Introduction

So much of the coverage of hip-hop’s 50th birthday has been fawning. Congratulatory. Devoid of meaningful critique. All that despite the fact that the art form has been soaked through with misogyny and homophobia from day one. So how do you celebrate hip-hop’s accomplishments while asking it to do better? Sam talks to journalist Kiana Fitzgerald, author of Ode to Hip-Hop, on how the women of hip-hop are leading the way today… but at what cost? And he catches up with hip-hop scholar Jason England, assistant professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University, who argues hip-hop’s midlife crisis has left an empty shell of what the genre once was.

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