Taking Hip Hop To School: Bridging Beats and Brains with Dr. A.D. Carson

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Hey everybody. I love double double entendres,
but imagine this one bringing hip hop to school.
My guest today is doing that. Literally.
Yeah, literally an overused word, but he really is.
And I think this is really cool.He's the first professor of hip
hop in the country, which probably means the world, if I

(00:23):
was taking a wild guess, but we can have him clarify that for
sure. He's the groundbreaking
professor of hip hop at the University of Virginia.
That's pretty progressive and cool to start this whole new
genre of education. He's not only a scholar, he's a
performer. He's an educator.
His work is bridging hip hop, social commentary,

(00:46):
consciousness, storytelling, andmuch more.
He's challenging art, identity and legacy.
If that's not all, he's the author also of a book that's
coming out called Being Dope. I know a lot of people would
like to read that one, starting with me.

(01:06):
And as if that's not all enough,rumor has it he's up for four
Grammys. So let's give it up for Doctor
AD Carson. And I'm ready to learn more.
Hello. Peace, peace.
Thank you so much for having me.Thank you for joining me.
OK, I'm not even sure where to start because you've got one

(01:27):
heck of a resume, but let's start with this.
Why do you like hip hop? How do you define hip hop versus
other genres? So, you know, I, I don't really,
I don't think that genres exist in the way that we believe they
do. I believe that the thing that's

(01:48):
going on when people are tellingyou about like musical genres,
they get sold, say like bluegrass or country.
I mean, and even going back to 10 Pan Alley, they're really
trying to tell you either who ismaking the music or who is
consuming the music. And so it's really all about the

(02:11):
bodies of either the performers or the audience.
And so you know, if you if you imagine that time period when
the world was shifting from disco and going into what was
called hip hop, a lot of those early hip hop records were
recorded to disco beats. I can still sing the Sugar Hill

(02:33):
gangs and a hip hop, yeah. Yes.
And so so that that is to say that a lot of what became hip
hop was borrowed from what were perceived as other genres.
And so in in my head, hip hop ismore about the process of how a
thing gets made rather than the product that is being made.

(02:53):
So some of my students sing, some of them Right Right,
poetry, some of them play classical instruments or or
whatever. But when they're in a class with
me, the process of making the hip hop album doesn't require
them to learn how to rap necessarily.

(03:13):
It does require them to learn how to make something new out of
what they bring into the situation.
And so hip hop historically has been about taking what is
familiar and making it unfamiliar through the process
of reinvention. Or, you know, taking something
that is unfamiliar and then making it familiar through that

(03:34):
same process of reinvention. You know, you make such
interesting points about, you know, how music gets lumped into
categories and how you know, they often blur into each other.
And I was talking, I have a 22 year old son who's very into hip

(03:54):
hop as they're all his friends. And I sent him something, you
know, it's tricky by run DMC theother day I said, this is the
hip hop I grew up with. You know, it's very different
than what he's listening to. And it's always fascinating to
me how broad a you know, how howthings try to get narrowed down

(04:18):
by people, yet how really broad they are.
Yeah, yeah. Not.
And it's not just the broadness of it.
I mean, I think that when peopleare using, and I think
intentionally using a term like hip hop culture, really what
they're trying to signal is thatthere is a cultural movement
that we could call hip hop, which includes at least, you

(04:40):
know, rapping, DJ ING, break dancing and, and visual art, you
know, like graffiti and tagging.And, and when we conflate rap
music or rapping with all of hiphop, then we cut off, well, at
least 75% of what folks were trying to describe as hip hop

(05:03):
culture. And so I imagine, I mean, I know
that there are people who have broadened the scope of what they
call hip hop so that, you know, some people say there are, are 5
pillars. Other people say that there are
9 pillars because it just keeps getting bigger and bigger
because hip hop has been influencing the world in ways I

(05:26):
think that were unimaginable at the time that folks were trying
to sketch out what, you know, like what hip hop encompassed in
the in the early 1970s. So yeah, it makes sense.
I'm just gonna. Ask you that when do you think
the birth of what would be classified as the early stages
of hip hop started and and how would you define that birth

(05:49):
culturally, musically? You mentioned graffiti, you
know, which is one of my favorite things in the city,
which is unpopular, but I just do love it.
Yeah, yeah. It defines neighborhoods to me,
defines personalities. But.
Yeah, every, every time I travel, I look for graffiti like
I want to go, I want to go wherethe art is.

(06:09):
And and it's the most accessibleart in any city, in any city.
Same with me. So, I mean, so this is one of
the things, one of the reasons that I wrote the book is because
I think that we could learn a lot about about the way that we
do American history by paying attention to the way the hip hop

(06:29):
histories get told. And so I can tell you that a
thing happened in August of 1973on Sedgwick Ave. in the Bronx
and that is the date that peoplegenerally use to mark the
beginning of hip hop. So when we talk about hip hop,
hip Hop's 50th anniversary, that's what folks were talking

(06:52):
about that that date that that back to school party happened
and it was thrown by Clive Campbell and his sister Cindy.
Clive Campbell is DJ Cool Herc. And so there's that.
But but then if you know, if youread just a little bit, then you
will find all kinds of examples of things that we might call hip

