The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop--and Why It Matters

How hip hop shapes our conversations about race -- and how race influences our consideration of hip hop

Hip hop is a distinctive form of black art in America-from Tupac to the Pulitzer Prize-winning Kendrick Lamar, hip hop has long given voice to the African American experience. As scholar and cultural critic Tricia Rose argues, hip hop, in fact, has become one of the primary ways we talk about race in the United States.

But hip hop is in crisis. For years, the most commercially successful...