Hip Hop and the Law

That would be a great course! Dr. Michael Eric Dyson offers "Sociology of Hip-Hop — Urban Theodicy of Jay-Z” to Georgetown undergrads.  (See the WaPo story here).  Seems to me that there would be huge interest in a related course in a law school.  For inspiration, peruse HipHopLaw.com for a few minutes.  The blogging team there posts regularly about  the intersections of hip hop and intellectual property, contracts, and political theory, among other topics. 

Comments

[Patrick S. O'Donnell]

Let's not forget Paul Butler's Let's Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of [Criminal] Justice (2009). Yet see this student note: http://georgetownlawjournal.org/files/pdf/99-4/Murrell.PDF

[Beth Thornburg]

Hip Hop also came up in our Lawtalk research on "rap." In addition to its legal meanings, by the 1800s “rap” had become a term for “talk.” In the latter half of the twentieth century that use became particularly linked to African-American culture and a specific stylized repartee. This in turn evolved into rap and hip-hop music. The two raps came together beautifully in 2007. Responding to criticisms that rap music is a source of racist speech, one newspaper headline asked this question: “Is hip-hop getting a bum rap?”