UCLA has just announced a Hip-Hop initiative which Chuck D will serve as inaugural artist in residence of. According to The Los Angeles Times, the roots of the initiative stem from a roundtable at the California African American Museum in downtown Los Angeles that featured Rakim, Talib Kweli, and Chuck called “Sweat The Technique: The Politics and Poetics of Hip Hop”. UCLA Professor of Anthropology H. Samy Alim recalls, “The room was sweating. It was on fire. This shows what we can do when we come together to showcase Hip Hop’s power and strength.”
The initiative envisions itself as “the leading center for Hip-Hop studies globally” and it aims to amplify and multiply the Hip Hop conversation across artistic disciplines, “by way of artist and residencies, community engagement programs, a book series, lecture series, an oral history and digital archive project, postdoctoral fellowships and more”, the initiatives announcement states.