At a recent town-hall discussion sponsored by the television network BET, newly appointed Georgetown University Professor Michael Eric Dyson found himself sitting next to the chart-topping rappers Nelly and T.I.

Squaring off over sexism in rap, Dyson objected to Nelly's explicit, late-night-viewing-only video for his song "Tip Drill." The video features a man swiping a credit card through a girl's behind. Dyson charged that, whether he realized it or not, Nelly had commercialized the trafficking of black women's bodies in a way that had recalled slavery's auction block.

With a cocked eye, T.I. asked Dyson, "Is it really that serious?"

Dyson retorted, "Of course it is."

"Wait a minute," Nelly said. "What was you doing watching my video?"

Dyson, 48, said, "I'm a cultural critic. That's my job!"

That moment of levity illuminated the continuing debate over the role of black public intellectualism. Should scholars engage themselves in the no-holds-barred world of talk shows, shock radio and pop culture? Or are they better off dispensing wisdom within the confines of the ivory tower?

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Labels: hip-hop intellectuals, mark anthony neal, public intellectuals, the clips

Mark: Were you conflicted at all when the conversation inevitably had to go to hip-hop? I mean, I imagine that there were all kinds of pressures around you as you turned in the manuscript to make it sexier, and sexier at this moment includes an indictment of hip-hop. But you dealt with hip-hop as it presented itself in a logical way. I thought it was interesting that you could take a so-called conscious rapper like Mos Def and so-called gangsta rappers like N.W.A. and acknowledge that there was a very real consciousness, especially in the case of N.W.A., behind how they employed the N-word.

Jabari: I didn't set out to do that. I've never had strong emotions about hip-hop, one way or the other. I've never been a hip-hop head, though members of my generation are. I never felt that it spoke to me in particular or told my story. I thought that quite a bit of the criticism of hip-hop -- and I say this as an outsider and a resolute non-expert -- is superficial, in that it comes from people who perhaps have never sat down to listen to a hip-hop recording. Criticism, if it's gonna serve any constructive purpose, must be deeply informed. So I had to listen to all that N.W.A. and I had to read those lyrics. And so as I listened to it. There were songs that confirmed what I had heard about these guys -- this is some awful stuff. And then there were other songs that seem to meet all the criteria. My hastily assembled yardstick for the use of the N-word is that I think art is sacred and you just don't respond to it the way you respond to other things. Secondly, if the use of the N-word advances our understanding of the culture in some way, then to me it is valid. N.W.A.'s lyrics easily meet that criteria. People talk about hip-hop spreading the N-word through the culture, but I take pains to point out that popular culture has always spread the N-word. There is serious precedent -- in the 1920s and 1930s, you went into a white middle-class home and the N-word was everywhere. It was on the shelves, it was in the cookbooks, the sheet music on the piano, the toys children played with. Let's not talk about hip-hop introducing this word in some new and unprecedented fashion. The only difference is that hip-hop exists during a period of high technology and spreads these things a lot faster. But let's not pretend that hip-hop has somehow confused white people regarding the use of the word. I think that's a very disingenuous argument.

Labels: don imus, jabari asim, mark anthony neal, n-word, n.w.a.

Labels: bakari kitwana, davey d, joan morgan, mark anthony neal, riots