March 23, 2006 | Read Time: 2 minutes
PRESS CLIPPINGS
Successful hip-hop performers and producers are increasingly using their “affluence and cultural influence to achieve philanthropic goals,” says Worth magazine (April). The article reports that, “as hip-hop enters its third decade, nearly every award-winning rap star boasts a charitable foundation.”
While such activities are dismissed in some circles as a means for rappers to counter the more controversial aspects of their music, the magazine says hip-hop philanthropy has helped close “critical funding gaps,” and that some rappers’ personal experiences with hardship give them “profound insight into the impact their philanthropy can have.”
Hip-hop foundations tend to be family-run and focused on grass-roots projects, including “urban charities that are often overlooked by traditional philanthropists,” according to the magazine. It cites the rap musician Jay-Z, who started a college-scholarship program to benefit residents of the Brooklyn housing project where he grew up. The program is aimed mainly at helping people who have received their high-school equivalency diplomas and former inmates, students who often don’t qualify for assistance from other scholarship programs.
Rap musicians are also increasingly “turning themselves into durable, multifaceted brands,” and diversifying beyond the volatile music world into businesses that can give their foundations more stable financial footing. Worth says Russell Simmons, who co-founded Def Jam records and later started his own clothing line, is worth more than $300-million. His 11-year-old Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation raised more than $2-million last year.
The magazine notes, however, that the controversial aspects of hip-hop culture can present problems for rapper charities among “donors, corporations, and other philanthropies that are reluctant to align themselves with an industry that often celebrates violence and misogyny.”
The magazine says hip-hop philanthropists must find ways to mollify these concerns, but concludes that the music’s stars “possess the potential to make a lasting impact on American philanthropy.”
