New York ? Standing at a podium, legendary hip-hop artist Grandmaster Flash, a bright orange hoodie sprouting from under his white leather jacket, shared the story of how he fell in love with vinyl records and turntables while growing up in the Bronx.

His father, a railroad worker and serious collector of vinyl records, wouldn’t let him go near the closet where he kept them. But young Flash, despite the punishments, played the records anyway.

He went on to become one of hip-hop’s pioneering disc jockeys of the early 1970s, assembling one of rap’s first groups, Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five, and elevating the role of DJ to an art form with such techniques as cutting, scratching and mixing.

“My contribution is: I was the first DJ to make the turntable an instrument,” Flash, who recently lorded over turntables at an official Winter Olympics party in Italy, said with the swagger central to hip-hop culture.

He spoke Tuesday at an announcement by the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History of its plans to immortalize hip-hop culture in an exhibit. The museum’s director, Brent D. Glass, unveiled the museum’s collecting initiative, “Hip-Hop Won’t Stop: The Beat, The Rhymes, The Life.”

“This is truly an historic occasion,” Glass said.

The project will gather artifacts, oral histories and other multimedia components tracing hip-hop’s evolution from a Bronx pastime in the 1970s to today’s global cultural juggernaut. It’s projected to cost as much as $2 million and take up to five years to finish.

On display on tables at the Manhattan hotel where the announcement was held were items donated by hip-hop pioneers including gangsta rapper-turned-television star Ice-T, MC Lyte, Afrika Bambaataa and DJ Kool Herc. All but Lyte attended the announcement.

Lyte was among the first female rappers to take on hip-hop’s misogyny and sexism and was the first to garner a gold single. She donated her diary from 2002. It read, in part, “God provides us with unlimited power to achieve our goals and pushes us beyond what we thought we were capable of.”

Flash gave a Technics turntable, which he calls his “war table,” a vinyl copy of 1978’s “Bustin’ Loose Part 1,” his trademark black and white customized Kangol hat and a mixer.

Ice-T, the only West Coast rapper at the announcement, handed over a framed poster for his 1991 single “New Jack Hustler” and two versions of his 1993 CD “Home Invasion,” the first of which his record label never released because of creative differences. He released it himself.

“Hip-hop didn’t need to be validated,” Ice-T said after the announcement. “Hip-hop never asked for acceptance. But we got it, and that’s a wonderful thing.”

Afrika Bambaataa, a DJ who in 1982 organized the first European hip-hop tour, donated his jacket bearing black nationalist Marcus Garvey’s name and image, a red fez and a poster of the Source magazine’s 50th issue cover, which he graced with Flash and Herc.

Herc, who blasted the “hooliganism” in hip-hop today, said he planned to donate an amplifier, a Technics SL-1100 turntable from the early 1970s and speakers.

Def Jam Records co-founder Russell Simmons gave away a wooden advertisement for Phat Farm, the clothing company he started.

Glass, the museum’s director, said the curator’s central challenge will be putting together a musical exhibit requiring multimedia components rather than merely stationary objects – and putting it together to tell an interesting story.