Thread by @aydeethegreat

“As a guy who got a PhD by rapping and works as a professor of hip-hop, the Olympic breakdancer is proof of the point I intend to make about hip-hop in academia, and notions of sanctioning and validating culture and cultural products. 🧵 1/7

“I was not intent on becoming a ‘hip-hop scholar’ when I started working on my PhD, and I don’t think that I have. I rap. I’m a scholar. I didn’t go to graduate school to learn how to rap. I didn’t go to learn how to think, either. That’s how the tired cliché goes. I went to 2/7

“learn how people use their ways of thinking about me against me, to understand how to navigate a world of thought and imagination in which I was considered an unthinking thing—a perpetual problem.

Folks seem to love the idea but don’t contend with the contents… 3/7

“I’ll say it this way: I’ve never worried about my skill or ability as a rapper. I have absolutely no worries about what’s going to happen when people hear my work, whether it’s a recording or me performing live.
This isn’t about the ability to rap, though. 4/7

“It’s about how people like this breakdancer are able to use hip-hop, oftentimes very poorly, and be boosted to a global platform while most practitioners who’ve lived a lifetime making art outside the limelight rarely get those kinds of opportunities. 5/7

“Seriously, if I rapped like she danced, I’d give my PhD back and quit my job, stat.

Anyway, I need to find a way to get on @swaysuniverse and say some stuff. 6/7

“You can still get vinyl of this album from bandcamp or download/stream it free. Everything I’ve written here I say in some form on the album. Also, my job gave me tenure, and I’m pretty sure you aren’t a better rapper than me.” 7/7

aydeethegreat.bandcamp.com/album/v-illicit