(07:13):
hop. Or if you're reading the
description, say in in Eldridge Cleaver's soul, Soul on Ice,
which predates that party in 1973 and is in a geographically
different place. And he's describing someone who
is, who is standing in a circle performing rhymed lines with

(07:41):
tears streaming down his face, talking about what's happening
in California. That sounds a whole lot like a
freestyle cipher to me. But then we could probably go
back even further because as I was talking to students the
other day, like I'm like, well, I mean, when we're listening to
Beowulf or when we're reading Beowulf and they're outside the
Mead hall and, and, and they arelike in this, this competition

(08:05):
of like braggadocio and went upsmanship.
That sounds a whole lot like like like rapping too, you know,
like the whole thing is, is, is in couplets.
It's all rhymed. So, so I feel like we could
probably challenge the notion that there is a a beginning date
and just kind of look at the traditions and how those things

(08:28):
evolved and, and you know, not to, because I don't, I don't
want to, I don't want to hitch hip hop's wagon to Beowulf
necessarily. I think that if you read someone
like, like Henry Louis Gates, hewould say that at the turn of
the century, like the early 1900s, people like his granddad,
we're doing the thing that was very similar to what we call

(08:48):
rap. And so while someone might say
that in the early 1980s or the late 1970s, that was the first
time hip hop was on television or the first time rap was on
television, I'm pretty sure thaton The Tonight Show in 1967,
there was Pygmy Markham performed Here Comes the Judge.

(09:09):
And if you listen to it, it sounds like an improvised rap
song. So, you know, for me, it's, it's
that like if we were to look at July 4th, 1776, something
happened that day. There was a thing that happened,
but there are all kinds of ideasthat existed before that day.

(09:29):
And we use that day to, to mark the thing that happened.
But to like call it a birth. I think it's kind of it, it's
not as accurate as we would wantit to be.
And so my, my thesis is that if we were to pay attention to
these shorter histories and the ways that they get blurry the
closer you get to the, to the date, to the actual events, then

(09:52):
we might be better about the thing that we call history.
So that we're not trying to curate a thing that is, that,
that is, is, is trying to solidify a kind of like fierce
regionalism or, you know, like what has come to be known as
like a kind of nationalism. And, and then we, we get to the
nitty gritty. So then we can start talking

(10:13):
about people who influenced whatbecame the thing that we
described as the birth. And that I don't know, I think
that that just seems to be a little bit better.
But because, I mean, it's more comprehensive because the way
that we do it, it makes it seem like there was one person, one
event, one thing. And, and then we would assume

(10:36):
that we would assume that the DJfor that party in, in August,
like, well, what was he doing inSeptember?
If he was learning the DJ, you know, like if, if he was
learning the DJ or, you know, what was he doing in January?
If, if, if that, like if, if he's learning the thing that
he's going to be performing there isn't he already starting

(10:58):
the thing? Isn't the thing already started?
Doesn't it predate the actual event?
And so I, I get it. We, we need those things.
But these are questions that I think are, I mean, if we're
thinking, thinking more comprehensively, you know, one
of the questions I think about history and about civilization
is like when does history begin?Does it begin when somebody

(11:19):
starts writing it down or does it begin at some point previous
to that? And so we have this.
Much. And then you get into who wrote
it down. Correct.
And and who they who they saw asworthy of writing about.
Yeah, and so so the hip hop history can help us understand

(11:40):
larger national histories and world histories.
Question. You say hip hop and you say rap.
Yep. Do you think of them as one of
the same, one in the same? Or is it a Is hip hop a cultural
theme? Yeah.
With a variety of baskets withinit.

(12:01):
And if So, what might be those baskets?
Yeah, correct. That's what I was saying just a
minute ago, that hip hop is the like sort of the umbrella, and
under that umbrella is rap, graffiti art, DJing, and break
dancing. Some people say entrepreneurism,
other people say style as well. And you know, like knowledge of
self. Like I said, there are some

(12:24):
traditions that look at it as four elements and then there's
some that say there are five elements, you know, all the way
up to 9 pillars. And I'm pretty sure that there
are other folks who have expanded that even more.
But at its most basic, you know there are four elements of hip
hop, and rap is one of them. How do you break down teaching
hip hop at the college level? Well, I mean, I, I come from a

(12:48):
tradition of teaching writing more generally to, you know,
children as as early as kindergarten and as, you know,
like as as late as, you know, advanced level graduate
students. And so I've taught, you know,
composition for, for elementary school kids or composition for

(13:10):
high school students. I mean, and this is just, you
know, like the five paragraph essay or how to write a
technical document like a resumeor an application letter.
And so my PhD is in rhetoric's communication and information
design and, and all of my teaching assistantships during
that time were in English department's teaching, teaching

(13:33):
composition. You know, I've worked in writing
centers as well. And so as a, as a rapper who is
becoming an English teacher, becoming someone who's earning a
bachelor's in literature and, and writing and, and, and
earning a master's in, in writing that entire time, I'm a,

(13:54):
I'm a rap writer. I write raps and I write poetry
and I write like all of the kinds of forms that I think, you
know, are, are important to me. And as I'm reading the
literature about all of these other traditions, I'm realizing
that there are absolutely poetics of hip hop or rap

(14:15):
writing that might be beneficialfor folks to learn in the ways
that I learned them. And these things are different
from the things that are going on in the classrooms that I'm in
as a student. And so I believe that students
can learn just as much from learning how to write raps,
learning how to read Raps as they can from learning how to

(14:35):
write a 5 paragraph essay, or learning how to write sonnets,
or learning how to write sistinas or villanelles, or
learning how to write short stories.
And really what it means is thatwe are going to take the
compositional elements and and teach them those, the
conventions and the grammars, but then we're going to also
talk about how information gets encoded and decoded within that

(14:59):
particular form. So, you know, we know that if
you are reading a haiku that like generally it has a set
number of syllables and the themes are something that we
probably understand that that maybe it's about nature.
Or if we're going to write a Sonic, we know that it has a
definite number of lines and it has the number of syllables.

