Freedom Moves: Theorizing Hip Hop as Black Liberatory Practice

ABSTRACT

This article theorizes Hip Hop as Black liberatory practice by explicating the links between Hip Hop knowledges, pedagogies, and futures. I draw on multiple research and classroom experiences, including co-teaching a course with pioneering Hip Hop artist Chuck D of Public Enemy. The course examined Hip Hop culture as an extension of Black freedom culture and delved into the politics and the poetics, as well as the activism and the aesthetics, of the Hip Hop arts movement. Presented in interview format, this article highlights Hip Hop as an organic form of culturally sustaining pedagogy that aims to advance the Black liberatory practices that we refer to as “freedom moves” (Alim et al., 2023).

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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Notes on contributors

H. Samy Alim

H. Samy Alim is the David O. Sears Presidential Endowed Chair in the Social Sciences and Professor of Anthropology at UCLA. He also serves as the Associate Director of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies, where he is Faculty Director of the UCLA Hip Hop Initiative with Tabia Shawel and Samuel Lamontagne, and editor, with Jeff Chang, of the University of California Press Hip Hop Studies Book Series. Alim has been researching and writing about Hip Hop Culture, language, race, and education for over 25 years. He is author or editor of 12 books, including Freedom Moves: Hip Hop Knowledges, Pedagogies, and Futures (2023, with Jeff Chang and Casey Wong), Neva Again: Hip Hop Art, Activism, and Education in Post-Apartheid South Africa (2019, with Adam Haupt, Quentin Williams, and Emile Jansen), Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies: Teaching and Learning for Justice in a Changing World (2017, with Django Paris), Global Linguistic Flows: Hip Hop Cultures, Youth Identities, and the Politics of Language (2009, with Award Ibrahim and Alastair Pennycook), and Roc the Mic Right: The Language of Hip Hop Culture (2006).