‘Two Turntables and a Microphone’ exhibit celebrates 50 years of hip-hop at the Bronx Museum of the Arts

Exhibit artist Dianne Smith and hip-hop icon Slick Rick the Ruler pose for photos at the July 7, 2023 launch party of “Two Turntables and a Microphone” at the Bronx Museum of the Arts.

Photo ET Rodriguez

Cellphones lit the air like lighters as fans crowded and pushed their way to record a moment in hip-hop history as Slick Rick the Ruler performed a cameo DJ appearance at the Bronx Museum of the Arts on Friday.

The event was a celebration of 50 years of hip-hop and an exhibit launch party for Dianne Smith’s, “Two Turntables and a Microphone” – an homage to the genre through the lens of a Bronx-born artist who was entrenched in the scene.

“Before hip hop became a global cultural phenomenon, it was just about the people in the community having agency in expressing themselves; having a voice when they were rendered virtually invisible” Smith told the Bronx Times.

Smith recalls the devastating Bronx fires of the 1970s and said that despite the horror, the youth was still able to find light in dark times through block parties and a sense of community.

“As much as the Bronx was burning, I still had those memories of joy and I wanted to speak to that with this exhibition,” she said.

Smith’s “Two Turntables and a Microphone,” curated by Souleo, an American curator, writer and events producer, is a collection of multi-media artwork and ephemera that evokes nostalgia of an era where a borough was literally rising from the ashes and forging a new identity and a new language to speak to that identity – the birth of hip-hop.

As part of the exhibit two 12-inch TVs are stacked atop each other. The bottom one showing a clip from a CUNY TV “Arts in the City” episode titled “History of Hip Hop in the Bronx” (2015). In it, several celebrities of the era speak to the genesis of hip-hop and its construction. GrandMaster Caz explains that the four cornerstones of hip-hop are DJing, MCing, graffiti and breakdance. On the…