Hello everyone! This will be the blog for our class, Hip Hop in Urban America (AAS181, Summer Session 1 2010). At least once this quarter, you and your group MUST post a playlist. Individually, you MUST respond to your classmates' posts--and mine. It is part of your participation grade, and I will check each week before section.
This is the place where you can be unedited, unrestricted, and otherwise uncensored--this is where YOU bring in music YOU want to talk about, YOU work through concepts YOU agree or disagree with. This is YOUR forum, y'all. Enjoy it!
I feel like Dyson's argument that hip hop provides a voice to a largely disenfranchised group does hold water, for as Dyson notes at the end of his essay, "[rap ] expresses the desire of young black people to reclaim their history, reactivate forms of black radicalism, and contest the powers of despair and economic depression that presently besiege the black community"(10). Someone like Tipper Gore might argue that rap does not offer the "right" kind of voice to a disenfranchised people, in that it, as Gore might say, is a violent and divisive form of music. Such an argument betrays a shallow interpretation of rap based on generalizations, which ignores an overwhelming amount of culturally responsible artistic creativity.
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