What hip-hop artists have been expressing about race, violence, economic class and beyond for the past 50 years is used as a powerful education tool in the present. Dan Charnas, Associate Arts Professor at New York University, suggests that hip-hop is crucial in overall education. His popular course on the late producer and composer J. Dilla — who produced for artists including A Tribe Called Quest, Common and Janet Jackson — inspired Charnas to write the New York Times bestseller Dilla Time.
"Hip-hop is just part of a longer popular music tradition which sits very squarely in any history — cultural, music or otherwise. So teaching hip-hop is just teaching history," Charnas tells GRAMMY.com, adding that not incorporating hip-hop into his curriculum would "be an incomplete education of our world.
"It’s funny," he continues, citing an episode of [Rick Rubin's] podcast. "When I was on last year, he’s like, ‘So you teach hip-hop, what’s that like?’ It was such a weird question! He says when he was a student at Tisch, where I teach, hip-hop was the thing you did instead of school. He comes from a generation that had no context for it being somewhat academic."
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Best guide to hip hop, soul, reggae concerts & events in San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles & New York City + music, videos, radio and more
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Thursday, Apr 18 @ UC Theatre, Berkeley
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