UNC junior Quincy Griffin made his first beat at just 10 years old. As the son of a rapper and producer, Griffin gained a musical foundation throughout his teens — but it wasn’t until he got to college that he began to take music more seriously.
Last semester, Griffin joined the UNC Hip Hop Ensemble, UNC’s first performance ensemble dedicated to hip-hop’s cultural traditions and global impact. The ensemble is a class offered through the UNC Department of Music and it meets once a week on Wednesdays from 6 to 8 p.m.
“It was a new experience for me because I’ve never been part of a music group,” Griffin said. “I’ve always been making beats on my own.”
Senior Donavan Moonie said his experiences with the ensemble have pushed him towards collaboration, rather than competition.
“When you’re on a team, you’re collaborating with everybody on the team,” he said. “You’re not trying to compete with everybody on the team. The point is to make everybody better around you and lift each other up.”
UNC Hip Hop Ensemble students are supported by the ensemble's founding music director, Teaching Assistant Professor Suzi Analogue. They wrote in an email that their role as music director is to guide the group through their songwriting process.
“She knows a lot about music and hip-hop and where we should be going,” sophomore Justin Jenkins said. “So it’s good to have that voice in the room while we’re still expressing our creative freedom.”
Analogue wrote that sessions vary from analyzing videos of great hip-hop performances to selecting beats and running songwriting sessions.
Junior K’mani Leonerio said that one of the first things that each member of the ensemble does each semester is share a performance that struck them and discuss what aspects of that performance the group might want to emulate.
