While hip-hop has, since roughly 1979, expanded as a global cultural phenomenon, over the past 20 years hip-hop studies has evolved as a viable subdiscipline that touches on various academic areas at the university level. More recently, it has also emerged as a facet of the curriculum in secondary and even in elementary schools. In Hip-Hop Within and Without the Academy, Karen Snell and Johan Söderman foreground the issue of hip-hop and education, setting out along two tracks, the first involving hip-hop and the acquisition of musical knowledge and practices among artists and the second being the processes through which hip-hop has evolved as a concentrated topic of study.

Organised into three parts (‘Ethnographic hip-hop studies’, ‘Academization of hip-hop’ and ‘Education and artistic implications of hip-hop’), each featuring a series of short chapters, the book opens with a concisely defined objective and some sound questions. The authors state that the book ‘seeks to explore why hip-hop as a contemporary musical genre has grown to become so meaningful to so many artists and fans’ and to interrogate why hip-hop is ‘a musical genre that seems to lend itself so well to dealing with issues that affect marginalized populations around the world’ (p. 3). They focus on several key constituencies that draw on the authors’ respective national networks: professional and amateur Swedish MCs, accomplished Canadian DJs, Canadian First Nations MCs, prominent female ‘conscious’ MCs in the USA, hip-hop DJs teaching in formal university settings in Canada and the USA, and music professors in Canada and Sweden. It is noteworthy that several of the chapters have been previously published. While this is not necessarily a detriment, it is concerning that some chapters are based on research identified as having been conducted and published over a decade ago which, considering the pace at which popular music practices, tastes, technologies, personnel, etc., change invariably harbours the potential for outdated findings.

In their examination of what they define as two distinct realms of hip-hop musical practice, the authors tease out issues of insider/outsider status and related aspects concerning real or perceived authenticity (that ostensibly coheres in the streets, ’hood, or studio where hip-hop is created) and its constructed Other, the ‘sell out’, whether this is conceived as commercialism in an industrial market context or opportunistic appropriation among scholars within the academy. The discussions about hip-hop artistry and the ways in which lyrical creativity or beat making are related to identity and a sense of social purpose are interesting here, as is the material on differences between hip-hop artists at different stages of their careers. As most of the book's informants explain, hip-hop presented a life-altering influence, in some cases upending their formal music educational experiences whereas, in other instances, hip-hop offered exciting new outlets for musical expression built upon prior exposure to classical music training or theory. For this latter group, the foundation derived from music lessons in their youth provided the budding hip-hop artists with insights on musical rhythm and tempo, keys, arrangements, instrumentation and other compositional factors.

Snell and Söderman present the widely circulated idea that hip-hop, in its most critical, radical/revolutionary, and ‘conscious’ expressions, can articulate social injustices while amplifying contestatory and counter-ideological discourses among the wider public. This comes through most clearly in the book's interviews with hip-hop artists in different national locales. Additionally, the authors argue that hip-hop appeals most directly to socially marginal youth (immigrants, refugees, ethnic or racial minorities, the poor) in most global societies, providing a means through which to define their experiences under the deleterious effects of neoliberalism and to resist pressures toward the morally bankrupt pursuit of self-interest. Via their interviews and subsequent commentary, Snell and Söderman explain how hip-hop's collaborative approaches to art and expression (i.e. the reliance on musical, dance, or graffiti crews or ‘loyalty to the global hip-hop nation’) can present a rejoinder to prevailing networks of power and authority that actively dissuade collective sociopolitical actions.

Although several chapters are about hip-hop artists and their work outside of academic institutions, it doesn't seem that this book is intended to appeal to non-scholars or to hip-hop artist-activists. In some places, especially the early chapters addressing hip-hop ‘without the academy’, the emphasis is on artists and ethnographic research methods, pointing toward the interests of musical education as much as hip-hop studies (some of this may be familiar among readers who have previously encountered the fine work of, for example, Joseph Schloss, Reference Schloss2004, Reference Schloss2009 or Mark Katz, Reference Katz2012). Although the subject at hand is hip-hop ‘without the academy’, in this sense the book actually brings hip-hop production and creative processes back into an academic domain.

The section on the ‘academization of hip-hop’ – what the book's title describes as ‘hip-hop within the academy’ – was promising as it is an area that is rarely well covered compared to the more common emphasis on the convergences of youth, politics and hip-hop. Here Snell and Söderman write, ‘It can be fruitful for music education research to explore how a more recently developed musical genre like hip-hop enters the university’ (p. 85). These discussions likely appeal most to those working in academic institutional settings and who are already invested in the internal politics and interpersonal dynamics that can facilitate or constrain hip-hop studies (i.e. Dyson, Reference Dyson2007).

The authors cite their preference for the politicised brand of ‘conscious’ hip-hop and despite suggesting that, ‘allowing the study of controversial hip-hop … should be embraced rather than avoided’ (p. 201), their stated mission includes, ‘teaching less commercial hip-hop, something we hope we are encouraging through the publication of this book’ (p. 202). While the terms ‘controversial’ or ‘less commercial’ are not explicitly defined here, I would submit that it is not the character or subgenre of hip-hop that is of paramount importance but how it is critically engaged, what analytical theories and modes of interpretation are brought to the tracks, and what discussions best explain the contexts of hip-hop production and consumption as well as articulating the ideological values that are infused within the lyrics.

