The Birthplace of Hip-Hop

I started off wanting to pursue a map that displayed how territorial the hip-hop genre is, showing how each region had its own distinct artists and sound. The inspiration came from Nike's "United Countries of Baseball" campaign seen here. This got more difficult when I realized each region was usually represented by a single city - making any boundaries I drew arbitrary without market research. I progressed to limiting myself to one city, the artists that emerged from it, and other places of relevance in the city that corresponded to rap.


Naturally, I decided on NY, NY - the 'birthplace' of hip-hop. I included different artists' places of birth and schooling, as well as the boundaries of the 5 boroughs. I did the entire project in Adobe Illustrator, first vectoring the borders of the boroughs, then pin pointing the exact locations on the map. Rap is a relatively new genre, but I wanted to depict the map in an older style because of its historic relevance.