Ronald Reagan may have been known as ‘The Great Communicator,’ but rap artists don’t view his legacy through such rose-colored glasses. A professor of Black studies and history takes a closer look.
Academic rigour, journalistic flair
Articles on Kendrick Lamar
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With Congress designating Aug. 11, 2021, as Hip-Hop Celebration Day, a scholar and performer of the art form makes the case for hip-hop to become more prominent in American academe.
A study of the late Keorapetse Kgositsile shows how the poet influenced black American culture. It also shows how his mother and his grandmother’s oral traditions in turn influenced him.
Music is an underutilised tool when it comes to steering curricula away from strictly Western and colonial models.
For a musician anywhere, surviving and prospering within the genre called jazz has never been easy, and it still isn’t.
The n-word is a means through which hip hop reminds white listeners of the chasm of culture and experience between them and black America.
A greater synergy between academics and practitioners is needed to progress hip hop for it to be taken seriously as a core area for study.
Whether it is art or pop, high or low, terms such as creativity, authenticity, innovation and uniqueness can help us judge a work of music. And Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN. brims with these qualities.
Something really magical is happening at the intersection between jazz and hip-hop at the moment. Many of the artists involved will be playing at Africa’s foremost jazz festival.
In a gloomy year filled, a number of artists with an Afrofuturist perspective gave hope with inspired works of art.
Top contributors
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Lecturer of English. PhD Candidate in Afrofuturism and African Studies, University of the Western Cape
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Associate Professor of Hip-Hop, University of Virginia
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Associate of the Gordon Institute for Business Science, University of Pretoria
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Associate Professor, Department of Literary Studies in English, Rhodes University
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Research Lead at Rhythm Obscura, University of Plymouth
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Deputy Head of School, Senior Lecturer in Piano and Musicology, School of Music, Australian National University
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Professor of Black Studies and History, Amherst College
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Casual lecturer, United States Studies Centre, University of Sydney
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Lecturer, Stellenbosch University
