SWA (Sound Wave Assassins)

09/06/2026

GOAT talk with the icon Nasir Jones.

09/05/2026

The Hip Hop Museum—Opening 2027. Under construction now at Bronx Point. Help us build it.

09/05/2026

09/05/2026

Three giants. Three different chapters of Hip-Hop history.

DMC, Grandmaster Flash and Chuck D represent generations of innovation, influence and cultural impact. From Grandmaster Flash helping pioneer the art of DJing, to DMC helping take Hip-Hop worldwide with Run-DMC, to Chuck D using Public Enemy’s music as a powerful voice for the culture.

Give the pioneers their flowers while they’re still here. 💐

09/05/2026

In 1968, a few hundred Puerto Rican families in the South End were told their block was coming down. They answered with one sentence, in Spanish, on a banner. 🇵🇷

The area between Tremont and Washington Streets was labeled Parcel 19 on the city's urban renewal maps. The housing there was cheap and in poor condition, and the plan was the same plan running all over Boston at the time. Clear it, rebuild it, and let the people who lived there find somewhere else to go. Families in the West End had already watched that exact thing happen to them.

So the residents organized the Emergency Tenants Council, and their answer went up on signs and banners across the neighborhood. No nos mudaremos de la Parcel 19. We will not be moved from Parcel 19. Then they did something almost nobody managed against the redevelopment authority in those years. They won. And more than winning a reprieve, they won the right to redevelop the parcel themselves instead of handing it to an outside developer.

What they built is Villa Victoria, still there today, with Plaza Betances at its center and a mural on the wall since 1979. It is one of the very few places in this country where a neighborhood facing removal ended up holding the pen instead. 🎨

09/04/2026