The Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History has decided to pay tribute to hip hop culture, via a permanent exhibit. The exhibit, "Hip-Hop Won't Stop: The Beat, The Rhymes, The Life.", will be an important fixture, as Hip Hop and all it entails, has had a profound impact on music and pop-culture. Whether you like Hip Hop or not, it's here to stay. Period. I'm no hip-hop head nor am I a limber B-Girl. I don't profess to know a lot about the culture, but I am aware of the impact it has had the world over. I haven't listened to the radio in a good while, and so am ignorant to who some of our modern day minstrels are... Thankfully. I came of age during the 80's. I witnessed the cool swagger of B-Boys, spinning frenziedly, with supple ease, on flattened cardboard boxes. I envied my older sister's name-tag belt, its buckle simply entitled FRESH. As someone who enjoys and works in the museum industry, and who enjoys vintage hip-hop, I believe it to be a legitimate art form, and am glad to see it being commemorated for what it was and what is still should be. It's historic, and almost unheard of, for a major institution to have such a display. Hip Hop Wont Stop will showcase artifacts donated by the pioneers of rap, such as Afrika Bambaataa, DJ Kool Herc, and Russell Simmons, in addition to oral histories, and multimedia tracing the evolution of the culture. It'll cost a couple million and is reported to be finished in about five years. I think this telling of Hip Hop's story will finally get the masses to realize its significant place in musical history. For those I persons I've had discussions with, who insist that Hip Hop is not "real music" and is nothing more than "talking over noise" Perhaps this exhibit will make you cognizant of the fact that it is, indeed, here to stay. At once momentous and life changing, this multilayered discourse is well deserved.