Aya de Leon is an American novelist and activist who teaches at the University of California Berkeley. She first came to national attention as a spoken-word artist in the underground poetry scene in the San Francisco Bay Area, and a hip-hop theater artist. de Leon is of Puerto Rican, African-American, and West Indian heritage, and much of her work explores issues of race, gender, socio-economic class, body, nation and the climate crisis.
Farai Chideya is an American novelist, multimedia journalist, and radio host. She produced and hosted Pop and Politics with Farai Chideya, a series of radio specials on politics for 15 years. She is the creator and host of the podcast Our Body Politic, which launched in September 2020.
SoleSides was an American underground hip hop label based in Northern California, founded in 1991. It comprised various DJs and MCs, the most notable being DJ Shadow, MC–producer Lyrics Born and duo Blackalicious. The members of Solesides all met via the radio station, KDVS, the 5000-watt community radio station of the University of California at Davis. During high school, Davis-natives DJ Shadow and The 8th Wonder used to frequent the station to support Orus Washington's hip hop show. In college, journalist and then-grad student Jeff "DJ Zen" Chang, broadcast a weekly hip hop radio show that got the attention of DJ Shadow and The 8th Wonder, freshmen Xavier Mosely, Tom Shimura and Joseph Patel (Jazzbo). They all shared a like-minded passion for hip hop that pushed beyond the sounds of mainstream commercial music.
Hip hop activism is a term coined by the hip hop intellectual and journalist Harry Allen. It is meant to describe an activist movement of the post- baby boomer generation.
Tom Barbash is an American writer of fiction and nonfiction, as well as an educator and critic. He is the author of the novels Dakota Winters and The Last Good Chance, a collection of short stories Stay Up With Me, and the bestselling nonfiction work On Top of the World: Cantor Fitzgerald, Howard Lutnick & 9/11: A Story of Loss & Renewal. His fiction has been published in Tin House, Story magazine, The Virginia Quarterly Review and The Indiana Review. His criticism has appeared in the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle.
Michael Lawrence Marrow, known as PHASE 2 and Lonny Wood, was an American aerosol paint artist based in New York City. Mostly active in the 1970s, Phase 2 is generally credited with originating the "bubble letter" style of aerosol writing, also known as "softies".
Charlie Ahearn is an American film maker living in New York City. Although predominantly involved in film and video art production, he is also known for his work as an author, freelance writer, member of Colab, and radio host. He is married to the painter Jane Dickson and is the twin brother to the sculptor John Ahearn.
Tim Barsky is an American musician from Boston, Massachusetts. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, he is a beatboxer-instrumentalist, playwright-performer, and urban circus artist. He is a graduate of Brown University with a degree in Islamic and Judaic religious studies. He also studied at the Berklee School of Music and with the Chasidic folklorist and archivist Fishel Bresler.
Hip-hop theater is a form of theater that presents contemporary stories through the use of one or more of the four elements of hip-hop culture—b-boying, graffiti writing, MCing (rapping), and DJing. Other cultural markers of hip-hop such as spoken word, beatboxing, and hip-hop dance can be included as well although they are not always present. What is most important is the language of the theatrical piece and the plot's relevance to the world. Danny Hoch, the founder of the Hip-Hop Theater Festival, further defines it as such: "Hip-hop theatre must fit into the realm of theatrical performance, and it must be by, about and for the hip-hop generation, participants in hip-hop culture, or both."
Josh Kun is an American author, academic and music critic. Kun is Professor of Communication and Journalism and chair in Cross-Cultural Communication in the Annenberg School at the University of Southern California. He also holds a joint appointment at USC's Department of American Studies and Ethnicity. He is the director of USC Annenberg's School of Communication, director of The Popular Music Project at USC Annenberg's the Norman Lear Center and co-editor of the book series "Refiguring American Music" for Duke University Press.
The history of hip-hop dances encompasses the people and events since the late 1960s that have contributed to the development of early hip-hop dance styles, such as uprock, breaking, locking, roboting, boogaloo, and popping. African Americans created uprock and breaking in New York City. African Americans in California created locking, roboting, boogaloo, and popping—collectively referred to as the funk styles. All of these dance styles are different stylistically. They share common ground in their street origins and in their improvisational nature of hip hop.
KMEL is an urban contemporary radio station that is licensed to San Francisco, California, serving the San Francisco Bay Area. It is owned and operated by iHeartMedia.
Danyel SmithWilson is an American magazine editor, journalist, and novelist. Smith is the former and first African-American editor of Billboard and Vibe magazine, respectively. She is author of two novels and a history of African-American women in pop music.
Hip hop studies is a multidisciplinary field of study that encompasses sociology, anthropology, communication and rhetoric studies, religious studies, cultural studies, critical race theory, missiological studies, art history, dance, musicology, ethnomusicology, music theory, and gender studies. The term "hip hop studies" began circulating in the mid-2000s, and though it is not clear who first coined the term to label the field, the field of hip hop studies is often cited as having been crystallized by the publication of That's the Joint!: The Hip Hop Studies Reader in 2003. That's the Joint! includes approximately 25 years of scholarship, criticism, and journalism. The publication of this anthology was unprecedented, and highlights the evolving and continuous influence of "one of the most creative and contested elements of global popular culture since its advent in the late 1970s." The publication of the first edition of That's the Joint! marked a consolidating moment for the field of hip hop studies because it brought together key writings on hip hop from a diversity of hip hop authorities.
Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation is a 2005 book by Jeff Chang chronicling the early hip hop scene.
Francie Lin is a Taiwanese-American novelist, whose debut novel The Foreigner (2008) won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel by an American Author.
Good to Go is a soundtrack album released on August 1, 1986, in conjunction with the release of the film Good to Go. The album features songs by prominent Washington, D.C.-based go-go bands and Jamaican-dancehall artists from the early-80s.
Lanard "D.C. Scorpio" Thompson is a Washington, D.C.-based hip-hop recording artist. He is best known for the singles "Stone Cold Hustler", "Beam Me Up, Scotty", and "Stone Cold Hustler II". D.C. Scorpio is considered to be a pioneer in the D.C. hip-hop scene, and is known for infusing go-go music and culture into his songs. He also starred in the 1998 independent film Streetwise.
A. Eugene Washington is an American physician, clinical investigator, and administrator. He served as the chancellor for health affairs at Duke University, as well as and the president and chief executive officer of the Duke University Health System, from 2015 to 2023. His research considers gynaecology, health disparities and public health policy. He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 1997 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2014.