While it is easy to agree that conscious hip-hop is essential to the well-rounded classroom lesson, so too are the successful bling and controversial bang associated with commercial or gangsta rap. There are certainly deep, oftentimes contradictory pleasures to be derived from some pretty appalling content; the beats, rhyme skills and flow of artists like Scarface, Eminem, or Tyler the Creator, among many others, offer substantial rewards to a young listener despite the lyrical emphasis on misogyny, violence and ‘Money (Dollar Bill, Y'All)’. Nor do the authors fully accommodate the broader realm of the popular within which hip-hop is formed, framed and enjoyed, whether this means reading about hip-hop in a magazine or website, watching a video on television or YouTube, or dancing in a club. Referring to the crucial importance of ‘various other forms of communication’ encompassing ‘secondary texts’, David Hesmondhalgh reminds us, ‘our understanding of good experiences of music should not be artificially distilled down, so that only “the music itself” is considered to be relevant’ (Hesmondhalgh Reference Hesmondhalgh2013, pp. 22–3).

Snell and Söderman are appropriately attuned to the ways in which public education is increasingly inflected by the demands and agendas of the neoliberal state (see also Giroux Reference Giroux2014), including economic defunding of schools, increased reliance on student or family self-sufficiency and community resiliency, and an overall reinforcement of the relationships between education, labour and commodity consumption. The passages concerning neoliberal tendencies in contemporary education (that include valuable reflections on hip-hop education's ‘cool’ cachet and its utility in academic marketing, promotion and enhanced tuition revenues) as well as debates among conservative and progressive educators about hip-hop's cultural value or relevance within the educational system are among the most interesting sections of the book. They assertively address the worrisome potential for academic institutions to engage in an academic ‘hustle’ (Gosa and Fields Reference Gosa, Fields, Porfilio and Viola2012) whereby teachers with little or no investment in hip-hop culture appropriate it toward their own careerist ends.

The authors remind readers that the conditions of neoliberal instrumentality and educational conservatism are global and pervasive. Still, while some of the institutional dilemmas affecting hip-hop education are identified, I would like to have seen more sustained critical scrutiny of the specific role of educational policy (at the meta-level of national education initiatives, at the more localised level of public school curricular objectives, and the micro-level of classroom design and teaching) and its impact on how hip-hop is integrated into educational contexts.

Since I am overtly named, I feel justified in taking issue with the discussion pertaining to the ways in which hip-hop scholars advance within the academy. In the authors’ telling, Michael Eric Dyson stands as a towering hip-hop authority with inordinate power: ‘Dyson has named academic writers who he regards as “hip-hop scholars”. By conferring this status upon them, Dyson consecrates these scholars. Dyson's consecration, which we interpret to mean that he allowed these scholars to enter the field of hip-hop academia, can be seen as a gatekeeping strategy’ (p. 89). Despite Dyson's status as a prolific scholar, an incisive Black cultural critic and popular US public intellectual (and, perhaps, the fact that he is an ordained Baptist minister), this notion of ‘consecration’ is a gross misstatement of his role and influence among hip-hop studies scholars. It is a frankly odd interpretation of academic collegiality, and an inaccurate description of what is actually a rather standard matrix of relationships based on shared interests in hip-hop music, culture and scholarship. Snell and Söderman largely ignore more relevant academic gatekeeping factors such as journal and conference peer review and publishers’ acquisition processes.

Although it is true that more established hip-hop scholars frequently provide mentorship for junior scholars and graduate student advisees, the version of a hip-hop hierarchy presented in the book simply doesn't match my experience as one of the so-called ‘consecrated’ few of ‘first-generation’ hip-hop scholars. In fact, many hip-hop scholars at various stages in their careers either collaborate explicitly (via book and journal ‘special issue’ projects, shared service in academic associations, or conference panels) or exchange ideas (including work in progress or course syllabi) through formal and informal means. All of this is to say that many mechanisms exist for hip-hop scholars to build together.

Their curious portrayal of a hip-hop studies hierarchy notwithstanding, the authors do raise an important issue that involves the social and generational dynamics between established and emergent hip-hop scholars. Relations among hip-hop scholars are, as in most fields, somewhat oriented around age, career longevity, and tenure status. The authors note later that, ‘It is obvious that the first generation of hip-hop scholars paved the way for hip-hop at the university’ (p. 91). This is true, but how the road got paved (and with what intellectual construction materials) is not fully addressed; a more detailed emphasis on the character of arguments, points of resistance, and strategic manoeuvres would be beneficial to an understanding of hip-hop's emergence ‘within the academy’. Indeed, closer attention to the establishment of scholarly standards relating to analytical ‘rigour’ or canon formation (in terms of the music, select artists, and scholarly texts employed in course syllabi) is also absent here, but remains of crucial relevance to hip-hop's academisation.

In the end, I am still unsure if the publication is intended for music educators (which in several chapters it seems to be), education scholars who adhere to critical ‘hip-hop pedagogy’ (citations reflect this area quite strongly with references to Dimitriadis, Hill, Petchauer, Gosa and Fields), popular music and cultural studies scholars (with a critical theoretical bent), or more specifically, if is it claiming a position within the hybrid terrain of hip-hop studies? It is, in various instances, oriented toward each of these areas, but the book's sharp bifurcation, identified in the title, makes it difficult at times to pin down its centre and its purpose. Rather than dismantling the barriers between the academy and the street (the within and without of the title), Snell and Söderman may ultimately reassert them.