Collegiate Times

Student Hip Hop Organization board members gather together with a common goal in mind — to share their love of hip hop with each other and the school. In the future, the group will hold hip hop-related events.

In a world recently dominated by pop music and mainstream radio sensations, the prevalence of hip hop in today’s society seems to be less evident. But there’s one group that is trying to change this. 

The Student Hip Hop Organization, which first began its journey in Richmond, was created to celebrate music’s existence, art and culture. Muhammad Yasin — known by his friends as Mo — is the founder of the Virginia Tech chapter of SHHO. Yasin wished to find a home for the organization in Blacksburg to make up for the lack thereof.

“The idea for our chapter at Tech is to engage all the people that love hip hop but who have no home in a sense,” Yasin said. “We want to find all of those people and let them know that there are other people who love this culture too.”

Yasin became the group’s founder during his freshman year, when he decided to bring SHHO to Tech in April 2011. Unlike other chapters of SHHO, which have already experienced a longer duration within university student life, Tech’s organization is still in its early stages.

As the organization works to strengthen its impact on campus, it is becoming more prominent in Virginia and is slowly making a statement nationwide.

“SHHO was founded in 2006 at Virginia Commonwealth University to promote what is now its mission statement: Higher learning through hip hop,” Yasin said.

In 2011, SHHO had shown its face at Tech, the University of Virginia, VCU, William and Mary, Old Dominion University, the University of Mary Washington, George Mason University and now, its national chapter’s location, Central Florida.

While each chapter has the same purpose — gaining more exposure and acknowledging the culture they love — they are each different. Since the VCU and U.Va. chapters have been active longer than the others, they have already been able to hold events.

Melinda Tran, a junior business information technology major at Tech and an SHHO executive board member, said she first learned about the organization through U.Va.

“I first heard about SHHO last spring when I found out about a concert that U.Va. was putting on. I learned more about the organization and immediately knew that this was something I wanted to be a part of,” Tran said.

When she heard of a school organization in which she could share her enthusiasm and admiration for hip hop, Tran asked if SHHO could come to Tech. She later met Yasin and became part of the team. 

Yasin and Tran are working with 12 other members of the executive board to make sure that SHHO has a successful breakthrough when general membership opens to Tech’s students this month.

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A version of this article appeared in the Jan 20 issue of the Collegiate Times.