Alexander on Hip Hop and Housing

Professor Lisa Alexander at the Wisconsin Law School has just published a very interesting article in the UC Hastings Law Review entitled "Hip Hop and Housing: Revisiting Culture, Urban Space, Power, and Law." In this article, Professor Alexander examines the concept of "cultural collective efficacy" and its impact on inner city communities. The abstract for her work follows:

U.S. housing law is finally receiving its due attention. Scholars and practitioners are focused primarily on the subprime mortgage and foreclosure crises. Yet the current recession has also resurrected the debate about the efficacy of place-based lawmaking. Place-based laws direct economic resources to low-income neighborhoods to help existing residents remain in place and to improve those areas. Law-and-economists and staunch integrationists attack place-based lawmaking on economic and social grounds. This Article examines the efficacy of place-based lawmaking through the underutilized prism of culture. Using a sociolegal approach, it develops a theory of cultural collective efficacy as a justification for place-based lawmaking. Cultural collective efficacy describes positive social networks that inner-city residents develop through participation in musical, artistic, and other neighborhood-based cultural endeavors. This Article analyzes two examples of cultural collective efficacy: the early development of hip-hop in the Bronx and community murals developed by Mexican immigrants in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. These examples show that cultural collective efficacy can help inner-city residents mitigate the negative effects of living in a poor and segregated community and obtain more concrete benefits from urban revitalization in their communities. Cultural collective efficacy also provides a framework to examine important microdynamics in the inner-city that scholars and policymakers have ignored. Lastly, this Article devises new combinations of place-based laws that might protect cultural collective efficacy, such as: (1) historic districts with affordable housing protections secured through transferable development rights, (2) foreclosure prevention strategies, (3) techniques to mitigate eminent domain abuse, and (4) reinterpretations of the Fair Housing Act’s “affirmatively furthering” fair housing mandate. These examples of place-based lawmaking may more effectively promote equitable development and advance distributive justice in U.S. housing law and policy.

Check the article out here.

Another Rapper Sent to Prison for Drugs

Recently, another up-and-coming rap artist was sentenced to seventeen years in federal prison after being ensnared with drugs. Boss G, a well-known South Carolina hip hop artist whose name is Darnell Mealing, was caught up as a “middle man” in the Folk Nation gang. In his sentencing, U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie referenced Boss G’s notorious lifestyle of violence (and his ranking position) in order to carry out drug deals. His position in Folk Nation gave him access to 30 to 50 “foot soldiers”; by using their services, Boss G was able to carry out the directives of the high level dealer, Pearish Perry. In exchange for protecting Perry and distributing his drugs, Boss G received Perry’s financial backing to support his music career.

Boss G, having appeared in dozens of videos, including the popular “The South Carolina Rap,” received no favors in court when the AUSA used one of Boss G’s videos against him. The AUSA reflected that Boss G’s videos portrayed the notorious and violent lifestyle that he lived.

Wiz Khalifa Sued for Alleged Copyright Infringement

Wiz Khalifa charted a huge hit when he released “Black and Yellow” in 2011. That record is now under siege. In January 2012, songwriter Max Gregory Warren, who goes by the stage name Maxamillion, alleged in a lawsuit that Khalifa’s top song is, in reality, stolen from Maxamillion’s own lyrics. Maxamillion is suing Khalifa for $2.3 million in damages, including fraud and deceit, copyright infringement, civil conspiracy and unjust enrichment.

Maxamillion claims that in 2007 he wrote a song called “Pink N Yellow,” and that before he was able to officially copyright it in 2008, Khalifa took that song and morphed it into his hit single releasing it as “Black and Yellow,” rather than “Pink N Yellow.” Maxamillion claims that Khalifa and his producers heard “Pink N Yellow and then “engaged in a scheme to defraud plaintiff out of the fruits of his copyright of the Subject song.” Also named in the lawsuit are Khalifa’s publishing company PGH Sound, EMI Music Publishing, Rostrum Records, Warner Music Group and Atlantic Recording Corporation.

