‘For the love of the culture.’ Celebrate 50 years of hip-hop at this Miami Beach block party
Jarobi White felt something was missing immediately after moving to Miami.
Although the 305 birthed a rebellious sound rooted in Black joy, not every Miami hip-hop fan wants to listen to bass music all the time. Sometimes they want a little A Tribe Called Quest. Sometimes a little 2Pac. Maybe even Common.
The bottom line: Miami’s hip-hop community wasn’t being fully served.
Enter LOVEisLOVE Miami.
A three-day celebration highlighted by an Oct. 14 block party at Normandy Fountain in Miami Beach, LOVEisLOVE Miami aims to bring together the 305’s rap community around the genre’s five elements: DJs, MCs, breakdance, grafitti and knowledge. Saturday’s free event will feature freestyles accompanied by DJ sets, breakdancing showcases by J9 and Underground Souls as well as an interactive graffiti wall and lessons on breakdancing.
We’re doing this “just for the love of the culture,” said Dinna Alexanyan, the founder and director of the nonprofit Sybarite Productions which throws LOVEisLOVE. Miami Beach needs more spaces that are safe and “inclusive for the Black community and what better way to do that than show them that we can do something that’s so full of love and centered around hip-hop.”
“We want to show that Miami has a strong presence in hip-hop because Miami often gets looked over,” added White, a founding member of A Tribe Called Quest and one of Saturday’s performers.
Although this is the third annual LOVEisLOVE Miami, the 2023 iteration will be the first centered around hip-hop. Sybarite partnered with vinyl listening bar Dante’s Hi-Fi, where acclaimed DJ and music historian Rich Medina serves as music director. The motivation behind the partnership was simple: Miami needs to be represented in the hip-hop 50 celebrations.
“Miami was overlooked because culturally and musically, I think Miami is usually pigeonholed into a Latin category because of the big, heavy Latin influence and because of its geographic location,” said Alan Drummond, one of the co-founders of Dante’s Hi-Fi.
In addition to the Saturday’s block party, Dante’s Hi-Fi will host hip-hop themed parties at their venue throughout the weekend.
These parties “will showcase a bit of the history of how hip-hop also evolved in Florida,” Drummond added.
Alexanyan has thrown LOVEisLOVE since 2005. Originally established in New York, the showcase has provided opportunities to thousands of young artists, the majority of whom are dancers, to get discovered by choreographers or industry professionals. Since expanding to Miami in 2021, the focus primarily shifted to pairing emerging artists on-stage with their more established counterparts. The ultimate goal for the 2023 iteration, however, is to get the second weekend in October stamped as Miami’s go-to hip-hop celebration.
“People from my generation complain about what hip-hop is now,” White said. “Instead of complaining about it, we want to spark the change that turns hip-hop in a direction that we want to see. People to get back into the spirit of being themselves, being original. Hip-hop is not just a cash cow.”
IF YOU GO
WHAT: LOVEisLOVE Miami Golden Anniversary of Hip-Hop Block Party
WHEN: 4 p.m.-10 p.m. Oct. 14
WHERE: Normandy Fountain, 7802 Rue Vendome, Miami Beach
PRICE: Free with RSVP https://www.eventbrite.com
