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STUDENTS EARN STREET CREDIT

Published Friday, Oct. 26, 2001, in the San Jose Mercury News
BY KIM VO

Mercury News


Stanford University has studied the language of love, the language of Shakespeare and the language of computers.

Now it's studying the language of Puff Daddy.

This fall, the university's linguistics department is offering a course on hip-hop. It's worth four units, the same as Chinese history or advanced genetics. Students will dissect lyrics such as Killarmy's ``Lyrical poems cock back with sharp tacks laced with ajax.''

H. Samy Alim, a doctoral candidate teaching the course, says scholars have long been studying black youth and urban culture, and hip-hop language offers insight into both.

``Hip-hop is the next latest chapter of African-American folklore. The latest manifestation of cultural tradition,'' said Alim, a.k.a. Brother Tha PharaoH Alim, an alias he uses when he edits Stanford's Black Arts Quarterly.

While it's true that the study of black culture has been an increasingly prominent fixture on college campuses, courses generally have not included guests speakers like J.T. the Bigga Figga; they haven't instructed students to ``get creative widdit''; and students haven't had a legitimate reason to argue for a field trip to the Jay-Z concert.

But Stanford is not alone in taking a scholarly approach to hip-hop, whose cultural influence stretches from fashion to movies to the $1.8 billion in record sales last year. University of California-Berkeley has offered a class on the poetry and history of Tupac Shakur; University of California-Los Angeles is teaching an urban language course through its anthropology department; and Harvard University will begin a hip-hop archive next year.

Hip-hop, which has been around 30 years, has four pillars: rapping, deejaying, graffiti and break- or street- dancing. The genre's history and cultural reach have caught scholars' fancy in ways that, say, hair bands of the 1980s never did.

``We can talk about fashion, entrepreneurs -- Puff Daddy, gangsters -- Tupac Shakur,'' said Shawan Wade, a doctoral student at the University of Michigan who chaired an academic hip-hop conference this year. Three hundred people registered to hear scholarly presentations on topics such as sexuality in hip-hop and testimony from artists like break dance pioneer Crazy Legs of Rock Steady Crew.

At Stanford, students analyze speech, pondering, for instance, why musicians use black English more often in their raps than in everyday conversation (Alim says it's to ``project an image of solidarity with the streets''). The class requirements include a love for hip-hop (it says so in the syllabus), a Pharoahe Monch compact disc, and tomes on linguistic theory. Students are also expected to do field research, complete with notes. Imagine Henry Higgins at a Wu-Tang Clan concert.

Academia's current embrace of hip-hop stands in stark contrast to its initial response five years ago to Ebonics, or black English. Some thought it was a legitimate vernacular -- the Oakland school district wanted to recognize it and use it as a springboard for teaching standard English. Others saw it as educational racism -- a way of keeping black students down by allowing them to speak ``incorrect'' English.

University hip-hop classes haven't encountered similar controversy. While students at prestigious schools like Stanford can relate when rapper Nelly says, ``My grammar be's Ebonics,'' they also have a commanding grasp of standard English.

And hip-hop's influence, more obvious with each passing year, cries out for examination, said Marcyliena Morgan, an associate professor at UCLA who will lead Harvard's hip-hop archive in January.

``Most universities understand this isn't going anywhere, it's part of American culture,'' Morgan said.

Clearly, hip-hop is no longer confined to America's urban streets. Hip-hop artists are rapping and scratching in Tokyo, France, Australia. In America, white suburban kids are buying most of the albums -- and have made hip-hop second only to rock in popularity. It's so pervasive that the ladies on ``The View,'' the Barbara Walters' produced all-women talk show, have been known to call money ``Benjamins.''

At Stanford, the student body president is also a lyricist for the hip-hop group ONE, and Kevvy Kev's hip-hop show on Stanford radio is reportedly the longest running of its kind on the West Coast.

On the first day of Stanford's new class, called ``The Language of Hip Hop Culture,'' Alim, wearing cargo jeans and a T-shirt, brought a boombox. Mos Def played low in the background while he lectured, but at one point the volume rose and competed with Alim. The instructor paused, walked over to the CD player and turned the music up.

There are 31 students in the class -- more than double the original slots open -- and they range in gender, race and majors. There's Randy DeVaul, a freshman who dropped geology to take this course. He stayed after class to talk with Alim about music, the hip-hop conference Stanford will host in 2003 and the possibility of starting a hip-hop quarterly on campus. There's also junior Rachael Neumann, who tells the class that she rapped ``Proud to Be Black'' in front of her elementary school because they were studying Harriet Tubman. Asked if she remembers the line, she quickly raps:

Now Harriet Tubman was born a slave/

She was a tiny black woman and she was brave/

She was livin to be givin, there's a lot that she gave

The class whoops, and some are clearly impressed that this white woman in a lacrosse T-shirt knows Run DMC.

The course is a surprising turn for a culture that prides itself on life experience, not book learning. Alim says it was the next logical step.

``Street cred is huge, it's No. 1,'' he said. ``Now we're developing academic credibility as well. It's taking over.''