Historically, across U.S. education systems, traditional teaching strategies and school curricular practices have been anchored in Western views and Eurocentric frameworks that position whiteness as the center of legitimate knowledge and, as a result, other knowledge as peripheral and insignificant. In this article, we offer practical…

Advocating for the advancement of hip-hop based education, critical qualitative research, and leadership for educational equity, I explain a theory of hip-hop educational leadership and discuss findings from my hip-hopography of hip-hop educational leaders who are spoken word artists, poets, rappers, or emcees and serve as community partners…

The work in this article (re)traces the nuances embedded within the aesthetics of the Wu-Tang Clan to draw attention to two theoretical, Wu-based concepts: "Shaolin" and "swarming." This article leans into fugivity and critical race theory (CRT) to demonstrate how hip-hop music can be a capacious avenue for theorizing alternate…

This article discusses how activist-oriented BIPOC youth designed an annual conference rooted in youth culture and social justice. As a participant-observer, I analyze how these youth co-constructed a teaching and learning curriculum centered on young people's identities, epistemologies, and radical imaginings. The process of the youth leaders…

In this New York City, New York-based study, we made use of a Critical Cycle of Mixtape Creation (CCMC) intervention to examine a Bangladeshi high school student's understanding of justice, and the impact of injustice on his well-being, through his creation of and reflection on original hip-hop song lyrics. The student participated in the CCMC…

This article situates educational leaders as prophetic critics in Black popular culture. These leaders merge cultural criticism with moral and political judgment, analyzing urban youths' lived experiences and representational practices as well as analyzing counter-narrative texts in Black popular culture that have implications for urban education.…

Given the prevalence of racial segregation in the U.S., college is an opportunity to prepare students for diversity through cross-racial interaction. Hip-hop, a culture steeped in black and Latino experiences, has significant white supporters. Through diversity and critical whiteness frameworks, this research considers how white hip-hop collegians…

The present article explores discourses surrounding the bodies of Black women and girls as they engage the meanings of Black womanhood in (American) society in an afterschool setting. Drawing on Black and hip hop feminisms, African American literacies, and critical discourse perspectives, the author analyzes two young girls' narratives, which…

This study illustrates the ways in which the practices of two instructors in an arts-based, after-school literacy program serving Somali youth provide insights for teaching urban immigrant students. It draws on a qualitative self-study that examines the experiences and practices of the researchers in the development and implementation of a program…

This article features key findings from a study that highlights the transformative impact of a pedagogical approach that employs Critical Multimodal Hip Hop Production (CMHHP). The study took place in an extended day program in a northern California public middle school among a group of 30, urban, African American, Chicano/a/Latino/a, and Asian…

Hip-hop music and culture are often cited as being public pedagogy, meaning the music itself has intrinsic educational value. Non-profit organizations and individual educators have graciously taken the lead in utilizing hip-hop to educate. As the academy continues to debate its effectiveness, teachers and community organizers are moving forward.…

Using Critical Race and Latino Critical theories, this study examines 20 in-depth interviews conducted by the author with Mexican and Puerto Rican youth from the Chicago area. The author contends that youth utilized hip hop music in multiple and overlapping ways, engaging hip hop music as both a pedagogy that centers the perspectives of people of…

This article provides a rich representation of how in-school practices that recruit students' "out-of-school" literacies, such as hip hop, can be used as critical bridges in students' learning. Hip hop, conceptualized in this article as an "out-of-school" literacy, works as a vehicle for curricular change at Eastview School for Pregnant and…

Hip hop culture is typically excluded from conventional educational spaces within the U.S. Drawing on the experiences of an educator who works with urban high school students and university level pre- and in-service educators, this article examines the role of hip hop culture for student engagement in two settings--an alternative high school…

Although hip hop culture has been one of the most significant urban youth movements over the last three decades, it has only recently gained attention within the educational literature as a force to be reckoned with. And even then, much of the literature seeks to understand how hip hop can be used to engage students in the official school…