Ambrose, at left, and Wilson, at right, with famed hip-hop producer Marley Marl at the museum's launch event in April. (Photo by Robert Adam Mayer)

The Bronx is the widely accepted birthplace of hip-hop, but the yet-to-be built National Museum of Hip-Hop has its sights set on Harlem. When a site in the Bronx proved too expensive to restore, organizers behind the museum turned to Harlem for more economically feasible options. Though cost considerations weigh heavy on museum president Craig Wilson’s mind, he says Harlem’s accessibility and its longstanding ties to hip-hop are also factors. With a museum in Harlem, Wilson says, “you get Manhattan, you get the 212, and you still have a location that bears historical significance to the culture.”

John Ambrose, the museum’s vice president and Wilson’s right-hand man, adds, “Harlem has rich, rich hip-hop history. You can feel it when you walk around.” Ambrose, who also heads an entertainment law firm, says he is confident their meetings with Harlem developers will lead to a building site within six months. He hopes to break ground within a year and a half.

The editor-in-chief of hip-hop-centric Vibe magazine, Jermaine Hall, says that while the Bronx has the strongest claim for housing the museum, “all boroughs have played a part in bringing hip-hop to where it is right now.” Hall says he believes that since hip-hop is now “a middle-aged genre,” it certainly warrants a museum in its honor. “I think this is the time for it,” he says, adding that the museum is “such an important undertaking.”

Despite being recognized as a worthy goal by many hip-hop higher-ups, the nascent project has faced many hurdles since 2005, when Wilson closed the marketing and management firm he founded to devote himself to the museum full time. His only income now comes from renting half of his duplex home in New Jersey City, NJ. A Bronx native and lifelong hip-hop fan himself, Wilson has struggled to raise the money necessary to fund the project. Though the museum has obtained official non-profit status and a provisional museum charter from the New York State Board of Regents, it has received no city, state, or federal funding. Ambrose estimates the museum will cost anywhere from $50 to $150 million to build. He says that so far only enough to cover minimal expenses has been raised, though he declined to give an exact amount. “It’s really not that much,” he says.

Wilson says he believes fundraising efforts have been hampered by the many others who have previously tried, and failed, to build a hip-hop museum. “Right now the difficulty is just dealing with the credibility issues,” Wilson says. “The issue of who we are as an organization, what makes us different from the past failed attempts.”

At a launch event for the museum in April, rapper KRS-One criticized the museum in a crowded room of reporters, saying that many early hip-hop artists were boycotting the museum. According to KRS-One, these early rappers were frustrated they weren’t benefiting from a movement they helped create. “How can you build a hip-hop museum and you’re not taking care of the founders of hip-hop itself?” he said.

Since then, Wilson and Ambrose have pledged to create a “Hip-hop Pioneers” fund to make sure early artists are looked after by the museum. They say they now have KRS-One’s full support and that he has pledged $50,000 to the museum. Getting KRS-One’s endorsement is no easy feat, Wilson is quick to point out. “You gotta be real. If he doesn’t see hip-hop in you, he’s not gonna talk to you,” he says.

Despite the bumps along the road, Wilson and Ambrose remain confident that the National Museum of Hip-Hop will be built and will serve as a model of 21^st century museology. As they envision it, the museum will feature sections devoted to each of hip-hop’s founding elements: rapping, DJing, grafitti and break dancing (also known as b-boying). The museum will feature some gallery space— including the world’s largest archive of hip-hop vinyl and music videos—but will be mostly interactive.  “You’re gonna be hip-hop, you’re not just gonna see it,” Wilson says of the museum. “Don’t come to the b-boy department unless you’re ready to dance.”

Christie Z-Pabon, who along with her husband, runs a hip-hop clearing house and summer hip-hop concert series in Harlem and the Bronx, says she hopes that all foundational elements of hip-hop— from beat boxing to popping and locking— will be covered accurately and objectively in the museum. “No one element should be made to look more important than the others,” Z-Pabon wrote in an e-mail.

The museum is set to relaunch its website later today.

Ambrose and Wilson hope to involve hip-hop fans like Z-Pabon through the museum’s first widespread fundraising effort, the “Donate a Dollah” campaign, which is just getting underway. By encouraging hip-hop enthusiasts to give just a dollar each, Wilson hopes to not only generate funds but to build awareness about the project and unify hip-hop culture. The museum will soon debut an updated website where visitors can donate online. Ambrose says that within a few weeks the museum will release two original viral videos to promote the museum online, and will host a “Donate a Dollah” official launch event in the coming months.

