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Hip Hop Generations

Wednesday, January 06 2010 by Frank Stasio and Lindsay Thomas

This semester at Duke University professor Mark Anthony Neal of Duke's African and African-American Studies Department is joining forces with Grammy Award-winning music producer 9th Wonder to teach a class called "Sampling Soul." It's a look at how the songs that made up the social soundtrack of the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power Movement remain relevant in contemporary culture. Neal also contributed to the new book, "Born to Use Mics: Reading Nas's Illmatic" (Basic Civitas Books/2010). It's a collection of essays that brings hip-hop scholars together to analyze the early artistry of Nas track-by-track. Bucknell University’s James Braxton Peterson joins Neal and host Frank Stasio to talk about the importance of "Illmatic" and how it resonates with a new generation of hip-hop artists.