Does rap music have a place in the classroom? It's a valid question. The knee jerks toward no. Racist, misogynistic, violent and counter-cultural texts are rarely examined without vital context from a professor, and I dare not speculate as to the context in which MIMS(MUMS?) will someday be posthumously put.
I got to thinking about the legacy of my craft after reading an article in National Geographic, which is not exactly my default source of inspiration in hip-hop. I stared at the "Hip-Hop Planet, p.100" on the cover of the magazine, then read it with the suspicion of a particularly contentious auto mechanic reading a hyperbolic review of what he knows to be a lackluster Chrysler 300.
James McBride is a writer and jazz musician from NYC. He's also black, which I admit adds credibility to his voice. Having seen "Rapper's Delight" performed in a living room also qualifies him well. The tone of Hip-Hop Planet is apologetic. It is a fifty year old man coming to grips with the reality of a global movement that has passed him by, and even further, that he watched it as he went.
Four years after Mr. McBride received his master's in journalism from Columbia, I was born. In middle school I heard BIG, Nas, Jay, and Wu-Tang. High school brought alternative rap, in the form of living legends and Atmosphere. Now I choose music not by genre, but rather by the whimsical musing instant gratification so precious to this, the digital age of music and reason.
If rap is the soundtrack of my life, the viewer is experiencing serious cognitive dissonance. I do not look to music to embolden my struggle. The entire body of rap music says nothing about who I am, or where I came from. It the first, but not the only, musical genre to which I claim fan-ship. Yet even I know clear as day that at its roots, Hip-Hop is the most significant cultural movement of our time, but if it does not soon become popularly considered so we will lose our opportunity for first person perspective, and rely on hindsight some time down the road.
Does rap belong in the classroom? Yes, if only to teach rhythm, meter, rhyme, cadence, enjambment, etc. I do not, however, know a teacher, nor a textbook, who authoritatively places NWA in the framework of race tensions in Southern California during the 1980's. Many articles have been published, but they are often obscure. Hip-Hop histories teem with "beef 'tween east and west coast," but rarely examine the socio-economic conditions of the Bronx in 1980.
Yes rap belongs in the classroom. Rap music (DJ + MC) is a model of American ingenuity. Why throw out the old when it can be reused? DJs borrow the best from any song, which in turn creates not only a new song, but also a new identity (positive or negative) for the borrowed song. Rap invades, and it asks no permission to leave its footprints everywhere.
We stand on the edge of history, in the humble terms of hip-hop. If we do not consider literary hip-hop culture, it will cease to be something we can study. Rap has no identity, but rather affects and distorts the identity of its surroundings. It permeates everything. If we don't focus and notice it now, for what it has been, is, and will become, then we risk entering a Hip-Hop dark age devoid of a valuable history.
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