Hip-Hop for the Homeless Celebrates 10 Years of Beats, Rhymes, & Helping Lives
Last night Joey Batts’ annual Hip-Hop for the Homeless Tour kicked off its tenth year of moving crowds, and making a positive impact in communities throughout Connecticut. Its founder, however, almost didn’t make it out of year one alive.
“I was channeling my Mahatma Gandhi,” Batts (photo: center, holding shirt) remembers, “I was like – not only am I gonna do a series of shows for the displaced, and the homeless folks of Connecticut, but in solidarity I will also go on a hunger strike at the same time. What a terrible idea!”
The tour, which happens every December, collects donations of food, clothing, and money for local homeless charities in each city where they perform, and has raised nearly $40k to date. Their first year, however, was a sprint, with all the shows on consecutive nights.
The weeklong run of shows, combined with his hunger strike, and his full time job as a high school teacher, landed Batts in the hospital for some medically mandated recovery time.
Year two featured some tweaks to make things a bit easier on Batts, and some of those tweaks came from the artists involved. Batts notes that N.M.E. the Illest, and STRYFE, who have both been with the tour since year one, and had previous experience doing fundraising shows, have been integral in making Hip-Hop for the Homeless what it is today.
“They were like – yo, if you actually thought about this a year in advance, or a couple months in advance, instead of just flying by the seat of your pants, we could actually do some really cool things. What about the concept of doing two weekends, so no one has to worry about going to a show on a weeknight, or a Sunday night?”
With that, the current Thursday, Friday, Saturday model that Batts has used for the past nine years was born.
While those weekend shows always happen around the December holiday season, the genesis of the tour actually happened a few days before Halloween in 2014, thanks to a Facebook post, and a huge buildup of goodwill.
All It Took Was One Post
On October 28th of 2014 Joey Batts posted the following on his Facebook page
The response was incredible, and it wasn’t just people who wanted to perform, it was people who wanted to help. If he hadn’t known it before, the goodwill Batts had accumulated over the years was now wildly evident, with artists from all over Connecticut wanting to lend a hand.
Within a few weeks the entire tour was laid out, and once it kicked off it didn’t take long for everyone involved to see the impact they were making, as an especially memorable moment happened at the show in Bridgeport.
N.M.E. the Illest remembers, “We had a group of homeless people come in right off the street, and Joey rushed over to take care of them, letting them take what they needed from the donation pile, and telling them to spread the word to anyone else in the city that was in need ASAP! It was awesome.”
This happened again during year three of the tour, when, in New Haven, Batts was able to hand a jacket to a homeless man who saw what was going on inside.
Moments like these have had a profound impact on Batts. “It was just like OK, yeah, I’m not dropping these off to a shelter, I’m not giving these to someone else to give to other people, I’m physically giving, or gifting something to someone who I know is in immediate need. If we’re not doing it for that reason, what are we doing it for?”
The feeling is one that’s shared by the artists involved, including New Britain-based emcee Muggsy, who’s been involved with Hip-Hop for the Homeless since year one, and has taken things to the next level within his own community.
“This event had a huge effect on me after that first year,” he says, “I started doing more community work throughout the city hosting my own events, like backpack, and toy drives, and eventually I became a Freemason, which further involved me in year-round community dedication.”
The effect has also been felt by the charities involved with Hip-Hop for the Homeless, all of which eagerly anticipate the tour each year.
Donation Appreciation
The charities Hip-Hop for the Homeless supports have stayed consistent over the years, and that’s due, in large part, to the charities themselves. Batts says, “Every single one of them go out of their way, and reach out to me throughout the year to let me know how big of a deal it is, and they always let me know that if it’s still going, they still want to be a part of it.”
Muggsy has experienced this, too, saying, “The shelter that I’ve dealt with the past nine years looks forward to us coming in every year.”
N.M.E. the Illest notes the tour has also seen what each charity needs, and adjusted the donations accordingly, “We’ve streamlined our donation list depending on which town, and venue we’re performing at,” he says, “Some towns need more clothes than canned goods, and some towns need more toiletries and money than anything … So we try and coordinate specific types of donations for specific shows on the tour.”
Seeing the donations in action has been huge for a number of artists, including Muggsy, who says, “To know that I’ve actually made a positive impact on the city I’m from gives me a sense of belonging I’ve never experienced.”
With the tour having such a big impact on everyone involved, it might surprise people to find out the one person who isn’t on stage all that much is the tour’s founder, Joey Batts, but there’s a good reason for that.
Hip-Hop for the Homeless is Not a Vanity Project
If you’ve been involved in Connecticut’s hip-hop scene over the past decade you’ve probably seen Joey Batts’ face on a sticker.
During the Hip-Hop for the Homeless tour, however, you’re far more likely to see his face behind the merch table accepting donations, than doing any kind of self-promotion, or performing. This is because while Batts created the event, he doesn’t want it to be about him.
“How many videos do we see online of people who are just like, let me film myself giving someone a hot dog on the street?” he asks rhetorically, “Even if their intention is ideal, it’s ruined. It’s ruined by that spotlight. It’s ruined by that focus.”
This is why instead of having a set every night, Batts chooses to shine the spotlight on the performers, as well as the charities, and sponsors involved.
Even with him firmly affixing the focus on others, his founding of the tour is still well known, and much appreciated within the community. In fact, he says that at Manchester High, which is where he currently teaches, they even mentioned it during his job interview. “The person interviewing me was like, ‘Yeah, you’re Joey Batts, right? You started Hip-Hop for the Homeless.’ I was like, ‘Hey, I guess I got the job!’”
Touring Beyond CT, and Beyond 2023
This year is the first time Hip-Hop for the Homeless will have ten shows, and the first time the tour will have a show outside of Connecticut. The out of state show – a December 7th date in Holyoke, MA – could be followed by more out of state bookings in the coming years.
“The goal is sustainability,” Batts explains, “The goal is that it could keep going if I’m not there. I need to make sure that if I’m not in a venue, that if I’m not in a city, someone can take the name, someone can take the helm of what we’re doing, and make sure that they’re doing everything by the book.”
Doing it by the book is of the utmost importance to Batts. “This is my baby. It ain’t a baby no more, but it’s my baby, so I can’t be like, ‘Yeah dude, throw a show in New Jersey, call it Hip-Hop for the Homeless, you got this!’ We gotta be really careful. Hip-hop has a bad stigma. Displaced people have a bad stigma. So it’s a very sensitive thing, and we don’t live in a sensitive time anymore, so I just want to be careful. I want to expand. I would love to do Brooklyn, I want to do NYC, I would love to do Long Island, it’s just gotta make sense.”
For 2023 his initial goal is to surpass last year’s fundraising total of $6,500, with a secondary goal of raising $10k.
“It’s quite possible we hit ten grand this year,” he says, “What a story that would be, to hit $10,000 in year ten. That would be so poetic.”
If it happens, after giving the money to the charities involved, Joey Batts will then give the credit to everyone else, and start brainstorming on how to make next year’s tour even bigger.
For more information on Hip-Hop for the Homeless, check out their Facebook page.
To make a donation, head on over to their GoFundMe page.
Full disclosure – Adam’s World has been a longtime sponsor of the Hip-Hop for the Homeless tour, and is a sponsor once again this year.
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