Hip Hop and the American Constitution

Dr. Donald Tibbs in collaboration with Professor andré douglas pond cummings are offering a first-of-its-kind law school course entitled "Hip Hop and the American Constitution," this spring semester 2012. Through an innovative link-up between Drexel University Earle Mack School of Law and the West Virginia University College of Law, Tibbs and cummings are presenting to law students at both schools an intellectual and academic experience connecting the intersections of hip hop with the law. The course is being presented primarily as a lecture series, where academics and activists from across the nation are traveling to Philadelphia and presenting their published work which examines various aspects of the the law through the lens of hip hop, its artists, culture and messaging. Students will be required to read the lecturing scholars work, be it law review articles or books, and will then intellectually engage with the visiting scholars following a lecture presented by each visiting professor. In addition, students will keep a journal of their insights through the semester, and will present a final paper tackling a current issue in the law and how hip hop music or culture critiques this law.

The lecture series will occur on Thursday evenings at Drexel Law throughout the spring 2012 semester and is being broadcast live to students at WVU Law. The lecture series line-up will proceed throughout the semester as follows:

January 19, 2012: Professor Bret Asbury, Drexel Law, "Anti-Snitching and the Hip Hop Community"

January 26, 2012: Professor andré douglas pond cummings, WVU Law, "All Eyez on Me: Hip Hop, Mass Incarceration and the Prison Industrial Complex

February 3, 2012: Professor Paul Butler, George Washington Law, "Let's Get Free: A Hip Hop Theory of Justice

February 9, 2012: Dr. Imani Perry, Princeton University, "Prophets of the 'Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop"

February 16, 2012: Professor Akilah Folami, Hofstra Law, "Law, Hip Hop and the Black Public Sphere"

February 23, 2012: Dr. Tryon Woods, UMass - Dartmouth, "Law, Black Sexual Politics, and Punishment"

March 1, 2012: Professor Kim Chanbonpin, John Marshall Law, "Legal Writing, The Remix: Plagiarism and Hip Hop Ethics

March 8, 2012: Professor Anthony Farley, Albany Law, "Sarah Palin: The Last Black President or Straight Up Gangsta"

March 22, 2012: Professor Pamela Bridgewater, American Law, "Is Feminism Dead? Is Hip Hop Dead? And Other 21st Century Questions of Marginal Utility"

March 29, 2012: Professor Andre Smith, Widener Law, "OPP - Other People's Property: Hip Hop's Inherent Clashes With Property Laws and its Ascendance as Global Counter Culture"

April 5, 2012: Dr. Donald Tibbs, Drexel Law, "From Black Power to Hip Hop"

April 12, 2012: Guest Finale/Keynote Speaker (TBA)

Contributing scholars who will teach portions of the WVU Law section include Professor Atiba Ellis, WVU Law and Nick Sciullo, Ph.d candidate, Georgia State University.

Each of the above lecture series participants will publish their articles or book excerpts in an anthology that Tibbs and cummings will edit, slated for publication in 2013.

Founding Fathers Try Their Hand at Rapping

Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson and Hip Hop? Hip Hop on Broadway? Although at first these concepts might seem completely unrelated, “The Hamilton Mixtape”—merging hip hop and theater—has recently opened as part of New York City’s Lincoln Center’s American Songbook series. Inspired by Ron Chernow’s book, Alexander Hamilton, the act comes alive with its hip-hop rock fusion.

Between Alexander Hamilton rapping that death is just a beat without a melody or arguing (and rapping) with Aaron Burr, American history and hip hop liven up—and merge—in this dynamic show. But considering that Hamilton feuded with Burr in a territorial clash, it is easy to extrapolate the beef to hip hop—say, Tupac and Biggie Smalls.

So while it may have taken a leap to merge hip hop and our founding fathers, and while the flow may be dubious, this fusion may be what is needed to get the music theater movement rolling again.

