Rhyme and revolution

Ousmane Power-Greene considers himself part of the hip-hop generation.

The Clark history professor was born in 1973, the same year considered to be the birth of the influential genre. When hip-hop turned 50 in 2023, the world celebrated with concerts, festivals, plans for a museum, and storytelling, and Power-Greene drummed up the idea for his new course: A History of Hip Hop.

“I was born and raised in the ’70s and ’80s, and I grew up on rap music and break dance,” says Power-Greene, whose favorite artists include KRS-One and Public Enemy. “This was my upbringing, and the 50th anniversary of hip-hop had me buzzing.”

Power-Greene explores hip-hop in four elements — DJing, breakdancing, rap, and graffiti — to provide students with a broad understanding of the evolution of Black popular culture and Black people in society. A few decades ago, he notes, some questioned whether Black culture could reach the mainstream and be enjoyed by people in the suburbs.

“Michael Jackson illustrated that it was absolutely possible,” says Power-Greene. In the early ’80s, the popularity of hip-hop and rap flourished. “Another illustration of that was President Ronald Reagan’s inauguration, which had break dancers in the background doing windmills.”

Breakdancing, also called B-boying, is an enduring element of hip-hop and has revolutionized live performance. It even debuted in the 2024 Olympics as a new sport.

“This form emerged in the South Bronx and has gone on to shape contemporary dance. It’s become a significant part of global culture,” says Power-Greene.

Off the dance floor, hip-hop ushered in new creative ways of playing instruments or modifying fashion. Power-Greene examines this historical element of innovation with his students.

“We’re talking about Run DMC wearing Adidas with no laces,” he says. “It’s the evolution of style impacted by kids from Hollis, Queens.”

Capitalism is also part of the conversation. Power-Greene wants his students to understand the bottom-line realities of the music industry.

“One of the main contradictions that I try to help the students understand is the constant paradox around wanting to be respected as a Black artist and wanting to have a big audience,” he says. “But the reality of having a large audience is that those in positions of corporate power [in the music world] are seeking money.”

Nic Smith ’25, who majors in musicology and media, culture, and the arts, took the course because they wanted to learn more about the rich culture of hip hop. Smith was excited to talk to a member of the rap group Antipop Consortium during class and enjoyed hearing about hip-hop history from an artist’s perspective. The experience has been insightful for Smith’s research.

“I am doing a directed study for my musicology major about the history of marginalization of queer people in rap music, so A History of Hip Hop gave me a general understanding of the culture surrounding the rap genre that has allowed me to analyze more specific topics, including the construction of hypermasculinity in hip-hop and the political messaging expressed in a lot of rap music.” 

History major Cole Gushee-Nelson ’26 is a musician and painter who says graffiti has had an influence on his work. He was interested in taking A History of Hip Hop because he enjoyed a previous class, African-American History from 1865 to the present, with Power-Greene.

“This class definitely helped put certain elements of popular culture into more context,” he says. “There is certainly a lot of debate and hand-wringing about authenticity, ownership, and ‘realness’ in pop culture more broadly in this day and age. Hip hop grappled with a lot of these questions from early on due to its unique evolution and I think this class helps me think about why these debates come about.”

“It was like a whole other side of the culture opened up to me.”

Casey Campellone ’27

Another history major, Casey Campellone ’27, said he wanted to take the course to learn about a contemporary topic. He also enjoys rap and hip-hop music.

“I was surprised by how little I actually knew about hip-hop and how it developed. It was like a whole other side of the culture opened up to me,” he says. “Already, I am seeing patterns in the music I listen to that I would have never noticed. Not even in just rap music, but other genres of music that I listen to, like rock or electronic. You can see what hip-hop drew from and what other music was influenced by hip-hop.”

The course also analyzes the war on drugs, gender and women in rap, East Coast versus West Coast hip-hop, and beefs between rappers. Students study how rhyme style and lyrical content change over time.

“We think about early rap like ‘The Message’ [by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five] that talked about what it was like in the city,” says Power-Greene. “Then there’s party stuff like Sugarhill Gang’s ‘Rapper’s Delight,’ and Run DMC, who has a grittiness in their lyrics. They’re yelling and they’re trying to distinguish themselves from being R&B and smooth.

“For political rappers like Ice Cube, a lot of the content is storytelling about Black popular culture and fairly easy to derive,” Power-Greene continues. “It’s not like in the ’80s or ’90s when many white people did not go into the south side of Chicago or Compton or Harlem. Then, rap music gave people outside the community an insight into what life was like, as [Public Enemy frontman] Chuck D said, it was like the CNN for the Black community.”

Mixed media fuels class discussions. Power-Greene plays clips from music videos, such as “Walk This Way” by Run DMC and Aerosmith, or snippets of movies like “Wild Style,” a 1983 film directed and produced by Charlie Ahearn that’s largely regarded as the first hip-hop motion picture. The course’s primary text is “Can’t Stop Won’t Stop” by Jeff Chang.

Of the 23 students in class, most have a relationship with hip-hop culture, Power-Greene says. Some are into rap or dance while others are DJs or graffiti artists. In addition to history majors, some students are studying music or political science.

“It’s fun to teach this group of students because they’re coming from different disciplines,” Power-Greene says. “I’m watching them see these moments that demonstrate a shift in the culture. Their eyes are wide because they’re seeing a clear evolution.”