“Some of the names are obvious, and some may not be as obvious,” says Jahi. “We really want to focus on celebrating the underseen, undervalued and underappreciated. We know who the tree tops are in the Bay Area, but there are branches, leaves, trunks, roots. We want to cover that.”
Selected by Jahi himself, along with an anonymous council of “triple OGs from the Bay Area community [who provide] sacred advice and verification,” the main stipulation is that each chosen entity must have at least 20 years of Bay Area hip-hop service. It’s not just about the rappers, either.
“We do research. Why not [include] a legendary historian of funk to understand the interconnectedness to tell a cultural story?” says Jahi. “We’re not following the rules of the commercial rap industry and what they say equates with hip-hop. We’re coming from a cultural lens. This is community work. That’s more indicative of what the hip-hop family really looks like.”
Black, a prominent queer DJ who has mentored numerous others, is one of those people. Aside from turntable queen Pam the Funkstress, Jahi points to her as “a mother of building the culture.”