Angela M. Nelson on Rap, Percussion, and Theology

From LawRhetoricandDebate.org: 

Angela M. Nelson (Bowling Green State University – Department of Popular Culture) has published “Put Your Hands Together”: The Theological Meaning of Percussion and Percussiveness in Rap Music (Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture (1900 to the present), Vol. 10, No. 1, Spring 2011). Here is a sample:

A framework for studying rap music is related to the social and artistic textures of African-American popular culture. These textures are best understood through the concept of repertoire (Hall 289) and relate to the aesthetic beliefs and values of Africana people. Rap music is a product of popular culture that is drawn from an African-American cultural repertoire, which consists of the specific devices, techniques, ideologies, expressive art forms, or products of people of Africana descent that influence part of their culture (whether as context, texture, or text). Often derived from the folk tradition (see Soitos 37) and dominant culture, these components form a foundation of a black aesthetic and are used to create black popular cultural products. Religion, theology, and spirituality as they relate to beliefs and values lie within the social textures of rap music. Rhythm, percussiveness, and call-response lie within the artistic textures, or cultural repertoire, of rap music as well.

Call for Submissions - Iowa Law's Journal of Gender, Race & Justice

The Journal of Gender, Race & Justice is seeking innovative scholarship for Volume 16. The Journal is dedicated to the living discussion of feminist inquiry and critical race analysis in legal scholarship. We explore how people are classified, stratified, ignored and singled out under the law because of race, sex, gender, economic class, ability, sexual identity and the multitude of labels applied to us. The Journal would like to invite legal authors of all perspectives to submit proposals for articles to fill Volume 16 of our publication.

For more information about the Journal please see: http://blogs.law.uiowa.edu/jgrj.

Please send article or proposal submissions, along with your curriculum vitae to Whitney Smith at whitney-e-smith@uiowa.edu

The deadline for submission of proposals is January 30, 2012.

The University of Iowa College of Law's Journal of Gender, Race and Justice's mission statement reads in part as follows:

"The Journal of Gender, Race & Justice is not for the weak of heart or the timid in spirit. Feminist inquiry and critical race analysis are the touchstones of our endeavor. Our building blocks are new forms of analysis that reach beyond traditional conceptions of legal thought. We challenge our writers, our readers, and ourselves to question who we are and how the law defines us. We strive to be a transformative experience. In a spirit of openness, we explore how we are classified, stratified, ignored and singled out under the law because of our race, sex, gender economic class, ability, sexual identity and the multitude of labels applied to us. Identity is a matrix of experiences; when the law fails to recognize any one facet of our identity, both the law and the person lose invaluable dimension. Our challenge is to examine how we negotiate our identities, how the legal system negotiates them for us and how these negotiations affect our ability to attain justice."

R.I.P. Heavy D

Heavy D collapsed in his Beverly Hills home today, passing away at the age of 44. According to CNN, Heavy D (né Dwight Arrington Myers) "was pronounced dead in the emergency room at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on Tuesday afternoon, according to Los Angeles County coroner's operations chief Craig Harvey. The cause of death has not been determined, Harvey said.

While his hip-hop recording career began in 1987 with his group Heavy D & the Boyz, his breakthrough hit came in 1991 with a remake of the O'Jays' 'Now That We Found Love.'"

Most recently seen as an actor with a small part in Eddie Murphy and Ben Stiller's heist comedy "Tower Heist," Heavy D was a prominent figure in the hip hop world in the late 1980s and early 1990s, recording his classic "Now That We Found Love" and also the theme track for "In Living Color" during that time period. The influential and pioneering Heavy D. will be missed. RIP

A Shout Out from The Faculty Lounge

Yesterday, on The Faculty Lounge blog, Bridget Crawford wrote that “Hip Hop and the Law” would be a great course. She was inspired by a Washington Post story concerning Dr. Michael Eric Dyson’s Georgetown University undergraduate course on “Sociology of Hip Hop – Urban Theodicy of Jay-Z.” As another source of inspiration, she pointed to our blog, HipHopLaw.com. We want to thank Bridget for the shout out and return the favor. I, for one, am a fan of The Faculty Lounge. It is a useful source of intellectual conversation and thoughtful information, especially about the legal academy.

Let me also offer another example of teaching at the intersection of hip hop and the law: Professor Donald Tibbs of The Earl Mack School of Law of Drexel University received a grant this past spring to start a course on Hip Hop and the American Constitution. His distinguished group of guest lecturers includes Paul Butler, Imani Perry and HipHopLaw.com bloggers Pamela D. Bridgewater, andré douglas pond cummings, and Akilah Folami. The lectures will culminate in a book to be edited by Tibbs and cummings.

