Critical Hip-Hop and the Pedagogy of the Populace

Over the past few decades, critical hip-hop has emerged as an incredibly powerful social, political, and cultural space in which our dominant, hegemonic and colonial societal modes are challenged, critiqued, and reimagined. While the analyses of various hip-hop artists have been profound in both their criticism and radical reimagination, their viability in the Academy is often neglected, ignored, and unrecognized. However, critical hip-hop has gained significant traction among many outside of academia, including young people and people of color. In the quest for significant societal change, it is insufficient for various social factions to exist in a parallel, un-tandem, relation to one another. Rather, it is of utmost importance that the various dissenting factions organize and collaborate in unity if they are to make significant strides towards a more just, more peaceful, more loving society and world. The first part of this presentation examines the history of critical hip-hop, from the emergence of its central figures to the various and multifaceted foci that constitute the field today. The second part of this presentation will explore the contributions of three of critical hip-hop’s central figures/groups: KRS-One, Immortal Technique, and Dead Prez. The third and final part of this presentation will examine the gap between critical hip-hop and critical academic scholarship, and will explore the potential for a synthesis of the two, both in art and in scholarship, as well as in social, activist, and political spaces that span the range of both the academy and that of the society as a whole