By now, the phrase “Hip-Hop modified my life” is a well-worn cliché, however that gained’t cease me from saying it.
I’m from the small Central Illinois city of Decatur. My hometown is without doubt one of the websites the place the battle on medication and plenty of of its battles occurred. In 2018, Decatur was listed at quantity seven in USA Right this moment’s “15 worst cities for Black People” and ranked third nationally of their 2019 “America’s quickest shrinking cities” ballot.
My ebook, Being Dope: Hip Hop & Concept by way of Mixtape Memoir, revealed in December 2025 by Oxford College Press, particulars what it means to be a survivor of America’s battle on medication.
The state of Illinois admitted the position it performed in that battle when it legalized leisure marijauna gross sales in 2020. The laws included “provisions to offer dispensary desire and additional funding to areas that disproportionately bore the impression of the battle on medication — these with higher-than-average charges of marijuana-related arrests, convictions, and jail sentences.”
Rising up in Illinois throughout the time Hip-Hop was changing into a world phenomenon, my family and friends bore the impression of the battle in many various methods. In 1993, the identical yr Menace II Society was launched, one in every of my early role-models, my cousin Tony, was taken by the identical sort of gun violence depicted in that film. He is without doubt one of the causes I like Hip-Hop and began writing raps.
More often than not I used to be in class incomes a B.A., an M.A., and a Ph.D., Jay, one in every of my greatest mates, was in jail. Jay was one of many causes I completed faculty. He helped pay my tuition and even gave me the cash for the initiation charges to affix a fraternity. The identical weekend I turned a member of the frat, his home was focused in a drug raid. Although we’re separated by distance, our lives have remained merchandise of interconnected methods. Clemson College, the place I earned my Ph.D., was constructed by imprisoned “slaves of the state” in South Carolina. The varsity the place I work at the moment, College of Virginia, advantages from the labor carried out in prisons just like the one the place Jay was held.
Hip-Hop modified the trajectory of my life. My doctoral dissertation was a 34-track rap album titled Proudly owning My Masters: The Rhetorics of Rhymes & Revolutions. With the album, I argued that “dope” may very well be a technique:
“If I’m striving to be dope, or if what we do is dope – and by ‘we,’ I imply rappers – what occurs is it will get minimize an entire lot of instances. We’ve got hip hop and sociology or hip hop and literature, hip hop and no matter else it’s that we minimize it with. This world of academia, you understand, or nevertheless we wish to describe it, is that world not prepared for that dope in its, like, uncut type? Can the students not simply create or converse by way of hip hop versus having it, like, combined with one thing else to ensure that it to be acceptable?”
I utilized that argument on campus between 2013-2017 whereas watching the worldwide documentation of injustices that supplied fixed viral reminders of how a lot it issues that we inform our personal tales and doc our histories ourselves. Hashtagged names have been usually added to the already-too-long checklist of individuals we felt we collectively misplaced once they have been killed. Declarations that “Black lives matter” have been met with offensive makes an attempt to right the assertion, assuming that centering Black lives was inherently discriminatory.
After I was arrested with different college students at a campus sit-in in 2016, it was as a result of we have been embodying that argument about whose tales get instructed and who will get to do the telling. Being Dope paperwork elements of that story — the unrest, the arrests, and the viral rap album dissertation — from my perspective whereas I used to be finding out about it and likewise residing it.
“Dope” remains to be my methodology. Defining “dope” in its present utilization, the New York Instances states, “its pop-cultural utilization as a synonym for “excellent” persists into the current day.”
From its begin, Hip-Hop has taken language used in opposition to us as a defend or insulation from hazard. Again in Decatur, we grew up with individuals referring to us with the phrase “dope” to forged us as enemies within the battle on medication. Describing us as “dope sellers” and “dope fiends” have been methods to make the world concern us. We made that language into artwork.
That artwork earned me a doctorate.
In 2017, I used to be appointed as a professor of Hip-Hop on the College of Virginia. I accepted that job and moved to Charlottesville that summer time, which was marked by racial unrest that culminated within the lethal “Unite the Proper” rally that garnered worldwide consideration. Utilizing Hip-Hop, I earned tenure with a promotion to affiliate professor in 2023, the yr that was extensively noticed as Hip-Hop’s fiftieth anniversary. My portfolio contained the 5 albums I wrote between 2017-2023. Being Dope consists of the lyrics from these albums alongside cultural criticism about Hip-Hop, training, academia, race, expertise, gender, grief, dependancy and restoration by way of essays, interviews, and critiques. Variations of tales and music within the ebook beforehand appeared in Rolling Stone, SPIN, Los Angeles Instances, NPR’s Code Swap, and Poetry, in addition to tutorial venues that embrace Kairos and Journal of Fashionable Music Research.
Being Dope challenges generally held notions about rap and rappers, and it demonstrates how a lot style issues. Being Dope paperwork my very own survival story together with tales from the previous and current battle on medication. It paperwork the tales of a few of my family members who’ve perished, and it provides voice to others, like Jay, who wrote the introduction to the ebook from jail. Above all, Being Dope demonstrates the methods Hip-Hop actually modified my life and continues to information me. My hope is that this ebook is a method I will pay that ahead.