We look forward to hearing more about this project as it progresses.

--Atiba Ellis

Chanbonpin on Legal Writing, Plagiarism and Hip-Hop Ethics

Kim D. Chanbonpin (John Marshall School of Law - Chicago) has posted Legal Writing, the Remix: Plagiarism and Hip-Hop Ethics (forthcoming in the Mercer Law Review) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

In this Article, I focus on hip hop music and culture as an access point to teach first-year law students about the academic and professional pitfalls of plagiarism. Hip hop provides a good model for comparison because most of our entering students are immersed in a popular culture that is saturated with allusions to hip hop. As a point of reference for incoming law students, hip hop possesses a valuable currency as it represents something real, experienced, and relatable.

Significant parallels exist between the cultures of U.S. legal writing and hip hop, although attempting direct analogies would be absurd. Chief among these similarities is the reliance of both cultures on an archive of knowledge, borrowing from which authors or artists build credibility and authority. Whether it is from case law or musical recordings, the necessary dependence on a finite store of information means that the past work of others will be frequently incorporated into new work. The ethical and professional danger inherent in this type of production is that one who borrows too freely from the past may be merely copying instead of interpreting or innovating. In the academic world, this is plagiarism. Members of the hip hop community call this “biting.” In neither culture is this mode of production celebrated.

My goals for this project are two-fold. First, as a professor of legal writing, I want to ameliorate the problem of plagiarism that I have seen growing worse each year. Second, as a scholar, I would like to contribute to the growing body of literature on hip hop and the law. This Article marks the beginning of my attempt to theorize a hip hop ethics and develop its application to the teaching, the academic study, and perhaps eventually, the reform of the law.


A most enthusiastic hat tip to Margaret Kwoka, who I met at LatCrit XVI, for passing this information on to me.


-- Nick J. Sciullo

The President's Hip Hop BBQ?

What most would refer to as a private 50th birthday party for President Obama last month, Fox Nation (an online extension of Fox News) decided instead to call it a "Hip Hop BBQ." But not just any hip hop barbeque, one that FAILED to create any jobs. As captured in the image on the left, Fox Nation chose not to highlight other notable non-hip hop birthday guests like Tom Hanks, Rita Wilson and Rahm Emmanuel, but instead chose to draw a link between Obama and hip hop in what can only be interpreted as a negative connotation.

The image and headline attempt to tie the President to what many deem to be a dangerous subculture (hip hop). Further, the story and headline attempts to perpetuate the tired stereotype of "lazy" black men, who were partying, not working, as evidenced by the President's failure to create new jobs at his 50th birthday party.

According to the New York Times, the hip hop barbeque article generated more than 2,000 comments, some of which were virulent and racist. "A small number of the user comments on the article page were overtly racist, while others condemned the article; one such comment stated, 'Racism is still alive, and Fox Nation is exploiting it.' [Fox spokesperson] Mr. Shine said, 'We found many of the comments to be offensive and inappropriate and they have been removed. We also shut down further comments on this piece.'"

CFP: Rap and Hip Hop Culture SW/TPC & ACA

Call for Papers: RAP AND HIP HOP CULTURE

Southwest/Texas Popular Culture and American Culture Association
February 8-11, 2012
Albuquerque, NM
Hyatt Regency Hotel and Conference Center
Downtown Albuquerque
http://www.swtxpca.org
Proposal submission deadline: December1, 2011
Submit Paper Proposals Here: http://conference2012.swtxpca.org
Proposals for both Panels and Individual Papers are nowbeing accepted for the Rap Music and Hip Hop Culture Area. We had excellent representation in this Arealast year and we are looking to expand in both quantity and complexity for thisyear’s conference. We are particularly interested in proposals that address the following but accept any proposal thatdeals with rap music and hip hop culture:

- Intersections of Hip Hop and Pedagogy

- Rap Music, Hip Hop Culture, and Space/Place

- Theoretical approaches to Hip Hop (i.e., LanguageTheory/Postmodernism/Social Theory)

