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Rhonda Collier

Tuskegee's Successful Hip Hop Forum


For the second consecutive year, Tuskegee University hosted a Hip Hop Forum sponsored by the Frank Toland Historical Society and co-sponsored by the Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc., Theta Beta chapter. Dr. Worth Hayes called the audience on two points: 1) When did you fall in love with Hip Hop? and 2) Are we in the Golden Age of Hip Hop?


The questions seemed redundant to me because, as a Generation Xer, I fell in love with Hip Hop during its Golden Age—the late seventies—when my cousins from New York played a dubbed tape of “Rapper’s Delight” for me. I was behind the times, so I had to catch up and the Hip Hop Forum reminded me that this art form is all about perspective. One of the sister speakers spoke on the fifth element of Hip Hop—knowledge.



Author Milele, a young sister from St. Louis talked about the Black Arts movement and its impact on Hip Hop. She spoke on the quest to know one’s self, and the need for women to understand themselves as both sexual and spiritual beings. Tuskegee University alum and critically acclaimed poet jac-E-j spoke some powerful words as she claimed her reverence for Mother Tuskegee. She recalled that Hip Hop was always a part of house parties in Los Angeles and it was always pushing her through life’s most difficult moments.


Tuskegee students recalled listening to old-school Hip Hop with their parents, loving Kanye yesterday, today and tomorrow, claiming Chance the Rapper as their own and that “yes” the Golden Age of Hip Hop had come and gone.


Dr. Hayes provided us with a new perspective on the Golden Age: author’s control of rights, audience, release, contents and economics of music. The speakers, Milele, jac-E-j and myself brought knowledge about women’s place in the Golden Age of Hip Hop.


I spoke on global women’s Hip Hop and the notion of freedom in binary “queen”/”king” oppositions of the hierarchies that subjugate female listeners who are referred to as “bitches” and “hoes.” Global Hip Hop must empower women to create spaces of freedom to speak truth to power and own their bodies without having to sell them in the rap game.

Milele and jac-E-j offered multiple ways of seeing our female selves as fierce, poetic, protective, sexual, empowered, knowledgeable, and respectable human beings.


Where are women in Hip Hop?…as jac-E-j would say, women are wherever they want to be. The questions seemed redundant to me because, as a Generation Xer, I fell in love with Hip Hop during its Golden Age—the late seventies—when my cousins from New York played a dubbed tape of “Rapper’s Delight” for me. I was behind the times, so I had to catch up and the Hip Hop Forum reminded me that this art form is all about perspective. One of the sister speakers spoke on the fifth element of Hip Hop—knowledge.


Author Milele, a young sister from St. Louis talked about the Black Arts movement and its impact on Hip Hop. She spoke on the quest to know one’s self, and the need for women to understand themselves as both sexual and spiritual beings. Tuskegee University alum and critically acclaimed poet jac-E-j spoke some powerful words as she claimed her reverence for Mother Tuskegee. She recalled that Hip Hop was always a part of house parties in Los Angeles and it was always pushing her through life’s most difficult moments.

Tuskegee students recalled listening to old-school Hip Hop with their parents,


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