Nas, Steve Stoute, and Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Ben Horowitz are doing their part to make sure hip-hop pioneers get their due diligence. They all have joined together to create the Hip Hop Grandmaster Awards. The event’s proceeds will 100% go toward the Paid In Full foundation to help “to support hip hop greats and other creatives.”
“Over the past several decades, Hip Hop music and culture rose from a local niche New York art form into a global phenomenon,” The Paid in Full Foundation’s website reads. “In doing so, it has created countless careers, many fortunes, and, most importantly, gave hope and aspiration to a generation of young people. Unfortunately, many of the most impactful original artists never received recognition proportional with their exceptional contributions to arts and culture. The Paid in Full Foundation aims to rectify that through its grant-making program, by both honoring the people who built Hip Hop and enabling them to pursue their creative and intellectual pursuits for the benefit of society.”
“What I wanna do is, all of the artists who [came in] early who signed bad deals or were taken advantage of, that the least we could do is give to them,” Steve Stoute said in a recent podcast. “Pay that forward and give to them.”