To_the_Academy

To the Academy, With Love, From a Hip - Hop Fan “Hip- hop, no music for old men!” The argumentative essay “To the Academy, With Love, From a Hip - Hop Fan” by Jamilah Evelyn which was published in a scholarly journal “ Black issues in higher Education” in the year 2001 deals with the issue that professors, in the usa, do not really have a good connection to their students. In order to show us her concern, she quotes the idea that scholars should listen to hip hop music, to understand their students and to get a better relationship to them as well. During the whole text she is using terms like “ho-ism”,” sadism”, “b – boys”, “hoochie mamas”, and that we should “keep it real”. All this terms are part of the hip hop language and crucial for her essay. It is to say that the specific focus of the essay is that the author tries to achieve that professors have a better connection to their students. By using those terms and saying that she is a fan in an academic way, gives us the impression that she has got background knowledge about this topic and that she is a reliable source. This essay will hopefully support her main idea by analyzing her thoughts of the responsibility of the university, the dismissal of a whole genre by scholars and last a better strategy to show understanding. The universities are responsible to make sure that there is a better understanding for hip hop music. “To extend its reach” (Evelyn 1). The only possibility to reach that extension would be that professors would get some background knowledge about the music their students are listening to. This is what Jamilah Evelyn claims by saying “love it or hate it, but attempt to understand it “(1). She wants to convince scholars, but mainly professors, to understand the culture of that genre in order to get a better connection to their students. The fact that scholars dismiss a whole genre and its fans is according to Jamilah Evelyn “disappointing “(1). Not only the fact that some scholar’s dislike that kind of music but also professors who should be intelligent enough to understand and deliver the true meaning of hip hop and all its terms and codes. Those lyrics need to be understood because hip hop is more than just commercial music and worth to get to know what it is all about. As it is described in her essay a better strategy would be perhaps to “show some understanding “(Evelyn 1). We as readers are requested to “accept and reach out to our students” (Evelyn 1). We shouldn’t sanction the “b- boys and the hoochie mamas” (Evelyn 1), or in other words that kind persons who are immediately associated with that genre, for the music they listening to and the clothes they are wearing, because they are defining so much of that genre. But some kind of change is already happening. As a matter of fact there are some professors who see the positive aspects of hip hop music. They let their students look at the poetic side of those texts and let them work with it. So the mission Jamilah Evelyn gives us “to keep it real” (2) which means that we should make it come true, in this case that professors and their students need to work together in order to get a better connection, is already happening. Jamilah Evelyn gives the readers of her essay a good insight into the campus life of the American culture and the within closely linked music culture. She describes the issues, with all this terms and slang phrases, still in a way that not only professors can accept for themselves but also “insiders”, who are just like Evelyn fans of that kind of genre. And that’s what’s the essay is all about, understanding and acceptance.