(15:20):
And we know that maybe it's about like love or interpersonal
relationships. Well, rats have those
conventions and poetics as well.And so we can look at some of
the can. You identify that.
Yeah. Yeah, like an example of the the
style of the writing like to break down this.

(15:42):
Yes, yeah. So if you like, if you're
listening to a Standard Time beat, then you're going to get
like you're going to get 4 beats, which you know is going
to happen across a certain amount of time.
Those are the beats per minute. And so if I'm going to attempt
to like rap with a triplet flow,that is the da, da, da da da da
da da da da, da, da, da, then that means that I only have a

(16:04):
certain number of spaces to be able to fit within those four
with within those 4 beats. And so like, I'm going to have
to divide so that like whatever that that number of syllables
across that line has to be divisible by three in order for
it to work. You're teaching math, music, and
writing all in one. Yes, yes, yes, that is true.

(16:26):
That is. True, I love it.
I mean what a way to learn. Correct.
And these are things that are. Nepal, Areas of the brain.
Yeah, and students are learning this stuff without ever having
the benefit of a classroom or someone to give them
instructions or to give them give them particular lessons
that they might be able to have someone check.

(16:47):
This is all really like trial and error.
And so my job is to facilitate. Before we get to what your job
is, I want to ask, what was it like when you said to the
University of Virginia? Oh, so by the way, I have this
idea for this new course work. Yeah.
What was the reaction to that? Well, I think that UVA was all

(17:09):
right with it because they were,you know, like they put out the
the call for a professor of hip hop before I even yes, they so
that. But but when I was working on my
PhD and and my my PhD dissertation was a rap album.
I submitted music for this program in rhetorics,

(17:30):
communication and information design.
It's a 34 track. Out at University of Virginia.
I was doing that at Clemson. Clemson.
Wow. Yeah, and so and and so The
thing is like, again, as I'm talking about the like sort of
the compositional things, we also have to think about the
content. So what what does rap do?
Like what are the things? And, and a lot of it, it's not

(17:51):
like a set of things that rap does, but I think that most
understandings would say that rap gives us the very often to
say things that are otherwise unsayable because of the appeal
of the, the rhyme structure or the Sonic engagement.
And so in a place like Clemson, which is literally a former

(18:12):
plantation, you know, like enslaved people were, were
kidnapped and held there and, and labored there.
And the, the plantation house isopen seven days a week, yet it's
a really like, there's this really strange tension where
people don't talk as much or as openly about the fact that the

(18:36):
land was bequeathed by a slaveholder to the state of
South Carolina. And so you can imagine how that
would make things awkward because that plantation house
sits on top of the hill. And if you've ever watched
Clemson's football team play, you'll see them running down a
hill onto the field before the game starts.
At the apex of that hill is thatplantation house that's even

(18:57):
open on game days. So my thinking about that was
like, well, hip hop would usually the hip hop that I know
would say something about that, would ask us what's going on
here and how might we reckon with whatever, whatever that
might mean. And, and so the, the contents of
the album kind of spoke to what it's like to study literature,

(19:18):
history and, and all of these things through rap music at a
place like Clemson from the years 27 or 2013 to 2017.
And so they are, it seemed like many people in the place like
whether they knew for sure that I was making a, a rap music
dissertation or not, they thought I was an activist.

(19:40):
And, and I'm like, well, no, I'mnot an activist.
I'm a hip hop artist, which means that the thing that you
see is activism is actually whatI believe it means to be in
community with people that I mean, and, and so that I mean,
and that's a significant difference.
It's incumbent upon me, if I'm going to be a hip hop artist in
the traditions that I've received, to speak about the
lived environment that we are all in because I know that the

(20:05):
that the work that I do has the power to.
Intervene in some of these conversations that we believe
that we can't have, which which meant that, you know, so there's
a song on that album called see the stripes, because Clemson's
mascot is a is a tiger. And yet on Fridays, you know,
before they, they have their spirit days, you know, like they

(20:27):
asked the people in the community to like wear solid
orange. Now, there's nothing wrong with
that mascot or, or that that that concept, except that I know
that I want us to talk about thehistory and I want us to talk
about the present and maybe evenchange the future.
And so my thinking as an artist is like, what if we saw our

(20:50):
mascot, rather than being solid orange, we saw that it had
stripes, that all tigers have stripes.
That's like a biological reality.
And those stripes aren't necessarily black And those
stripes are not, they're also not like the color of their fur.
That's just like that. That is how they are, you know,
created. So when I wrote the song See the

(21:10):
Stripes, it was just to take advantage of this mascot that
hundreds of thousands of people know and to make that very
familiar thing unfamiliar so that I could intervene in that
conversation that we needed to have about that plantation
house, about that history of enslavement, about the history

(21:33):
of sharecropping, about the, the, the ways that the student
body interacts with the administration, you know,
etcetera. So that was, that was my, that
was my primary goal there. And they found out.
I mean, I won't say they found out later.
Once folks, I guess, explicitly understood that my goal with

(21:56):
music was to do that kind of thing, then I think people
understood a little bit better. So yeah.
You know, hip hop seems to have,there was a good interview I
listened to in a car one time and then it was on the tanning

(22:17):
of America and, you know, the merger of cultures and hip hop,
I mean, is clearly crossing overall cultures.
You see it in the United States.You could go to a hip hop
concert. I can look at Madison Square
Garden. I mean, it's it's everybody's
outside of that, that place waiting to get in.

