Cambridge KiOSK (formerly Out of Town News), Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA

Join the Massachusetts Hip-Hop Archive at UMass Boston, The Hiphop Archive & Research Institute at Harvard University, and community partners in celebrating the local roots of The Source magazine.

About the Cambridge KiOSK

Pacey Foster, Ph.D. (UMass Boston, Massachusetts Hip-Hop Archive at UMass Boston)

The importance of The Source magazine to the history of hip-hop culture (and journalism in particular) cannot be overstated. What started as a photocopied newsletter to promote a student hip-hop radio show on Harvard’s student run station WHRB (95.3 FM) would go on to help found the business of hip-hop journalism and at one point become the top selling music publication on American newsstands. Although the history of the magazine in New York has been well reported, its foundational years in Cambridge, when it was still a photocopied magazine being run out of the Harvard dorms by two white college students and their partners in the local rap group The Almighty RSO, remains an untold hip-hop origin story.

In 2024, the Massachusetts Hip-Hop Archive (MHHA) at UMass Boston took in a large collection of The Source and Street Beat radio show tapes that represent the largest publicly available collection of the magazine and its origin story. At this event, Cambridge KiOSK visitors will learn about the Massachusetts Hip-Hop Archive in celebrating this important collection, and about the source of The Source with Prof. Pacey Foster, The Hiphop Archive & Research Institute at Harvard University, and other community partners.

Pacey Foster is an Associate Professor of Management at the University of Massachusetts Boston and founder of the MHHA at the Archives and Special Collections at the Healey Library at UMass Boston. As a creative industries scholar, his research focuses on social networks in creative industries, the social dynamics of creative clusters and scenes, and the growing community archive movement. Since its launch in 2016, the Massachusetts Hip-Hop Archive has become one of the largest regional hip-hop archives in the world and has partnered with a diverse network of institutional and community partners to host world class events and exhibitions that collect and celebrate the local history of hip-hop arts and culture in Massachusetts. 

masshiphoparchive.org