Political Power of Hip Hop: Ferguson

"The Fix reached out to hip-hop scholar James Peterson of Lehigh University to get a sense of what this moment means for this now-middle-aged genre of music that has long since become something much more than just a genre. We caught up with him while he is in Japan, on tour for his book, "The Hip-Hop Underground and African American Culture: Beneath the Surface."

FIX: What do you make of this moment and what it means and says about hip hop? 

PETERSON: Hip-hop is my specialty, and for such a long time I’ve had to bear the brunt of criticism from people who say that it was apolitical and the hip-hop generation was apathetic and disengaged. I have known this not to be true. Hip-hop artists have been talking about police brutality since 1982. This hip-hop generation has been talking about government surveillance since the 1990s. And the hip-hop generation activism is at the forefront of this generation of activists. So people who have criticized hip-hip for being apathetic and staying on sidelines have to keep quiet now."

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