At the intersection of NCAA Athletics and hip hop is the question of whether athletes of color are exploited by the NCAA and the Universities that recruit the athletes to play for and represent them. To that question, the West Virginia University College of Law Sports & Entertainment Law Society is proud to present a panel presentation entitled "Pay for Play: NCAA Athletics as Opportunity or Exploitation?" on Wednesday, April 4, 2012, at 12 noon in the Marlyn Lugar Courtroom, in beautiful Morgantown, West Virginia.
The event is free and open to the general public. The panel features Ramogi Huma (President, National College Player's Association), Mike Parsons (Deputy Athletic Director, West Virginia University), Dan Fulks (Professor at Translyvania University and NCAA Research Consultant), and andré douglas pond cummings (Professor of Law, West Virginia University College of Law).
Hip hop has made it to the hallowed halls of the Ivy League. Recently at Yale Law School artists and legal scholars collaborated on a panel to discuss hip hop and corporate influence. Akilah Folami (Hofstra), Bret Asbury (Drexel), Jasiri X, and Paradise Gray spoke of far ranging topics from misogyny to corporatization, marketing to social justice.
This panel's placement at Yale Law School should serve as a harbinger for the hip hop and the law movement. It clearly represents a strong interest by both scholars and artists to engage the law in new ways. Five or ten years ago, would we have seen such a panel? Not likely. Read the story from the Yale Daily news here.
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.
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 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.
