This year, LWHS welcomed back a new member to its admissions staff: Ben Cohn ’08. Mr. Cohn, a man of many talents, has devoted himself to spreading his extensive knowledge and love of music around the world.

After graduating from the University of Puget Sound in 2012, Cohn traveled to Yangsan, SouthKorea to teach English for one year. After returning to the United States, Cohn created the hip-hop music Mecca of his website, da-what.com. This website features interviews with local musicians, and serves as a platform for hip-hop enthusiasts to share their own music, as well as discover others’.

Cohn has also won a Fulbright scholarship, and he will soon travel to Accra—the capital of Ghana—to create a program that facilitates access to music education for children in local communities. The Paper Tiger (kinda) sat down with him to talk about his experiences.

When did you create da-what.com?

I started Da-What at the end of 2008 with a couple friends of mine. While they have moved onto other ventures, I have continued to maintain the site to this day.

How has the website evolved since then?

Well, we originally had no idea what our goal was for Da-What. We were all hip-hop heads who read other sites, listened to a lot of music and enjoyed some of the online communities that had developed. Some of the early posts I can remember included a “Top 10 Albums of All Time”, various spotlights on artists I didn’t hear on the radio and information on different types of hip hop production.We definitely also had links/uploads where people could download music that shouldn’t have been available for free and that was one of the first changes we made. As huge music fans, we didn’t want to promote piracy and quickly changed policy to only upload free music.