Hip-hop has created a lot of millionaires and even billionaires in its 50-year history. But some early pioneers never got their just due, and Nas, Steve Stoute, and others are looking to change that. Nas and Stout have joined forces with Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Ben Horowitz and his wife, Felicia Horowitz, to pay homage to hip-hop pioneers through financial support.
The inaugural Hip Hop Grandmaster Awards is set to take place and honor hip-hop legends Rakim and Scarface in a celebration where 100% of proceeds will go “to support hip-hop greats and other creatives,” the Paid In Full Foundation states.
“Over the past several decades, hip-hop music and culture rose from a local niche New York art form into a global phenomenon,” said the foundation. “In doing so, it has created countless careers, many fortunes, and, most importantly, gave hope and aspiration to a generation of young people.”
However, many pioneers were ahead of their time in shaping hip-hop culture before the art
form received the financial backing and success that came in the late ’90s into the 2000s. Because of this, the Paid In Full Foundation intends to right the wrongs by securing a financial future for many of those early trailblazers.“The Paid in Full Foundation aims to rectify that through its grantmaking program by both honoring the people who built hip-hop and enabling them to pursue their creative and intellectual pursuits for the benefit of society.”
Stoute says the foundation will give $500,000 and healthcare to hip-hop “contributors who didn’t get what they deserved.” The Hip Hop Grandmaster Awards will also become an annual event.
“What I wanna do is, all of the artists who [came in] early who signed bad deals or were taken advantage of, that the least we could do is give to them,” Stoute said on the Rap Radar podcast. “Pay that forward and give to them.”
He continued, “No one’s ever done this before. No one’s given the people who’ve helped move this industry forward
reparations of some sort for what they’ve done but didn’t get back.”The Hip Hop Grandmaster Awards is sold out and will take place on Nov. 17 in Las Vegas.
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