What’s Important About These Items

Ope donated all of these to the UHHM.

Building from the ground up is how all music, particularly jazz, spirituals, and Hip Hop, came to be. When Ope Odumakin began DailyRapFacts® and rooted in the “build it and go get it” of Hip Hop spirit. As the founder of three Black-owned businesses in the United States, Ope knows something about grassroots and hustle. DailyRapFacts®, an independent digital media and publishing company, provides Rap and Hip Hop facts, videos, and news to millions of fans around the world, educating and entertaining every one of them. Ope and his team wrote The Rap Dictionary, 100 Hip Hop Facts, and Rap Scores: A Rap/Hip Hop Gradebook. They created Rap Trivia Game and RHYMEBOOK.

It makes sense that the Official Record of Hip Hop have a copy of the A-Z guide to Rap/Hip Hop. The Rap Dictionary, the internet’s largest resource for the genres’ used words and definitions, is such a tome. 100 Hip Hop Facts (1973-2000) is the first of a series that begins, appropriately, the year Hip Hop was born. While Rap Scores was created long before Verzuz, it’s an ideal volume for those who want to evaluate rappers, their songs, and their albums. The Rap Trivia Game challenges as much as it educates, and RHYMEBOOK beats Moleskine for those who want to write rhymes, bars, and lyrics or just want to generate ideas.

Why Ope Donated These Items to the UHHM

Empowerment is inherent in every item made by DailyRapFacts®, be it something to read, write, or play. The Rap Dictionary has more than one thousand entries and definitions of Hip Hop’s most used words, slang, and phrases. Besides being a useful tool to understand Hip Hop music and culture, “it defines past and current vocabulary and will be updated in upcoming editions,” Ope told us. The first edition, soon to be forever out of print, is something that this author, who’s dedication to origin stories, is overjoyed to see in the UHHM archives.

Related to the Rap Dictionary is 100 Hip Hop Facts (1973-2000), which is also “always in progress.” This well-researched book documents the most significant occurrences in Hip Hop since 1973, the year the genre was born. Besides exclusive photos of Coke La Rock, Hip Hop’s first MC, and an icon with whom Ope is working on a documentary, DJ Grand Wizzard Theodore, creator of the Scratch and a UHHM advisory board member, 1520 Sedgewick Avenue, the building in the Bronx where Hip Hop literally began, there are more than 20 illustrations. Ope has given us the very first print edition.

Leaving no one out, and with an indirect nod to rap battles, DailyRapFacts® Rap Scores: A Rap/Hip Hop Gradebook is an evaluative tool with the community in mind with its style and format. You’ll grade your favorite performers, songs, and albums from lowest to highest on bars, beats, creativity, originality, flow, features, and more in the categories of Rapper/Rap Groups, Songs, and Albums. Yep. School is in session.

It’s not enough for Ope and his team to provide information; DailyRapFacts® knows how much it means to do the thing. The Rap Trivia Game is more than a fun party game: besides quantity of questions (200 and counting), this game is for fans and aficionados so everyone is part of the competition, the lessons, and the inspiration. And for MCs on the come up, as well as established Hip Hop lyricists, the DailyRapFacts® RHYMEBOOK is their go-to. Ope designed the book “specifically to be a helper for a rapper, an artist, or a songwriter.” This volume is the definition of Each One Teach One, with its inclusion of a “How To Write Raps” booklet that contains rhyme schemes and sample rap lyrics, ¾ of its pages lined/ruled for writing songs, rhymes, bars, lyrics, hooks, verses, and ¼ of unlined pages for visuals, drawings, and sketchable ideas.

In Ope’s Words

“For me, the donation is confirmation and proof that all the time the DailyRapFacts team has spent, everything we’ve been doing, and our future ideas are genius and here to stay. Hip Hop has changed my life. I’m happy to know I am giving to an organization that I love and want to exist in the world.” – Ope Odumakin