NEWPORT, R.I. – Tricia Rose, professor and chair of Africana Studies at Brown University who is best known for her books on hip hop culture, will explain “Why Hip Hop Matters” when she lectures at Salve Regina University on Tuesday, Feb. 16 at 6:30 p.m.
Rose’s lecture, free and open to the public, will be presented in the Bazarsky Lecture Hall, O’Hare Academic Center on Ochre Point Avenue. Rose’s appearance is part of the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy’s “Making Difference” lecture series.
In her new book, “The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop – and Why it Matters,” Rose voices a call for revitalization of the progressive, creative heart of hip hop, which has increasingly become defined by one thin slice of a varied, complex genre.
The most visible and widely-consumed hip hop sets forth a troubled vision of ghetto street life that defines young, at-risk black men and women to each other and also to a large white audience (seventy percent of hip hop consumers are white). Rose offers six guiding principles for progressive hip hop creativity, consumption, and community, ending the “blame hip hop vs. explain hip hop” wars and promoting critical conversations that inspire transformational music as well as social justice for all.
Born and raised in New York City, Rose spent her childhood in Harlem and the Bronx. She graduated from Yale University where she received a B.A. in Sociology and then received her Ph.D. from Brown University in the field of American Studies.
Rose’s ground-breaking book on the emergence of hip hop culture, “Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America,” was published in 1994. It is considered a foundational text for the study of hip hop, one that has defined what has eventually become a serious field of study. Black Noise won an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation in 1995 and was also considered one of the top 25 books of 1995 by the Village Voice.
She lectures frequently to scholarly and general audiences on a wide range of topics relating to American cultural politics, black culture and music and gender. Rose has also been featured as an expert commentator on NPR and other national and local radio outlets, and on television. More of her work can be found in articles appearing in magazines and newspapers such as Time, Essence, The New York Times and The Village Voice and on her website,
www.triciarose.com.