(22:40):
What? What do you equate that to?
That unifying force? Yeah, so I think that it is.
I mean, in the book, the book, the metaphor being dope is
actually about, I mean like and.Who doesn't want to be dope?
Correct. Except that, except that there's
this way like even as we now like understand that like the

(23:04):
so-called war on drugs of the 1990s and the way that it might
differ from like what we have now that we might call like an
opioid crisis. That there's a long history in
this country that like took to the present that like we
understand drugs, everybody in this country has a relationship
to drugs because the country hasa relationship to drugs.

(23:27):
And whether it's the, the, the administration trying to stop
trying to stop people from bringing drugs into the country
by blowing up boats, or it is, you know, like making certain
drugs into controlled substancesand, or prohibiting the, the,

(23:47):
the consumption of alcohol. We have this really long history
of policing what is and is not legal or is or is not
sanctioned. I believe that this history,
again, like I said, with genres,is really something that we can,
we can expand as a metaphor to think about people, to think
about the country's relationshipto whiteness and what we

(24:10):
understand is blackness. And, and what I mean, there is
not like really racial so much as trying to codify, trying to
codify these things that we, that we call racial categories,
which I think all of the, the, the research at this point says
race is not a biological reality, but there is a social
reality that we do abide by. And that social reality is about

(24:32):
sanctioning and not sanctioning or saying who belongs in this
category, who doesn't belong in this category?
So who is called dope and who isnot called dope I think is the
thing that goes all the way backto who is, who gets called human
and who's not called human. And so on the one hand, people
are saying that that these people who we've enslaved are

(24:53):
not human beings. But if we take their music or we
take their culture or we take their their agricultural, take
their agricultural methods, you know, yeah, all of these things.
And then we make them into an American product.
We make it into, you know, like a like American farming and, and

(25:13):
really like making it into American farming is just
changing the category of person that you that you believe is
making The thing is doing the thing.
So pop culture, like if we can do these cover records and we
can take these songs that were collected and then and then we
sing them, we are and and then also only give copyrights to the

(25:34):
people who can write the songs down.
So the the person who made the song or who sings the song can
be the source of the song, but can't be the author of the song.
All of that is the process of becoming dope or being dope,
which kind of means that rather than looking at these, and
again, I'm saying that this is all the way through American
culture. So we look at films, films like

(25:54):
Scarface or like Kingdom, New York or New Jack City and you
have these drug kingpins who arewho are lauded as larger than
life characters. Well, my contention would be
like, would, would, would, wouldbe that when rappers are talking
about those characters, there isa thing that's going on.
People say, well, why do rappers, you know, like always

(26:15):
glorify these people? My question in response to that
as well. the United States of America glorifies these people
because in my metaphor, the realkingpins were Thomas Jefferson,
George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and those guys who
were signing that declaration, who all were importing or had
imported people and were sellingthose people's labor as a

(26:38):
product or selling those people's bodies as a product.
And So what I mean about being doped now is that there are some
people who get sanctioned and there are other people whose
labor or whose work or whose bodies are sold as a product.
And and that is like like, I think the best example of that

(26:58):
is in music. How in music?
Because I mean, certainly we have seen people get totally
ripped off in the pub music publishing industry that
historically has happened forever, you know, I mean, and,
and that that goes across all, all, you know, everybody in

(27:20):
music, we could say everybody inHollywood to Detroit.
I mean, it's always been who canyou?
I mean, Prince talked about it, you know, saying he was enslaved
by his record company. George Michael said the same
thing, you know, so that kind ofstuff is going on.
So how do you mean that, doctor?Yeah, Yeah, yeah.
So that means that the like the the.

(27:44):
So if we were looking at like record company owners, then then
we're just talking about like, again, these these classes of
people who own a whole lot of property or hold a whole lot of
wealth and trying to make sure that the people who they're
exploiting so that they can earnthat wealth continue to be

(28:06):
exploited or strive to be exploiters themselves.
And so it makes sense that an artist who makes music might
say, I'm going to become a labelowner and that's how I'm going
to get the same kind of money that people were getting off of
me. And so the the process repeats.
And so I mean, it's just like, Imean, basically.

(28:27):
Is that becoming dope? Is that humanity?
Is that an investment of just plain humans seem to want to
control each other, whether it'svia war, forms of slavery,
whether it's in the workplace, in the, you know, culturally,
it's it's a it's an interesting topic of discussion.

