AirLoom Beats
Producer • Beatmaker • Educator • Creative Technologist
Culture Bearers • Knowledge Keepers • Educators • Innovators
2026 Artist-Scholar-in-Residence Cohort
The Hip-Hop Education Center’s Artist-Scholar-in-Residence (ASIR) program recognizes Hip-Hop artists and cultural practitioners as scholars, educators, historians, and producers of knowledge.
Meet the Artist-Scholars
Five Decades of Hip-Hop Knowledge
The 2026 cohort brings together ten extraordinary culture bearers whose experience spans Hip-Hop’s foundational years to today.
Denise “Dee” Barnes
Media Pioneer • Recording Artist • Journalist • Producer
DJ Hapa
DJ • Educator • Entrepreneur • Music Technologist
Dr. Glenn “Sweety G” Toby
Hip-Hop Pioneer • Entrepreneur • Philanthropist • Author
Juan Juárez (Mexico)
Historian • Educator • Cultural Practitioner
Lyric Jones
Recording Artist • Musician • Producer • Educator
Marissa Molina
Visual Artist • Educator • Cultural Practitioner
Odylle “Mantis” Beder
B-Girl • Choreographer • Educator • Cultural Historian
Paradise Gray
Hip-Hop Historian • Cultural Artivist • Curator
Prime Minister Pete Nice
Recording Artist • Curator • Historian
The ASIR Program
From Cultural Practice to Public Knowledge
The Artist-Scholar-in-Residence program creates space for Hip-Hop practitioners to research, document, teach, create, and share the knowledge embedded in their lived experiences and artistic practices. Rather than separating scholarship from cultural practice, HHEC recognizes the people who built Hip-Hop, and those advancing it today, as essential knowledge producers.
What the Work Includes
The Residency in Action
Research & Documentation
Preserving histories, methodologies, archives, and cultural knowledge.
Teaching & Mentorship
Engaging youth, educators, emerging artists, and the next generation of cultural leaders.
Public Programs
Lectures, workshops, performances, conversations, exhibitions, and community learning experiences.
Creative Scholarship
Developing projects that connect artistic practice, research, technology, and education.
Legacy & Preservation
Ensuring Hip-Hop histories are documented and saved by the people who lived, created, and shaped them.
Why This Matters
Hip-Hop’s Knowledge Belongs in the Record
Hip-Hop is one of the most influential cultural movements of our time, yet much of its history, pedagogy, intellectual traditions, and community knowledge remain undocumented or disconnected from educational institutions.
HHEC is building an infrastructure where Hip-Hop’s artists and culture bearers can become active participants in how their histories are researched, preserved, taught, and carried forward.
The 2026 Cohort
An intergenerational bridge between Hip-Hop’s foundational histories, contemporary practice, education, archives, and the future of the culture.
An intergenerational bridge between Hip-Hop’s foundational histories, contemporary practice, education, archives, and the future of the culture.
Collaborate + Invest
Partner With Us
We invite foundations, universities, schools, museums, cultural institutions, corporations, and community organizations to invest in and collaborate with the 2026 Artist-Scholar-in-Residence cohort.
Partnership opportunities can support:
Together, we can ensure that Hip-Hop’s knowledge is not only preserved, but taught, studied, activated, and passed forward.