Rap Academics

‘Kids rock Akademiks but they’re not academic’: hip-hop, academia and the liminal spaces between

This song is a ra/p/aper, demonstrating and arguing that hip-hop practice is hip-hop studies. Building on AD Carson’s artist-research in the form of mixtap/e/ssays (Carson, 2020), the track asserts that rap is research, art is scholarship, rather than research being a process that has to happen after creative practice. Through this process, issues are raised and explored regarding cultural legitimacy, hip-hop culture vs academic culture, and access to cultural spaces, through the creative output itself.

Written for and presented at PANTHEON: Paris EHHSN 2022 Meeting, the song takes the lyrics, ‘Kids rock Akademiks but they’re not academic’, from Jehst’s England, (2011) as a jump-off to engage with three specific domains: hip-hop culture, creative practice and academia.

Jehst links hip-hop streetwear clothing label Akademiks to the academic, scholastic world. He is saying ‘young people around here wear street clothing with the Akademiks brand but are not scholarly, or studious’. The implication being that they are then the opposite of that: unschooled but street-smart. This cleverly presents the dichotomy of academic intelligence versus socio-cultural intelligence – street-wisdom – and how the two often seem incompatible.

This creative output argues that through analysis of hip-hop practices, it becomes clear that those engaging deeply with the culture are partaking in activities that are the definition of research.

The song expands on AD Carson’s pioneering conjoined word-format of academic peer-reviewed music release: ‘mixtap/e/ssays’ (Carson, 2020), proposing a ra/p/aper, that is both creative and academic output.

Verses one and two are concerned with demonstrating that hip-hop cultural practices are academic practices, translating activities between the two. The second part of the song is concerned with addressing themes of the local and the global, hip-hop radicalism vs institutionalisation, legitimacy and authentication. 

This process allows for connections, arguments and perspectives relating to postcolonial theory, local/ global hybridity, decolonisation of curricula, appropriation, marginalisation and access to institutional spaces.

The artistic output itself makes an overarching argument that rap is research.

Peace.