It starts a night before the festival officially does. On Thursday, Schuur screens Wild Style, the 1983 film that took graffiti, breaking, DJing and MCing out of the Bronx and onto screens everywhere else. Amsterdam rapper Nnelg introduces the film and joins a conversation after the screening. Born Glenn Abrokwa and raised in Amsterdam Zuidoost, Nnelg has become a distinctive voice in Dutch hip-hop through releases including Contra, Serena, Balans and his latest album Rijkdom. He is also part of SMIB, the multidisciplinary collective working across music, fashion, art and literature.

Then it picks up late on Friday at Patronaat with Zwarte Liefde, a collective built around exactly the kind of relationship between records, DJs and hip-hop culture that sits at the heart of the festival. Founded by Welly Well, Zwarte Liefde has spent the past decade keeping vinyl and black music firmly connected to the dancefloor. For this year's edition, Extince, Rafik, Chuckie, ND, Welly Well, DNS, Desibel, Rodney Williams and Setiono take over Patronaat's Zaal 2. A particular highlight comes from Dutch hip-hop icon Extince, playing his first-ever vinyl DJ set.

On Saturday afternoon, the story moves from the crates to the music and ideas they carry.

It opens at Locael Centraal, where Het Huis van Funky Vinyl kicks off its weekend with a documentary lunch hosted by Steppin' into Tomorrow. Sample Not For Sale goes straight to the question underneath all of this: who owns a sound once someone else has built something new out of it. Director Mike Redman joins for a Q&A after the screening.

At PHIL, writer and music journalist Saul van Stapele looks back on three decades spent sitting across from some of the biggest names in American hip-hop: Kendrick Lamar, Nas, Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent, Jay-Z and many more. His latest book, Woorden als wapens, takes those encounters as a starting point, but the conversation goes much further than backstage stories.

Together with moderator Leon Wijdenbosch, Van Stapele gets into the tension that has followed hip-hop from the beginning: gangsta rap as protest and billion-dollar business, the mythology of the bad guy, censorship, violence, and what happens when stories about a community start shaping the way that community is seen. All with the records that carried those stories playing alongside them.

At the same time, over at Teylers Museum, Solange's A Seat at the Table gets a different kind of close listening. Ten years after its release, the album will be played from beginning to end as part of a Pitchblack Playback deep listening session, in complete darkness and through the FFF Sound System. Soul, R&B, funk and spoken word come together in an album deeply connected to questions of Black identity, history and cultural memory.

If you would rather have your hands on the records than your eyes closed, DJ DNS and De Haarlemse DJ School run hands-on vinyl DJ workshops at Locael Centraal later that afternoon. Open to anyone curious about DJing on vinyl, no experience needed.

And then, on Saturday night, the mic passes on.

PHIL's Grote Zaal belongs to a very different chapter of the story. Mula, Lusho and Marou & Massin bring together different edges of the current Dutch hip-hop scene for a Haarlem Vinyl Festival hip-hop line-up built on trap beats, bars and plenty of forward motion.

Mula has been bending the shape of Dutch hip-hop for a decade, moving from the cult status of D&G towards the trap, indie and electronic collisions of Narcopop. Lusho comes in with UK rap, Memphis and Jersey Club in the mix. Marou & Massin bring their own sharp flows and wordplay from a younger wave coming through. It's a line-up designed to put several sides of Dutch hip-hop on the same stage.

The opening programme kicks off at 20:00, with the night continuing after the Grote Zaal as lostboyshawty takes over PHIL Café for the aftershow.

The rest of the city keeps going too. At Stiels, Haarlem live band 2K Magic ft. Leehaund plays the 2000s back at full volume, with Usher's grooves, Nelly's beats and 50 Cent's raw energy delivered by a band instead of a soundsystem. At Café du Théâtre, Revert 95 Soundsystem brings in Sam Goldberg and Job the Dutch for a vinyl-only night of classic hip-hop and future classics. Both are free.

Back at Patronaat, CLUB3 hands the turntables to The Flexican for a two-hour vinyl-only set, joined by Dora and Just & Kay. Born in Mexico City and raised on Pink Floyd, Guns N' Roses and his uncle's backstage rock gigs, Thomás moved to Amsterdam in 1992, where MTV's hip-hop wave rewired his ears for good. As producer and MC with Flinke Namen he helped deliver Dutch rap landmarks like Superstuntwerk and the cult favourite Bumayé. Equally at home in hip-hop, funk and house, he brings a crate-digger's ear and a dancefloor instinct to every set.

Sunday starts where Saturday night left off, with the technique rather than the party. DJ DNS hosts a screening of Scratch, the documentary that made turntablism legible to people who had only ever heard it, and then demonstrates the thing itself in a live showcase at Locael Centraal. It is one of the few moments in the weekend where you get the history and the hands in the same room.

There is one more record to sit with before the weekend is over. On Sunday, Teylers Museum turns its attention to A Tribe Called Quest's The Low End Theory , marking the album's 35th anniversary with another full-album deep listening session. Few records capture hip-hop's relationship with jazz, sampling and the possibilities of the album format quite like it.

From Wild Style on a Thursday night to The Low End Theory heard front to back on Sunday afternoon, with Zwarte Liefde digging through the crates, Saul van Stapele looking back at three decades of the culture and Mula and a younger generation taking it somewhere else, hip-hop runs through Haarlem Vinyl Festival in several forms.

Put the weekend in the calendar

Wild Style, Film Screening with Nnelg
Thursday 1 October · 21:15–23:00 · Schuur

Black Love
Friday 2 October · 23:00–04:00 · Patronaat, Room 2

Sample Not For Sale + Q&A with Mike Redman
Saturday 3 October · 1:00 PM–3:00 PM · Locael Centraal

Saul van Stapele, Words as Weapons
Saturday 3 October · 14:30–15:30 · PHIL

Solange, A Seat at the Table: 10th Anniversary Deep Listening Session
Saturday 3 October · 2:30 PM–3:45 PM · Teylers Museum

DJ Workshops with DJ DNS
Saturday 3 October · 3:00–5:00 PM · Locael Centraal

Mula + Lusho + Marou & Massin
Saturday 3 October · from 20:00 · PHIL, Grote Zaal, with lostboyshawty after at PHIL Café

2K Magic ft. Leehaund
Saturday 3 October · 21:00–00:00 · Stiels · free entrance

Revert 95 Soundsystem feat. Sam Goldberg & Job the Dutch
Saturday 3 October · from 22:00 · Café du Théâtre · free entrance

CLUB3 X The Flexican
Saturday 3 October · from 23:00 · Patronaat

Scratch + Turntablism Showcase with DJ DNS
Sunday 4 October · 1:00 PM–3:00 PM · Locael Centraal

A Tribe Called Quest, The Low End Theory: 35th Anniversary Deep Listening Session
Sunday 4 October · 2:00 PM–4:00 PM · Teylers Museum

Want the whole weekend? The Weekend Pass gets you in across Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.