"We cannot understand the last fifty years of history in the United States—certainly not the first thing about Black history—without studying the emergence and evolution of rap"

An excellent essay by Dr Austin McCoy on the changing nature of hip hop, and its ongoing cultural and political relevance:

I will never forget one of my professors in the African American studies master’s program at Ohio State telling us, “We aren’t going to hip-hop our way to liberation.” True enough—yet as I later learned from African American history professors like Zachery Williams, it’s not useful to think of history as separate from culture, nor can one understand culture’s power without the history from which it springs.

It’s Bigger Than Hip-Hop - The Baffler