The Breakbeat Narratives relies on user-provided data in the form of answers to questions posed by Microsoft Conversational AI, in order to offer a personalized look at the history of hip hop as an art form. The unique AI chatbot guides users through a series of questions and preferences about music style, lyric preference, and favorite rapper to help define their exploration and offer up customized Spotify playlists for each user. We built 5 Afrofuturist characters called the Elementals (based on the 5 elements of hip hop: MCing, turntablism, breakdancing, graffiti art, and knowledge) to take users through the experience.

The goal of the Universal Hip Hop Museum is to honor and explore hip hop as a true artform, tracing its legacy and influence from the South Bronx across music, fashion, film, and more — globally. Currently, there exists no American institution dedicated to this pursuit. UHHM broke ground in 2019, and as construction continues, a pop-up exhibition space across the street is hosting a series of installations and artifacts from the birthplace of hip hop, the Boogie Down Bronx. We collaborated with UHHM and MIT’s Center for Advanced Virtuality to create an interactive, personalized exploration of hip hop, using Microsoft’s Conversational AI chatbot. Our installation, the Breakbeat Narratives, uses technology and an interface that younger patrons are more comfortable with (the online chat), making the past of this artform more accessible.

“It’s more than just music now. It’s everything.” So says Universal Hip Hop Museum Executive Director Rocky Bucano. And he’s right. So in order to trace the evolution of hip hop in a way that resonated with guests no matter their hip hop knowledge or background, we tapped MIT’s Center for Advanced Virtuality and Microsoft’s Conversational AI to create the Breakbeat Narratives, a guided exploration of the depth and breadth of hip hop as an art form. Guests answer simple questions about their music taste to get a personalized look at some of the founders of the movement, the musical and cultural building blocks of hip hop, and the standard-bearers of the artform today — resulting in a customized Spotify playlist for them to explore further. The entire experience is centered around the user’s provided data.

The strategy was simple: Allow guests at the museum to get a tailored experience that exposes them to the breadth and depth of hip hop’s cultural impact by basing that experience on data that they provide. Whether that visitor is a huge hip hop head or more of a country music fan, by learning their own music preferences, we could tailor The Breakbeat Narratives to be an impactful and engaging look at the relevance of hip hop as an art form. By turning Microsoft’s Conversational AI into a series of colorful Afrofuturist characters, we could engage with guests in a more inspiring and authentic way, while also imparting knowledge about the 5 core elements of hip hop: MCing, turntablism, breakdancing, graffiti art, and knowledge.

“Because there’s not one singular story of the evolution and the revolution that led to hip hop culture now, we wanted every single story to reveal nuance,” says Dr. D. Fox Harrell. User data provided that nuance we needed. We worked with Dr. Harrell’s team at MIT’s Center for Advanced Virtuality to create Afrofuturist characters based on the 5 core elements of hip hop (MCing, turntablism, breakdancing, graffiti art, and knowledge), which guide visitors through the history of hip hop using Microsoft Conversational AI, personalizing the experience to each guest based on music preferences, and other queries posed by the AI in the form of these characters. Instead of a dry After this guided trip through hip hop, visitors receive a personalized Spotify playlist, tailored to their preferences and emphasizing education on the style and substance of hip hop as an art form and cultural force.

Thanks to the user data we were able to collect via the Microsoft Conversational AI chatbots, we could tailor every experience to the guest. Simply stated, the Breakbeat Narratives would not exist without that data. It would just be another digital timeline (albeit with a killer soundtrack). By asking for interaction and data from each guest, we prolonged visitor engagement with the Breakbeat Narratives, and hence the Microsoft product.