ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that academic knowledge and hip-hop knowledge need at least to be on speaking terms, and that such a dialogue depends upon academics seeing that rappers have their own protocols, their own epistemologies, which cannot simply be read according to an academic laundry list of theoretical questions. The outposts of Empire and the black diaspora have always had underground channels of communication, but the technology of sound recording, particularly in its digital form, has enabled these channels to carry musical and cultural data at an ever-increasing rate. The politics of pluralism have reached a kind of limit-zone in the nineties; the myth that society can, with a little cajoling, function as one big happy diverse family has done far more harm than a more realistic assessment of the multiple lines of conflict along boundaries of race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, and gender.
