Pay for Play: NCAA Athletics as Opportunity or Exploitation?

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 Comes to Yale Law School

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.

Photo: Jennifer Cheung, Yale Daily News


-- Nick J. Sciullo

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.