Exploring the Emancipatory Rhetoric of Hip-Hop DJs

Hip-hop’s wide-ranging impact on culture has yet to be fully explored in academic spaces due to gate-keeping and erasure of the very artists responsible for its climb, attested DJ and CUNY professor Todd Craig in a special dialogue with TC’s Bettina Love on March 25.  The conversation — which convened two of the most prominent scholars at the intersection of racial justice and education —  celebrated Craig’s latest work, K For The Way: DJ Rhetoric and Literacy for 21st Century Writing Studies, which illustrates how the rhetoric of hip-hop DJs have cultivated an impactful “shared social identity.”  Craig disc-jockeyed before and during his lecture. (Photo courtesy of Smith Learning Theater)  “Who gets to tell the story is critical,” said Craig, who DJ’d his own set to the standing-room only crowd in Smith Learning Theater. “Who gets to tell the story of hip-hop? Is it the English academics who sit in an office in an ivory tower, completely unattached from the culture on the ground, or should it be the people on the ground who are cultivating and innovating and contributing to the culture we’re thinking about?”  For Love, Craig’s work “reminds us of the responsibility of the DJ to inform...