Bakari kitwana biography of barack obama

This post is part of our forum on “Hip Hop at 50.”

This is an interview with Guy Emerson Mount, Assistant Professor of History and African American Studies at Wake Forest University, and Bakari Kitwana, the internationally known cultural critic, journalist, activist, and thought leader in the area of hip-hop, youth culture, and Black political engagement.

Kitwana is the Executive Director of Rap Sessions, which for the last fourteen years has conducted over 150 townhall meetings around the nation on difficult dialogues facing the hip-hop and millennial generations. His most recent book is the co-edited volume, Democracy Unchained: How to Rebuild Government for the People(The New Press, 2020).

Guy Emerson Mount (GEM): As we reflect on the last fifty years of what we now call Hip Hop, I was hoping we might begin with your take on how the history of Hip Hop is currently being narrated both within popular culture as well as within scholarly discourses.