Harry Allen, Hip-Hop Activist & Media Assassin, is known for his long-time association with the seminal band Public Enemy and for his widely heard  “cameo” on their classic record, Don’t Believe the Hype. Allen, a renowned journalist and radio host, will discuss the classic photographs he took in the early 1980s and explore the context of early hip-hop.
 

Attend Mr. Harry Allen's convocation on

March 2, 2017, 3:00pm

Phelps-Stokes Auditorium.

If you liked this convocation speaker, then you'll love these books that we have available for check-out near cafe!

 

Thug Life by Michael P. Jeffries
Call Number: 306.484 J474t 2011
Publication Date: 2011
Hip-hop has come a long way from its origins in the Bronx in the 1970s, when rapping and DJing were just part of a lively, decidedly local scene that also venerated b-boying and graffiti. Now hip-hop is a global phenomenon and, in the United States, a massively successful corporate enterprise predominantly controlled and consumed by whites while the most prominent performers are black. How does this shift in racial dynamics affect our understanding of contemporary hip-hop, especially when the music perpetuates stereotypes of black men? Do black listeners interpret hip-hop differently from white fans? These questions have dogged hip-hop for decades, but unlike most pundits, Michael P. Jeffries finds answers by interviewing everyday people. Instead of turning to performers or media critics, Thug Life focuses on the music’s fans—young men, both black and white—and the resulting account avoids romanticism, offering an unbiased examination of how hip-hop works in people’s daily lives. As Jeffries weaves the fans’ voices together with his own sophisticated analysis, we are able to understand hip-hop as a tool listeners use to make sense of themselves and society as well as a rich, self-contained world containing politics and pleasure, virtue and vice.
 
Hip Hop Family Tree by Ed Piskor (Artist)
Call Number: 782.421 P677h
Publication Date: 2013
From exciting young talent and self-proclaimed hip hop nerd Ed Piskor comes this explosively entertaining, encyclopaedic history of the formative years of the music genre that has changed global culture. Originally serialised on the hugely popular website Boing Boing, Hip Hop Family Tree has been collected in a single volume cleverly presented in a style evocative of the Marvel comics of the same era. Captured are the vivid personalities of stars like DJ Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, as well as three kids who later become RUN-DMC.
 
 
The 'Hood Comes First by Murray Forman
Call Number: 782.421649 F724h 2002
Publication Date: 2002
The 'Hood Comes First looks at the increasingly specific emphasis on real neighborhoods and streets in rap music and hip hop culture as an urgent response to the cultural and geographical ghettoization of black urban communities. Examining rap music, along with ancillary hip hop media including radio, music videos, rap press and the cinematic ‘hood genre, Murray Forman analyzes hip hop culture's varying articulations of the terms "ghetto," "inner-city," and "the 'hood," and how these spaces, both real and imaginary, are used to define individual and collective identity. Negotiating academic, corporate, and "street" discourses, Forman assesses the dynamics between race, social space and youth. Race, class and national identification are recast and revised within rap's spatial discourse, concluding with the construction of “the ‘hood,” a social and geographic symbol that has become central to concepts of hip hop authenticity. Additionally, the book analyzes the processes within the music and culture industries through which hip hop has been amplified and disseminated from the ‘hood to international audiences.