(28:48):
And I got. Really interesting in the
classroom. Yes, for sure.
So that like so that particular process is not necessarily
becoming dope, but it is gettinginto the dope trafficking game
that you are. You are a person who was treated
as the product and now you're like, I want some products to
treat or I want some people to make in the products.

(29:08):
So I think that like what what I'm saying is I like, I want to
own the things that I do. I want, I want to be treated as
a person who has the ability to talk about myself.
I don't need a prescription written about me.
I don't need a law written to sanction me.
I don't need an act or a an amendment to say that I am

(29:30):
human. What I need is for you to be
true to your word when you said that we all were human and had
inalienable rights. However, the history, you know,
tells a different story. And so part of what I'm talking
about with being dope is the history and the present and

(29:51):
challenging us, if we were to think about it through this
metaphor to say, like, well, when when I am trying to become
a record label owner, am I trying to become a record label
owner in order to treat people more humanely?
Or am I trying to become a record label owner to enrich
myself? And those are very different
things. Because even if you don't see it

(30:11):
as racial or you don't see it asexploitative, it's going to
require an engagement with this racial history and with this
exploitative history. And so of course, someone like
George Michael can be exploited as well.
And of course, someone like likeany pop artist who's not making
rap music can be exploited. But if we look at the history of
pop music in this country, we can't have a conversation with

(30:34):
that, about that without talkingabout the racial politics of it,
the gender politics of it. And if we have a conversation
about copyright, it's impossibleto have a conversation about
copyright given, you know, what I just said about how some
people could be sources for music while others could be
authors of that same music. That's absolutely a conversation
about racial dynamics, about gender dynamics, about

(30:58):
embodiment. Who gets the right to own the
legal documents that that call thoughts, property, intellectual
property? Yeah.
And so that's, I think that it'salso a much easier way into some
of these conversations that we very often find difficult
because people will, you know, maybe say, well, everybody's too

(31:19):
interested in making everything about race.
Everybody's too interested in talking about divisive subjects,
and my response to that is, well, I don't have a whole lot
of difficult conversations. They might be a little
uncomfortable, but it's not difficult to say that the
history of American popular music has racial dynamics.
That's just being accurate aboutwhat is.

(31:40):
It's like saying that American history had like it like has
some some issues with race. Saying that is not difficult.
Hearing that might feel a littlebit awkward.
I'm not trying to make you feel bad about it, but but we also
have to understand that the purpose of telling history is
not to make people feel good. It's to inform people.
Inform and hopefully not repeat the things that weren't great

(32:02):
that you don't feel proud of, that make you feel
uncomfortable. I mean, when I start, I, when I
start, I started blogging almosteight years ago.
And, you know, it was, it was when Trump and Hillary were
running the first time and, you know, and everyone started to
get like everyone had a political comment.
It was becoming divisive. And my hair was white.

(32:25):
I called it silver. But I you, I, I Co opted Martin
Luther King's, you know, civil disobedience and said, I'm going
to be silver disobedience. I am going to try to raise
conversations civilly in a, you know, and maybe it's a
disobedient way because people don't want to talk about it.
So just push it over here. But let's talk and let's talk

(32:48):
and prove that you can have great conversations without
shouting, you know, that you canactually ask some good
questions. I mean, you're informing me of
some really interesting perspectives right now.
Weren't yeah. And that's I I think that that
is that's something music is is always for me been a an entryway

(33:09):
into many of those conversations.
And the reasons that I believe that they don't, they don't
register as difficult is becausethere's genuine interest in how
we got here or there's genuine interest in how, you know, like
how those drum sounds were made or how those samples come to be

(33:30):
new creations, you know, whatever the particular thing
might be. And so students come to class
believing that they know a lot about hip hop.
And then they leave hopefully feeling that they know a lot
more about the world. And, you know, like at its best,
I think that this is what the work that I want to do brings

(33:51):
into a space like academia that the, the students absolutely
are. I mean, the students in my lab
so often are coming in during their times that they're not
scheduled to be in the lab. I mean they.
I believe it. Yeah, they have class and then,

(34:11):
I don't know, they're hanging out or whatever it may be, and
then they come, they come by andthen they're just there.
I have one student who several times this, or a former student
who several times this semester has gotten up at 9:00 and sat
sat in on all of the classes during the day just because.
Progress with anyone of that ageto get them up so they sit
around. Yeah.

(34:32):
And so undergraduate students sit in on grad seminars all the
time. We're having these conversations
and, and there's this thing whathappens where a young person who
might have never thought of themselves as academic or might
have never thought of themselvesas someone who's going to get an
advanced degree, they're like, So what would it take to get a
PhD or what would it take to geta master's degree?

(34:54):
Would you be willing to look over my application materials?
And if education isn't supposed to do that, I don't know what
it's supposed to do. Yeah, well, talking to you, I'm,
I find it very inspiring talkingto you.
So I can imagine you really enrolling students in a
classroom. And like I said, you know, one
of the things if you look at education, and I talked to a lot

(35:16):
of a lot of educators because I found traditional education very
frustrating personally. And, and I think it's because
everything's so segmented. You know, you have your English
class over here, you have your history class over here, math
over here, science over here, philosophy over here.
Everything I'm hearing you say is this like cluster that make

(35:43):
somebody inter inter learn. If that's such a word, probably
not, but I invent them regularly.
But you know, you know, if you're thinking about beats, OK,
and you have quarter notes versus half notes versus, you
know, three, you know, and trying to get the words to fit
in there and tell a story and look at history and relay what's

(36:06):
happening in your love life or your neighborhood or the world.
It's fascinating. One of the things I want to talk
to you about is, you know, so much has changed in the world
and this is in some ways maybe out of your scope, but maybe
it's exactly in in what you're teaching and what you're

(36:28):
experiencing as you're up for four Grammys, which I want to
talk about as well, is you have a lot of people saying, I'm
going to just Rep my own music. And obviously, you know, there
was a point that everybody needed the record label, but it
was very hard to get to the record label.

