Welcome to the official website for the Rec.Music.Hip-Hop Usenet newsgroup. RMHH on Usenet is arguably one of the longest running Hiphop discussion spots on the internet. Easily accessible through Google Groups, its archives stretch back to 1995, and feature indepth discussion on Hiphop, sports, politics, food, owls and more!

You can read the most recent posts on RMHH here or here.If you want to take part in the discussions, the quickest and easiest way is to grab a free account on Google Groups, and then dive in. Alternatively, if your ISP has a Usenet feed and you're a little more technically-minded, then its likely you can catch rmhh using Outlook Express, or a stand alone news-reader (such as Agent or X-News.)

How did Rec.Music.Hip-Hop begin?
Steve Flash Juon explains...
"A lot of people seem to think that the reason rec.music.hip-hop was created was because alt.rap was so wack we couldn't stand it anymore. That's not really accurate. True, alt.rap had a lot of stupid shit going on, but so does any newsgroup at any given period of time. That's just the nature of newsgroups as a whole. For an alt hierarchy group, alt.rap was actually a lot classier than most. I met some really great people in my time there, and even started hip-hop's first electronic newsletter: the now defunct HardC.O.R.E. It didn't survive the transition from text to the web, but that's another story. Suffice it to say alt.rap was a mad cool group with a lot of mad cool people I loved to hang with and talk to.

More than anything, what lead us to create rec.music.hip-hop was respect, and the lack of it we felt hip-hop had. Alt as you know is short for alternative, or alternate. We didn't feel that rap music or hip-hop culture was an "alternative" to anything -- we thought it was a regular everyday part of life the same way rock 'n roll, jazz, reggae, folk, or the blues is to other people. I personally made the observation that ALL of these artforms had a newsgroup in the rec.music hierarchy. Relevance? Not all newsgroup servers carry alt groups, because they're easy to create (that's why there are thousands) and viewed as outside the mainstream of society as well as the internet.

The time had come to get ours: we felt that by creating a group in the rec.music hierarchy, we would not only establish the respect hip-hop music and culture deserved by making it equal to the other arts like rock and jazz, but we would broaden our conversation by enabling it to reach more people in an established and respect section of newsgroups. I researched how other groups were formed and found it was a five-step process: discussion of goals, creation of a charter, submission of charter, revising charter, and calling for votes.

We already knew what our goals were, so it was on to creating the charter. Our biggest and probably most contentious issue was probably the name of the newsgroup itself: even though 'hip-hop' embodied what we stood for, I thought at the time that rec.music.rap was both easier on the tongue and simpler to understand for people making the transition from alt.rap to the rec groups. After taking a poll though, it turned out people were firmly in favor of the longer but more representative rec.music.hip-hop as the name for our group. I rewrote the charter to reflect that, and also included in our mission statement that the discussion should not be music-based only (as a 'rap' group might have implied) but should encompass the whole of our hip-hop culture.

So we had three steps down. Now I submitted the charter to the appropriate moderated newsgroups. These groups are moderated for the very reason that they don't want anybody to come in, yap about a newsgroup they think is cool, and slam it down for everybody to read. Following the procedure, creating a formal proposal, and submitting it through channels shows that you're serious and that you've thought it through. We tweaked it some after the first submission, and resubmitted it again -- I acted as the vessel through which people poured their input but I also influenced the charter with my own love for hip-hop culture. This whole process of the first four steps took place from about November of 1994 through February of 1995. Once we finally reached a consensus and had our agreed charter, it was time to call the vote.

This is the hard part for creating a newsgroup in one of the "big seven" hierarchies, of which rec is a member. To create a group that is considered established officially and is therefore worthy of being added to newsgroup servers, you have to meet all of the following criteria:

1. Yes votes must exceed no votes by at least 100.

2. Yes votes must be two-thirds or more of total voting.

3. Absolutely no false or duplicate votes can be submitted or the whole process is thrown out.

We pumped up the call for votes hard. We convinced alt.rap people that it was in their own best interest to spread the word to a larger audience. We convinced rec.music.funky people that it would take away the rap traffic that they didn't want and give it a space to live and breath. So on and so forth. Everybody told everybody, and the word was out -- and it paid off. We won with a landslide -- approximately 280 some yes votes to around 40-50 no votes. Easily clearing both the 2/3rds majority and the 100 vote limitation. After that, in March of 1995, the newsgroup slowly but surely began to pop up around the country as both regulated servers with news admins added it by hand and automated servers that recognize new rec groups tacked it on. Even though it's likely that very few people at the time were capable of reading it, I'm still proud to say I had the first post on rec.music.hip-hop -- a true honor.

So that's the story in a nutshell. I like to think of my role as that of being a facilitator: getting the input, combining it all together, and making it happen. The actual CREATION of the group was done then by the people who voted for it and is done NOW today by the people who post messages TO it and keep the group lively and active. I authored some documents and got the ball rolling. That was my role in forming RMHH, and quite honestly I'm proud of it -- but I'm even more proud of the people who made it happen and MAKE it happen today."