Legends come out for hip-hop museum groundbreaking

Groundbreaking ceremony for hip-hop museum in the Bronx

Construction is now officially underway for the permanent home of hip-hop in its birthplace of the Bronx.

NEW YORK - Musical luminaries including Nas, LL Cool J, and Fat Joe came out Thursday to the birthplace of hip-hop for a ground-breaking ceremony to launch the capital campaign for the new Universal Hip Hop Museum.

They joined a slew of politicians in the Bronx, where the now-global cultural force that is hip-hop has its roots.

"When I was a kid starting out my room was a museum," LL Cool J said.  "So it doesn't surprise me but I'm grateful it happened."

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The museum is part of a $349 million mixed-use project along the waterfront in the South Bronx.

"It's just like you wait for someone else to do it and you wait forever," Chuck D said.

The first phase of the development, called Bronx Point, will provide affordable housing and public open space. It also is slated to include cultural and community-focused programming, including the permanent home of the Universal Hip Hop Museum.

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Grandmaster Flash said, "This thing we were doing was anti-everything else.  Anti-everything else.  Here we are almost 47 years later."

With the Associated Press