(36:48):
Now you see people don't even put together records.
They put out singles, you know, and you know, when an afternoon
a new singles out and then the next day, oh, maybe they went
back, some event happened and they have the next single.
So it's a very different landscape.
What are you observing with thisas someone who's more
professional than I am? I think that what, what's
happening there, the changes areit's like technological shifts

(37:11):
that music is always follow technology and in a lot of ways
it has LED with technology. And, and what I mean is that,
you know, like during the, the 1860s you had, I mean, during
the 1860s, pre emancipation, like lots of people were
entertained by the people who, they, who they held captive, you

(37:31):
know, and, and, and then that turns into the, the, the period
where people are dressing up like those entertainers on
plantations, you know, in, in doing the thing that we call
like minstrelsy. And then that that evolves.
And eventually after emancipation, then some black
people are also engaging in blackface minstrelsy because

(37:55):
that is what the popular appetite is at the time.
And so you have these performance circuits where there
are audiences who do not want toinvite black performers in, and
so they have white people dress up like black people.
And then there are these other audiences.

(38:16):
I mean and then of. Course that one always.
Like I could never reconcile. I'm like, that's just the
weirdest thing ever. Yeah, but it, well, I think that
it's because there's the the social stigma against sharing
space with people while also being absolutely entertained by
the kind of music that those people made.
And so this again, is like kind of like the dope metaphor.

(38:36):
It's like you want the you, you want the product that the people
produce, but you don't want the people that are associated with
the product there. Can you?
Define the word dope in a sentence.
Well, dope is just I looked. It up in the Urban Dictionary.
What would you? What?
Did your definition. Be the first definition of the
OR I'm sorry, the first page of the book gives like the New York

(38:57):
Times definition of the word. And it kind of talks about how
people have used it to talk about to talk about drugs
because historically it was related to drugs.
And then it just became a turn aterm just like bad or a term
like cool that that was ultimately like used as a stand
in for something that might be good.

(39:19):
But before that, there was a period where calling someone a
dope would be an insult. And so it just kind of speaks to
the pliability of of American English in the ways that people
have subverted the language so that they might take a thing
that sounds bad or negative and make it into really like the the

(39:39):
benchmark for cool. You know, along that line, I'm
going to ask you a question. Why are words that make me
cringe used in rap songs? Yeah.
Well, I mean, I think that this kind of has to do with, you

(40:01):
know, when I talk about being able to say the unsayable and in
public, some of it has to do with the I mean, there are a lot
of different registers that are going at once.
And, and one of those might be, you know, if someone says to me.
That that my my rap. They don't understand my rap
music and they're turned off by the offensive words that I use

(40:23):
in my rap music. What I might say in response is
that that is absolutely intentional.
If you are not committed to understanding what I'm doing,
then you're not my audience. And so that's a way to alert an
audience to listen while also like doing the the work of
telling another audience, well, they don't have to pay attention

(40:46):
or they'll say, I'm turned off by that.
So I'm literally not going to hear the rest of what you're
saying. Now there's, I mean, there's
history to this as well. You know, there were there were
times when people were enslaved where they might be singing a
song in a field and people were like, oh, that's such a
beautiful song. And it sounds like they're
singing about religion. They're singing about salvation.

(41:09):
And then like they wake up lateron that evening or, you know,
the next day and those people are gone.
And those people with that song that made those people who heard
it stop paying attention becausebecause they said Jesus or
because they said Coming Forwardto Carry Me Home it, those
people stopped listening. And the song was literally the

(41:30):
way they organized their escape.And so hip hop is doing that.
Clarifying answer, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
And so, yeah, it's, it's doing, it's doing that.
It's just that like we have so many different ways to get
people to tune in and tune out. And I would imagine if I'm a
person who's interested in talking to a young person and
that young person is playing music that is offensive to me,

(41:53):
my, my thought wouldn't be to tell that person not to play
that music. My thought would be to ask that
young person, what is it they'rehearing?
What, what, what's going on there that is drawing you in?
Because there's something that'stelling me not to listen, which
makes me think that there's something that is telling you to
absolutely listen. And I want to know that.

(42:14):
And so that brings that opens a conversation for me with a young
person that I might not be able to have because again, they're
listening to the unsayable thing.
And if it's unsayable, then there's no way that I'm going to
know what The thing is unless I ask.
Can everybody sing the same lyrics?
Well, I think that in this in inthis country, in the social

(42:39):
realities that we have, I imagine anybody can sing the
same lyrics. I don't think that everybody's
going to get the same responses if they do sing the same lyrics.
And, and what I mean by that is that, you know, like the
so-called N word, it's not like that word is owned by people of
color. It was not even invented by
people of color. That's the descriptor that

(42:59):
people use before the people that they brought here could
even describe themselves. And so like, if you invented a
word, of course you can use it. But if you invented that word
for all of the causes that we associate with that word, my
question would be, why do you even want to use it now as you
invented it? So, OK, sure, you can do that.

