Leaning against a light pole on Broad Street in Newark, a few feet from piles of hip-hop mixtapes and speakers blasting the latest hit from his mobile sales cart, Fuquan Brown, 28, nodded his head to the music.
"They said hip-hop was just a fad, but it's not a fad. It's a culture and it's not going away," he said. When two Rutgers University students approached Brown about registering to vote and becoming part of the National Hip-Hop Political Convention, he signed on the dotted line.
Music has power, he said.
Thousands of hip-hop music lovers from across the nation are expected to converge in Newark from June 16-19 to create a hip-hop political agenda that they want candidates to address.
Hip-hop music, which is used to sell everything from cell phones to couture, is a common bond for a multi-ethnic generation between the ages 18 and 35. Organizers are betting the hip-hop generation is ready to begin organizing, raising money and making candidates address their concerns.
"Rather than let someone else create what we should care about, let us decide what our priorities are and what's relevant," said Charles Hill, 29, the New Jersey coordinator for the convention, a project of the National Black United Fund...
