose to cover this story in a non-traditional way. Because hip-hop is not just music, but fashion, breakdancing, DJing, MCing, poetry, and beatboxing as well, it seems right that different multimedia vehicles should be used to cover the different elements of this culture.
Though the website is chock-full of content, it is presented in a very simple and easy to navigate yet innovative fashion.

The links section of the website has been cleverly designed into a spinning album with the links circling on the record. For some reason I did find myself more inclined to click on all the links because they were presented in this way. If the links alone were presented so creatively I found myself wondering how the actual topics linked to would be covered.

After visiting all 5 links: DJing, MCing, graffiti, breakdancing, and poetry, I had barely noticed I had passed nearly 20 minutes perusing the site. Because all of the subjects weren’t simply covered using text but video and slideshows as well, I found myself more interested. Naturally when the subject is dancing or rhyming, these are more effective and interesting when actually heard and seen. The DJing link even had a little game in where the user could scratch their own beat.

I also liked the section where different artists described on video what they thought hip-hop was. This gave the story a personal element to it, and also made it more interesting to me.
Overall I thought the website did a good job of balancing a good amount of information and interactive features, or relaying one through the other. For example, as oppose to simply writing out a timeline of hip-hops history, the time line was presented in the form of a turntable and sliding the different bars along provided more information.

I thought the site was very effective in being both informative and interesting because I wasn’t initially very interested in the topic of hip-hop, but through using the different multimedia features I in turn learned more about the culture.

WSJ's Hip-Hop 101: So fresh it had to be covered twice.

For this weeks blog post I chose to write about the Wisconsin State Journal’s interactive multimedia website, Hip-Hop 101.

Hip-Hop 101 is WSJ’s attempt to educate people who otherwise might not ever be told about what hip-hop is. The website explains that hip-hop is a culture not a genre of music. There are four elements of traditional hip-hop, MCing, DJing, break dancing and graffiti. WSJ added poetry or spoken word. Each of these five elements is explained with video, audio slide shows, even a game.


The site is well done as far as content delivery is concerned. It is well laid out, easy to navigate, and interesting to the eyes. The functionality of some of the segments of the website work better than others, I experienced some herky-jerky video on some of the pages, while other videos played flawlessly. I enjoyed the fact that they covered all four elements essentially differently. Yes, most of the coverage was a mix between video and audio slide shows, each video was shot differently, some more journalistically, some more feature-y, and some documentary style. I appreciated the fact that the people talking about the corresponding sections of the website actually lived the life they were talking about, this lends credibility to the site.

The flash work on Hip-Hop 101 looked great, but was a little difficult to control. On the video clips, they auto-played which I just personally am not a fan of, and to go forward and back in the video you had to drag a slider the size of a pin’s head, not easy. The same goes for the controls on the time line (which is cleverly disguised as a turn table). The game was a good attempt, but the audio was a bit off, which bothered me considering how true to hip-hop the website was overall.

The website is great so long as your cursor-eye coordination is good. All in all, well done to the Wisconsin State Journal, and more importantly, thank you for covering this.

Props to the Wisconsin State Journal

Many people hate hip-hop.

Many people don't understand hip-hop.

And when most people think hip-hop, the last place they think of is Wisconsin.

So when I browsed through some of the winners for different awards in the Online News Association's Journalism Awards, the multimedia piece the Wisconsin State Journal put together really shocked me.

In a good way.

I'm a huge hip-hop fan, and I'm a fan of exactly the hip-hop that was covered in this piece. When people hear the term hip-hop, there are a lot of negative connotations that go into their head.

But this piece focused on the hip-hop that is at the root, why hip-hop was started. It focused on the roots of hip-hop.

The piece creatively used videos, audio, and a flash package to put together a beautiful and functional presentation. The hip-hop timeline was particularly great.

This was really an amazing piece that deserves the recognition it has gotten.