- Rap, Hip Hop, and Academic Disciplinarity

- Rhetorical Approaches to Rap Music and Hip Hop Culture

- Rap, Hip Hop, and Film/Documentary

- Hip Hop Subjectivities/Agency

- Anthropological/Sociological approaches to Hip Hop Culture

- Economics and Hip Hop Culture

- Discussions of international Hip Hop

- Intersections of Hip Hop and Religion/Theology

- Hip Hop and Technology

- Latino Hip Hop

- Women and Hip Hop

- Hip Hop in the age of Obama

As always, papers and panels that consider the myriad waysthat Rap Music and Hip Hop culture impact and feed upon Popular and Americanculture are encouraged. This Area shouldbe construed broadly, and we seek papers that aren’t afraid to take risks. Proposals from Graduate Students areparticularly welcome, with award opportunities for the best graduate papers.

Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words withrelevant audio/visual requests by December 1, 2011, to http://conference2012.swtxpca.org. Panel proposals should include one abstractof 200 words describing the panel, accompanied by the underlying abstracts of250 words of the individual papers that comprise the panel.

The Business of Dead Rappers

While it is understood that death typically stalls a career, some artists have been able to not only live beyond their untimely deaths, but also extend their popularity. Two icons, Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls, are such examples. Having been murdered when they were at the top of the hip-hop game, both continue to live on as icons. Both artists have released posthumous albums. One of Biggie’s albums, “Ready to Die,” released fifteen days after his 1997 death, sold more than 10 million copies by 2000. Tupac's management has released nine records since his death, almost double the five he released when he was alive.

Just as fans have allowed the Beatles or Elvis Presley to live on, it is no different in the hip-hop world. Both Tupac and "Big" captivated their followers. From Tupac's flow about the struggles of being a young black man in America to Biggie revitalizing New York hip-hop and bringing rap back to life on the East Coast, both artists continue to be culturally significant to many people. They spoke to the masses; their music impacted the world.

The legal and business implications that accompany posthumous success are numerous and complex. Managing the legacies of Elvis Presley and John Lennon have proven difficult, but lucrative. The same will likely be true of hip hop giants Notorious B.I.G. and 2Pac.

Wiz Khalifa at the Forefront of Rap's Internet Democracy

Social media has dramatically changed the hip hop game. The record label model has been on life support for several years now, and the technological advances of ProTools and social media have not only made the hip hop genre more accessible but is changing the music industry in radical ways. Take Wiz Khalifa as an example. Born in North Dakota; Lived in Europe as a child; Wears skinny jeans; Became best friends with a goofy white guy; Is generally positive in outlook; and is now a hip hop superstar. How did this happen? Wiz Khalifa is a master of social media sites on the Web. Rappers, like the oddball Khalifa, are using Twitter, YouTube, and MySpace in order to generate an enormous following, and then are taking their music and following to the record labels with a leveraged position heretofore unknown.

When these rappers (and other musicians) finally sign with a record label, their fans are already locked in. Curren$y has a virtual community that follows him. Lil B drops dozens of songs and videos on MySpace. Khalifa’s hit song, Black and Yellow, is used as a rallying cry for the Pittsburgh Steelers (and any sports team with similar colors). In particular, Khalifa’s scheduled performances are a testament to the power of the viral world. When rappers combine their talents with the internet, it is easy to understanding how the internet is democratizing rap.

Mia Moody on hip-hop and the "Independent Woman"

Mia Moody has published, "A rhetorical analysis of the meaning of the "independent woman" in the lyrics and videos of male and female rappers" in the 13.1 American Communication Journal 43-58 (Spring 2011). It's worth a read for those interested in hip-hop and feminism.

The abstract is here:

Using the concept of intersectionality, this rhetorical analysis combines feminist and critical cultural theories to explore the meanings of the ―independent woman‖ in the lyrics and respective videos of male and female rappers. Findings indicate both groups use misogynistic language to describe women and juxtapose images of independence with material wealth. However, male rappers are more likely to include messages of beautiful, overachieving women paired with average men while female rappers focus on their own sexual prowess. Also worth noting is while male rappers highlight domestic skills such as cooking and cleaning, female rappers do not mention them at all. Based on viewer feedback, it appears very few viewers explore the true meaning of independence and relationships. This study is of significance because rap music is a large part of popular culture that scholars must continuously analyze for new messages and meanings.