(43:22):
But there will be social consequences probably because
there are some people who say, hey, we don't say that anymore
or we don't use that in that way.
But you don't get to tell other people what their relationship
to that word that was used to describe them should be.
That's a great answer. That's a great answer.
What where do you think if you were going to use your crystal

(43:44):
ball, how do you think, because hip hop rap in particular has
certainly evolved. As you said, you know, we could
look at, you know, earlier rap to what's happening now, the
multi genres, you know, from mumble rap to where you can
clearly hear something to stuff that sounds more like humming.

(44:05):
But we're just the beats, you know, the the sampling and
everything that's happening, which you could obviously define
better. I'm getting it straight through
my my 20 year something year oldchildren's perspective where
they'll their playlist is now myplaylist because they're still
on my iTunes. Yeah, yeah.

(44:25):
So where do you think it's going?
I think that it's going where we're going, you know, And so if
we are, you know, if we keep moving toward, you know, like
this, I don't know, like this flirtation with posthumanism,
with AI and machine learning, you know, etcetera, then I
imagine it's not that. I don't think that it's really,

(44:47):
I wouldn't look at, I wouldn't look at Meta and Apple and you
know, like the big corporations to see where it's going.
Because those are the people again, like who are kind of like
overseers or who are like in that class of folks that will
take the thing that's being madeand then try to make a lot of
money off of it. I mean, that's how we got to
music streaming. But there will be some people

(45:09):
who are sitting around on their computers innovating with AI or
innovating with machines and someone's going to find a way to
make that into a bankable product.
And then that's going to be where we go.
And so I think that we can follow the technology, not the
technology companies, but followwhat regular people are doing
with the technology. And that is very likely going to

(45:31):
be where the innovation happens because again, it will be a case
of someone taking something thatis somewhat familiar and making
it unfamiliar through the process of transformation, or
they're going to take something that's unfamiliar and then make
it familiar through that same process.
I believe that that's absolutelywhere music will go more

(45:51):
generally. But you know, like my my
understanding of hip hop over the past 50 plus years leads me
leads me to believe that hip hopwill be one of the places where
that innovation absolutely happens.
Now you've got you're teaching, you've got a book and you're up
for four Grammys. What is?

(46:11):
What are the? What categories and what does
that look like? I think 1 is best rap album 1 is
yeah. And one is is is classical
crossover. Maybe.
I think it's classical crossovermixing and engineering.
And so I I I recorded an album with the Charlottesville
Symphony. It was a live engagement.

(46:34):
They they commissioned a piece for their 50th anniversary
concert. And so I wrote with Ben Rouse,
the conductor, this piece calledAnn Metaphors.
And Ann is spelled with the withthe ampersand.
And we and, and I thought, well,because we are doing this huge

(46:57):
orchestral thing and there's so many people who are involved to
make something like this happen.And both, both nights of the of
the performance were sold out. We're going to make we're going
to release this album. And hopefully the people who
weren't in the room get an opportunity to at least feel

(47:18):
some of the energy that came through whenever we were putting
that piece together. And really working with the with
the with the Symphony was a matter for me of, again, doing
the thing that I think hip hop does.
I don't want to stand up in front of a stage or on stage at
Old Cabo Hall and have the orchestra play instrumentals of

(47:40):
my songs. I want us to make something
together. And that thing that we make
together is something that we share with an audience so that
the thing that gets performed isan entirely new piece that comes
from that process, that hip hop process that I'm talking about
of transformation. And I think that we realize

(48:01):
that. And you know, if a Grammy is,
is, is if, if the if a Grammy isa by product of that cool.
But it's absolutely not about the Grammy to me.
It's it's absolutely much more about yeah, the work.
That what a concept. Yes, yeah.
And so that was it was great. I, I mean, I, I really
appreciate it and I appreciate it that, that then the Co writer

(48:24):
was the composer, you know, likethat we were able to collaborate
and I mean truly collaborate on the piece.
So that, that, that we did a thing that neither of us could
do on our own. And, and I think that that's
just incredibly important for meas a collaborator.

(48:45):
What it means to be in communitywith people is not to like make
them do what I want them to do or them have me do what they
want me to do, but for us to like, say, what do we bring to
the table? And so in a, in a, in a real
way, I hope that Ben and I modeled what we want our
students to do whenever they collaborate with one another.

(49:05):
You're just asking people what are the things that you bring
into the situation and how mightwe combine those things so that
we can make something new? You know, you, you're talking
about collaboration and what you're teaching.
Can you say what your curriculumis like?
How do you break down what you're teaching?

