During 1967-8, The Lovin’ Spoonful, The Animals, The Who, Richie Havens, Jefferson Airplane and the Iron Butterfly, performed in the gymnasium at the small, liberal arts Drew University in suburban New Jersey. Turns out, this experience was not unique to Drew. College campuses across the country were essential for the growth of popular music, and of rock music in particular in the mid- to late-sixties. The music industry took notice as booking agents, record shops, pop music promoters, radio stations, and industry magazines and newspapers all began to place more emphasis on the opportunities provided by the nation’s colleges. While we know a great deal about activism on college campuses during the sixties, we know little about that same environment and its relationship to the growth and development of rock culture. This essay will explore the relationship between the growth of rock culture, the college campus, and the broader sixties experience. The college campus proved crucial in the development of rock music as student tastes determined “rock culture.” Folk, pop, soul/R&B, folk rock, hard rock, and psychedelic/acid rock, thrived simultaneously on the college campus from 1967 to 1970, precisely the period of significant change in popular music.

While hip hop and the university appear to operate within radically different social (and socioeconomic) spheres, we nevertheless see increasing overlap between the two that demonstrates a mutual interest and perhaps desire between the two. With the rise of hip hop studies on the one hand and a remarkable array of hip hop songs and films that address the university space and/or university education on the other, these two discursive spheres produce knowledges that are both complementary and contradictory. By analyzing several texts—major academic works of hip hop scholarship; films on hip hop and the university, especially Method Man and Redman’s 2001 How High ; and the rap oeuvres of Kanye West and J. Cole—this article examines the ways in which the epistemologies of hip hop and the university interact and conflict. By examining these texts, I show that academic epistemologies, or what I term “book knowledge,” inadvertently impose a hierarchical and colonizing frame on rap and hip hop, such as the practice of “close reading” rap as poetry. Instead, I argue that we can learn how to ethically inhabit and transform the university space by drawing from hip hop’s commitment to producing the radical, decolonial, and embodied practices of “street knowledge.”

Rap, the musical element of hip hop culture, has depended on the recorded past to shape its birth, present and, potentially, its future. Founded on a sample-based methodology, the style’s perceived authenticity and sonic impact are largely attributed to the use of phonographic records, and the unique conditions offered by composition within a sampling context. Yet, while the dependence on pre-existing recordings challenges traditional notions of authorship, it also results in unavoidable legal and financial implications for sampling composers who, increasingly, seek alternative ways to infuse the sample-based method with authentic content. But what are the challenges inherent in attempting to compose new material—inspired by traditional forms—while adhering to rap’s unique sonic rationale, aesthetics and methodology? How does composing within a stylistic frame rooted in the past (i.e. the Blues) differ under the pursuit of contemporary sonics and methodological preferences (i.e. hip hop’s sample-based process)? And what are the dynamics of this inter-stylistic synthesis? The article argues that in pursuing specific, stylistically determined sonic objectives, sample-based production facilitates an interactive typology of unique conditions for the composition, appropriation, and divergence of traditional musical forms, incubating era-defying genres that leverage the dynamics of this interaction. The musicological inquiry uses (auto)ethnography reflecting on professional creative practice, in order to investigate compositional problematics specific to the applied blues-hop context, theorize on the nature of inter-stylistic composition, and consider the effects of electronic mediation on genre transformation and stylistic morphing.

This article explores Jaco Pastorius’s efforts to legitimize himself as a jazz electric bassist. Even though the instrument had existed at the margins of jazz for decades, by the 1970s it was overwhelmingly associated with rock and funk music and therefore carried with it the stigmatized connotations of outsider status. Building on the work of Bill Milkowski, Kevin Fellezs, Lawrence Wayte, and Peter Dowdall, I situate Pastorius’s career within the broader context of 1970s jazz fusion. I then analyze how he deliberately used his public persona, his virtuosic technical abilities, the atypical timbre of his fretless electric bass, and his work as a composer and bandleader to vie for acceptance within the jazz tradition. As I argue, Pastorius specifically attempted to establish his jazz credibility through his first two solo albums, initially by disassociating himself from his own instrument, and then by eventually abandoning the musical style that had made him famous. Ultimately, Pastorius’s story serves as a useful case study of the tangible ramifications of authenticity disputes and the complicated ways in which musicians have attempted to navigate contested musical spaces within popular music.