Hip hop music is important precisely because it sheds light on contemporary politics, history, and race. At its best, hip hop gives voice to marginal black youth we are not used to hearing from on such topics.

The methodologies of examining hip hop are borrowed from sociology, politics, religion, economics, urban studies, journalism, communications theory, American studies, transatlantic studies, black studies, history, musicology, comparative literature, English, linguistics, and other disciplines.

Hip-hop is about the brilliance of pavement poetry.

The Hip Hop Professor.

Hip-hop has globalized a conception of blackness that has had a political impact, whether or not it had a political intent.

No one can identify the uninformed until they voice their ignorance about a topic. Silence is a fool’s best friend. Sadly, he is often too foolish to realize it.