(49:28):
Because you're teaching a lot. You've now talked about another
thing. You're adding the collaboration,
which is a business lesson, intothe whole mix and a social
lesson at the same time. Yeah, so right now, like a lot
the primary classes that I teach, like this semester I'm
teaching writing, rap and the black voice.
And the black voice is a, A class not really about like

(49:50):
blackness as a racial category, but about like that history that
I was telling you about going all the way back to, you know,
like pre United States. And, and how the phenomenon of
believing that we can hear race even becomes an idea because we
believe that race has a sound, even though it's so difficult to

(50:14):
define. And so we're talking about how,
how we get to those, those definitions and how those
definitions often fail because they are really meant to do
something else that, you know, like race isn't only a visual
phenomenon. It is also and maybe as much a
Sonic phenomenon writing rap. I teach those and so I'm sorry

(50:35):
in in the black voice class, we read a lot of history and theory
and and and current events in writing rap.
We read poetics texts. We also read about histories of
hip hop. And so each week there's one
lesson on history and one lessonon a particular convention or

(50:57):
writing technique. And so they get, they get
history and composition each week.
And, and every week there is a, a live performance that the
students can engage in. So they either play a recording
that they made or they perform aa verse that they've written.
And so there's a microphone set up in the class and it's set up

(51:18):
like a cipher. So they get to cipher with one
another and experience that kindof thing.
And then in the spring, I'll be teaching a graduate seminar
again on listening practices. But then I teach a class called
Composing Mixtapes. And in that class there are
anywhere from 10 to 20 students who are tasked with making an

(51:39):
album together. They have to write, produce,
record, master and release an album and they get 16 weeks to
do it. And so ultimately those classes
together give students a kind ofcomprehensive engagement with
the kinds of stuff that I do in my professional life, but under

(52:01):
the the umbrella of, you know, like the rap lab as a space of
learning rather than, you know, the the, the harsh lights of,
you know, like the real professional world.
And so, yeah, so they get to kind of pilot.
We're going to say that could bea reality TV show.
Oh, for sure. A bunch of kids together and say

(52:21):
OK, you got 16 weeks to come up with your multi track album.
Wow. Yes, it could.
I mean, the the students, once there was a reality, yeah, there
was a reality TV show that was about that, like from probably,
I don't know, like 20 years ago.And the students, the very first
class of composing mixtapes thatI had, the students brought me a

(52:46):
cheesecake on the last day to kind of like to, to like, I
guess a parody of that, of that television show, which was kind
of funny that they know. I mean, I do love cheesecake,
but the reason they did it was because, you know, because
they'd seen that television show.
So that's kind of funny. Well, it's funny.
That's why I I get to record from Manhattan Center, because

(53:07):
when I met everybody about almost 25 years ago here, I had
wanted to put musical groups in different apartments in New
York. Wow.
And then bring in music producers, 2 totally different
kinds of music producers and seelike kind of create a battle of
the musician. Yeah, yes, yeah.

(53:30):
No, I people, there's an audience for it.
People absolutely have loved these these these television
programs where you get these different artists together and
then see what happens. But I, I just think that it's a
fascination with the creative process and in our little corner
of the world, you do get to see all of the personalities and
everything, but you get that endproduct.

(53:51):
And you really do hear how thosestudents either have really
committed, excuse me, committed to the thing that is set forth
for them to do or how they've challenged the convention
because they've listened to the previous group and they say we
want to do something different from what they did.
Right. These interviews always go too

(54:11):
fast. I mean, I could keep talking to
you for another hour easily. Doctor Carson, I have a question
for you to to wrap up, no pun intended, but if we were to wrap
up this show with what's the biggest take away you would like
someone to have about hip hop culture?

(54:34):
Yeah, I mean, I would I would tell folks that or to be weary
of who is trying to sell you something whenever they use the
words hip hop culture. And, and what I mean really is
that hip hop is not only about things that get sold and bought.

(54:57):
It is actually much more for me for sure about the ways that
people come together, the ways that people communicate with one
another, the ways that people teach and learn from one
another, the way that community works.
And because most of those thingscan't be turned into products,

(55:20):
you are never going to see a commercial for them.
You might not ever see a documentary about them.
You like probably won't even seea feature film about them.
But those are the things that I mean when I'm talking about hip
hop and it's not only about sales charts or, or awards or,

(55:44):
you know, bright lights and, and, and trinkets.
It is absolutely about people getting together and making
something new out of what we've been given.
That's that's a good definition to contemplate.

(56:05):
This has been a really fantastichour with you, Doctor Carson,
and I really appreciate it. I learned a lot.
I know I'm going to be sharing this heavily.
I can think of a lot of people who would really enjoy every bit
of all the little Nuggets of really good knowledge you shared
about a a cultural phenomenon that's not going away.

(56:29):
And it's, if anything, it's getting bigger and more
encompassing in so many different ways.
For sure. Thank you so much.
I really do appreciate you making the time and yeah, this.
Thanks. Everybody, this has been the
Silver Disobedience Perception Dynamics podcast.
I'm Diane Grissell, the host. I have been speaking with Doctor

(56:49):
AD Carson, who is a hip hop professor, a musician.
I'm just basically, I'm just going to say a really
thoughtful, really thoughtful, brilliant guy who opines on a
lot of different things and makes them very accessible and
understandable and conversational, which is what we
aim for here to have a really good conversation about whatever

(57:12):
that is moving the world forwardand hopefully forward with
greater unity and community. So thanks a lot for joining me.
And we're going to move over to the green room.
Hey, listen also they're going to be all I want you to hit
subscribe to this podcast at Silver to Speediness.
But there's going to be all kinds of ways you can get in
touch with Doctor Carson. And also I highly recommend you

(57:34):
pick up his book Becoming Dope, because I have a feeling it's a
winner. Talk to you soon.
Thank you.

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