The “Donate a Dollah” campaign will also serve as what Wilson calls a global hip-hop census: for every dollar given, a hip-hop fan will be accounted for. Because donation forms will include a place for people to mark where they live, the campaign will automatically create an inter-borough, inter-state and inter-continental battle for the most loyal hip-hop region per capita.

In the first year of the “Donate a Dollah” campaign, Wilson and Ambrose hope to raise $3.6 million, a number they feel is “very conservative.”  Wilson noted that a campaign of “Donate a Dollah”’s scale has never been done in the hip-hop community. “It doesn’t get any more grassroots than this,” he says.

Lying in bed at his West 141th Street apartment, he writhed in agony. Pain shot through his left leg; blood soaked through the bandages wrapped around his thigh and oozed down his calf. Images of his family – his father, brother, wife and infant son, refugees in Mali, raced through his mind. If he should die, he thought, who would take care of them?

Three days earlier, on Aug. 23, Ndiaye, a Mauritian refugee who arrived in Harlem in September 2006, tackled an armed robber at DD Fashion Store in the Bronx. The assailant fled without the goods, but left Ndiaye with three bullet holes and some modest media fanfare.

Now recovering, visiting a physical therapist and taking ESL classes, he’s about to learn his future. Last Wednesday, Ndiaye, 22,  appeared before a judge for a master calendar immigration hearing to prove he has legal representation, the first step in the arbitration of his refugee status. Ndiaye will reappear in court in April.

Ndiaye has been nervous about this process for months. If his refugee claim is eventually denied, he’ll be deported. Brian I. Kaplan, Ndiaye’s lawyer, declined to comment on case specifics.

On the afternoon of the attempted robbery, however, Ndiaye had little doubt of the outcome. “I was going to win,” he said. “I had to.”

The harrowing fight – captured on a store surveillance tape – erupted after a customer pulled a gun as Ndiaye was ringing up his purchases. Handing the customer a bag of clothing, Ndiaye noticed the gun in the man’s shaking right hand. In a flurry, Ndiaye jumped to his right; the man, startled, fired the gun, and Ndiaye leaped on his back, grabbing his wrists and trying to wrestle the gun from his hand. After crashing into a display case, Ndiaye managed to pin the assailant to the ground – but two shots pierced the inside of Ndiaye’s left thigh. In a final fit of strength, he ripped the gun out of the man’s hand, and took a third shot to his thigh. The shooter escaped as Ndiaye lay face down on the floor, his pants wet with blood.

His actions were primal. Aside from childhood horseplay he had never been in a fight. “I was scared,” Ndiaye said. “I was just trying to protect myself.” The next 18 hours were a blur. Bystanders outside the store rushed in and called an ambulance. They doused water over his shaved head; Ndiaye, a Muslim, was observing the Ramadan daily fast and wouldn’t consume even a sip. He was taken to Lincoln Hospital where he refused to call his family, not wanting to worry them.

The ensuing news coverage painted Ndiaye as a hero, a title he has yet to grow comfortable with. “If they call me a hero, I accept it,” he said. “But I thank God, the police, the people at the hospital; I thank everybody.” Ndiaye, who had lost his job at a Queens Dunkin’ Donuts when it closed, was only filling in at the Bronx store for his vacationing cousin.

“I feel so bad,” said his cousin, back from vacation and standing next to a quadruple-screen security monitor. He declined to give his name because the robber was still at large. “I should have been here.”

Despite the tumult Ndiaye has experienced in recent months, it doesn’t compare to his bleak and precarious former life in Mauritania, an existence marred by enslavement.

Ndiaye was born into a nomadic tribe historically oppressed by Mauritania’s “white Moor” ruling class, the Bedan. Although recent anti-slavery legislation in Mauritania attempted to eradicate such subjugation, it mostly amounted to a public relations move, said Bakary Tandia, a Mauritanian case manager and policy advocate at the African Services Committee in Harlem. Tandia estimated 40 to 45 percent of the nation’s population consists of enslaved or formerly enslaved people, commonly identified as Harateens, literally meaning “freed slaves.”

Mauritania has been rocked by political strife in recent years, including military coups in 2005 and 2008. Despite efforts to stabilize the government, said Kevin Bales, president of Free the Slaves, an international human rights organization, “human rights are still being suppressed.”