For many of Liberia's most talented hipco artists, the love of music is a reason to stick together. Hipco, which is short for “hip colloquial,” refers to the broken English commonly spoken by most Liberians. For the circle of nearly twenty artists living in the Sinkor area, hipco is a way of life and a means of self-expression. iLab was first introduced to the team of musicians through hipco advocate, Nora Rahimian. She was eager to see how we could teach local artists the skills necessary to promote their work to a wider audience, while also enhancing their ICT skills. After an in-depth evaluation with the musicians, iLab's team customized the Social Media course to include YouTube (along with the popular Facebook and Twitter), and despite efforts to also instruct Soundcloud, Dropbox, and Bandcamp, the staff wanted to focus attention on a few platforms first. Lawrence Logan, commonly known as 'Marvalous MC,' shared the most important aspect of how the training is beneficial to him
“It's important for me and other artists to work hard to improve the music industry and get Liberian tunes out to the rest of the world – for most of us, it's been a way to band together to unite our country.” As they entered the Twitter-sphere, generated Facebook fan pages and YouTube channels, excitement spread quickly as to how learning these platforms can generate instant exposure of their work. Hipco artist Abu B. Bernard, or 'Sunshine,' reminds us all of the beauty of music: “Music as a whole doesn't have any boundaries, so there's no reason I should as a musician.”