From the very beginnings of Hip Hop, and even before, getting a message out to the community and broader demographics was not as easy as it is today. Without social media networks like the big three (Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter), without smart phones, and without faster traveling communication, Hip Hop spread across the world both commercially and underground. All four elements as well as the debatable fifth element, knowledge, captivated communities all around the world through the peace, love, unity, and having fun message.

Today it is much easier to communicate a message and you don’t even need to be fluent in any particular language to understand it. Culture, community, ethnicities traditions, and other relevant lifestyles are used as inspiration to build our lives closer and closer to each other. 

One of those organizations set on building the community through Hip Hop is “stance.” Stance was founded by Daniel Zhu, well-known for his content previously on StrifeTV, earlier this year as means to promote the various elements of Hip Hop.

“‘stance’ is a hip hop lifestyle storytelling channel. We are all in the hip hop community together, but how we use hip hop to enrich our lives is different from person to person. Those are the stories we want to tell,” states the message on stance YouTube channel.

Daniel and stance have “enriched” many lives accomplishing the ability to share stories, knowledge, and exciting content via high-quality videos. 

Having interacted with Daniel Zhu on many occasions previous to stance’s debut, he never ceases to amaze me the creativity and original content he captures from raw battles to intimate moments with some of the best dancers in the world. If you are not familiar with the Hip Hop culture or involved in the street dance scene, I guarantee you have seen some of his content being shared from pages on Facebook. 

Those of us in the street dance media game first found a passion for dancing by seeing other communication mediums either through music videos, movies, VHS tapes of old battles, or original websites like Styl2Ouf, 1000pour100, CypherStyles, SoulSeek, Freestyle Session, and others. It’s no wonder, with there being so much information today on the Internet, a new revolution of dance and culture media is influencing the world through the quality, the quick film, edit, and release turnaround, and most importantly the relationship between the messenger delivering the message to the receiver. stance has done that in 5 months time.

Zhu should be recognized for adding an extra ingredient to capturing a culture full of positivity and energy allowing the public to get a glimpse of what the lifestyle is truly about and not what todays news media portrays Hip Hop. Stance has content providers and video editors perfectly set up in various countries around the world with just as much talent on and off camera sharing the influence of Hip Hop in their respective cultures, cities, and traditional ethnicities. 

Only five months in stance is making an impact not just on the social networks, but in communities around the world. It’s important we support things which have such an impact on our kids, youth, and even us adults looking for inspiration to be better everyday.  

How will you enrich your life?

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