Chapter 12: It Takes a Nation of Millions: How to Freestyle a Hip-Hop Curriculum

One of the challenges in first introducing and subsequently organizing hip-hop within an academic institution is that while academia theoretically constitutes an open space traditionally amenable to new, innovative ideas and learning, it can in practice also be stultifying and difficult to change. All too often, academia has been reluctant to embrace hip-hop culture; and there has been indeed, a strong anti-intellectualist sentiment that presumes hiphop is mostly noise and has very little of substantive value to offer students, faculty, and staff (see Asante, 2009; Chang, 2005; Dyson, 2007; Forman & Neal, 2012; Malone & Martinez, 2015; Ogbar 2007; Rose, 2008; Watkins, 2005). One example of this insight comes when Jeffery O. G. Ogbar (2007) writes, “Outside critics have lambasted hip-hop for being responsible for a myriad of social ills. Several high profile politicians, academics, journalists, and activists have held hip-hop culpable for violent crime rates, sexual irresponsibility, poor academic performance, and general social dysfunction” (p. 106). Ogbar continues, “these pundits have offered little more than recycled fear of Black youth as a social danger. More specifically, anti-rap pundits have pandered to racist and class-based fear of young Black people and created untenable arguments to bolster their claims” (p. 106).