Marlon Monroyo

Dip-Hop By Nicole Marsh

According to SLYKI (Sign Like You Know It) Entertainment’s CEO, Warren “Wawa” Snipe, “The world's gonna know a new music genre: Dip-Hop. Dip-Hop is Hip-Hop through deaf eyes”.

Over the years, there have been many examples of deaf musical artists and producers, from Deaf M Productions to DJ Supalee, and Wawa himself. These men were the pioneers of Dip-Hop, with Prinz-D the First Deaf Rapper and Sho’Roc (as the Helix Boyz) following in their footsteps. After these came Sean Forbes and SignMark, along with a handful of other artists and DJ’s.

Deaf M Productions began in 1994, when the founder Marlon Monroyo received a job as a promoter for a DC club. This offer came after he successfully recruited more than 400 Gallaudet students to gather at a club during his first week at Gallaudet. Joining the Delta Sigma Phi fraternity as a Gallaudet student motivated him to start hosting his own events, and then he started deejaying as well. During these events, he brought the Helix Boyz together to perform.

This year marks DJ Supalee's 20th year as a disc jockey. Amazingly, he is not known only for deejaying but also for drawing the Deaf community together in many ways. He hosted an event called SupaFest for four years, and when this ended, DJ Supalee explained, “I set up goals to give back to the community by forming Deaf United Entertainment. It’s a national wide event planning company. I used that to host all over the States”. Through this, he has hosted many events that have drawn the deaf community together to celebrate music and ASL. Like Deaf M Productions, through hosting events, he has also created a space for Deaf recording artists such as the Helix Boyz a place to perform.

At that point, there was no name for this type of music, or a genre for these performers. Warren “Wawa” Snipe started his performing career back in 1988 as a member of the Wild Zappers dance group. “I was labeled [hearing-minded] a lot, so I would do my music, poetry and rapping in private,” Wawa shared. Fed up with labels and hiding his work, he broke free of these labels and shared his skills. As the man that’s coined that term “Dip-Hop” back in 2005, Wawa said, “I wanted to show Deaf Culture through Hip-Hop but it just didn't feel right to call it Hip-Hop, thus the birth of Dip- Hop”. After being in the business for over 20 years, Wawa decided to create SLYKI Entertainment to provide