Do a web-search for “Hip Hop” and you’ll get search results for Hip Hop as a culture (composed of 4 elements: breaking, emceeing, DJing, graffiti), a genre of music (rap) and now—especially if you filter for results only from the last couple of days—a tool for speeding up PHP sites and apps. This tool was  recently announced by Facebook and improves the performance of large PHP sites like it.

Whoever decided on the name did a much better job than Apple on their recently announced product but the name still draws up some obvious, unrelated imagery. I'm sure jokes are being dropped left and right in techie circles and some articles are already cashing in on the association to generate clever titles and content.

For me, just reading what people posted about HipHop (the PHP tool) with Hip-Hop (the culture) in-mind was a trip in itself. Some statements reminded me of Hip-Hop's presence. When Marco Tabini said that HipHop "has the potential to be an incredibly disruptive product”, I couldn't help but be reminded of how hip hop has affected the world, changing the lives of people from Congo to China.  Others conjured up messier memories. Mac Slocum's question, “How easy—or hard—do you think it will be for other companies to take advantage of HipHop?”, immediately had me thinking about Hip-Hop's relationship with Corporate America. One of the most interesting e-pinions, though, was from the creator of PHP, Ramus Lerdorf. After Facebook's announcement, he tweeted about it, saying "I think HipHop is cool and will certainly help the poor people stuck in framework soup." Replace "framework soup" with "poverty" and you've got PHP's creator summarizing the creation of Hip-Hop.

But the biggest coincidence of all was in the announcement itself: making HipHop open-source. By releasing HipHop to the world to be used, improved and changed, Facebook has made it closer to its namesake than it may have realized.

Though Hip-Hop is a culture, it's open-source. Anyone can use it, improve it or change it. It's been used by people all over the globe as a means of self-expression and empowerment. Over time, it has been improved by emcees like Rakim, b-boys like Style Elements Crew, DJ's like Q-bert, and graffiti writers like SKEME, all of whom raised the bar and elevated the level of their respective elements. And Hip-Hop has been changed in different cities, regions and countries as people looked at the source code and adjusted it to better reflect their area's style. It's great that Facebook is giving back to PHP community by open-sourcing HipHop. If it ends up sharing the same legacy as it's namesake, it'll become a transforming force for years to come.