No, This Isn’t “The Onion”

George Leef

Inside Higher Ed today has a story about a new book by a professor on hip-hop culture in college. In the interview, the author says, ”Hip-hop collegians are college students who create hip-hop and apply its sensibilities and worldview to their educational lives….They dance, rhyme, make beats, DJ, paint and draw visual arts such as graffiti, curate events, and more… A hip-hop collegian is not someone who simply listens to rap music. Anyone who turns on the radio can listen to rap music today because it is a mainstream part of American society. But a student who is deeply invested in the fuller culture of hip-hop, often by creating a part of it, and applies its sensibilities to education, is a hip-hop collegian.”

Sounds like a satire from “The Onion,” as one commenter wrote, but apparently not.

I wonder just what hip-hop “sensibilities” are and how they differ from the sensibilities affiliated with any other form of music. Other than perhaps creating more graffiti, how are these “hip-hop” collegians different from others?

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