Across the street from South City Campus is a hub of hip hop music in Salt Lake City: Uprok.
Uprok is owned by one of the premiere DJ’s in Salt Lake City, Street Jesus. Street Jesus acquired Uprok from its previous owners who opened the shop in the late 90s.
Uprok has been a centralized location for hip hop in Salt Lake City, because it provides what is commonly known as the four elements of hip hop: break dancing, DJing, MCing and graffiti.
Any aspiring hip hop artist can go to Uprok to work on beats for their rhymes, as well as encounter other artists trying to find inspiration within the hip hop culture.
Yet, Street Jesus and DAO, another premiere DJ in Salt Lake City, both expressed a forlorn desire to The Globe for the days when people would come together to work on music for the love of the music.
“People use to get together and work on music together, now it is just all done through the internet,” says DJ DAO.
Jeremy Cluff, a former Salt Lake Community College student, connected with people like Street Jesus and his patrons from Uprok in the time of community hip hop of Salt Lake City.
“It would start out with a bunch of guys kicking around ideas, then the notebooks would come out, then we would all head to the recording studio in Rose Park,” says Cluff. “Then the scene became all thug and all anyone cared about was money.”
For those within any genre of music that believe the music should be about working with others who are passionate about music and not just the money, SLCC may have a solution.
The new sound recording studio at South City Campus can be used to connect local artists looking for recording studio time with students looking for musicians to produce music for college credit.
The interaction between students and the local music scene could help provide a context that is beneficial to the Salt Lake City local music scene and the SLCC student body.
The Resonance Club at SLCC has the capacity to give access to the new studio on South City Campus for recording as well as students who have the training to work with musicians to create professional recordings. Every semester there are group projects that the club carries out.
“If a band wants to record, they have to find someone that is in the club to collaborate with,” says Michael Huggard, Resonance Club treasurer. “A student must propose to a group that they record the band, and the group must then accept that proposal.”
The band would then work with the recording students to record their music.
The club has taken on local projects, through a series of auditions, and helped the artists record a few songs in the new studio.
Taking a community genre of music like hip hop, with a local hub located directly across from the community college and combining it with the skill and access to high quality equipment at the community college, can help breathe a more vibrant feeling not only in the genre of music but also into the college as well.
The easiest way for a band to get in contact with a student in the club is through their orgsync website at slcc.orgsync.com/org/resonance.
