By Josh Luby

It’s blasting from the windows of passing cars and on the radio in public places. Now, hip-hop just might be in class schedules, too.

Hip-hop studies has been appearing in curriculums around the country. The University of Texas is one of the many universities that offers courses related to hip-hop studies.

The rise of hip-hop studies was discussed on Oct. 13 in the Curry Student Center Ballroom where Murray Forman, assistant professor of communication studies and Mark Anthony Neal, associate professor of black popular culture in the program in African and African-American studies at Duke University, spoke about their new textbook, “That’s the Joint: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader.”

“It was an active love and passion [of hip-hop] that pulled us together,” Forman said.

He compared putting the book together to DJs going through stacks of records.

“We went through crates of articles and pulled out the best, then put them into our book,” Forman said.

“That’s the Joint” is a compilation of articles that explore the rising hip-hop culture throughout its existence, nationally and internationally. Currently Forman is part of the Hip-Hop Studies Collective, a group of professors working toward making it an actual course.

Both Forman and Neal said they hope someday hip-hop studies will become a course carried by all colleges in the country.

“You cannot name a major university in the nation that does not have some course that is influenced by hip-hop,” Neal said.

Neal said the only way to make hip-hop studies work as a class is to be serious about it.

“We have to treat [hip-hop studies] as parallel to sociology, mathematics and English,” he said.

He feels it is taken too lightly by universities and students alike.

“It cannot be [an easy] course, otherwise it will not be respected and will not progress to where my colleagues and I want it to go,” Neal said.

Both professors said they feel there is a common misconception about hip-hop studies as merely a course about rapping.

However, rapping is perhaps the least important part of hip-hop studies. There are several different art forms that make up the culture, from break dancing to graffiti artists.

“Hip-hop is a culture and a life that you need to live; someone cannot just teach you how to be and act hip-hop,” said middler business major Alan Rothenberger. “It is not like watching [Black Entertainment Television] is going to make you ‘street,'” he said. “You have to live it to understand it.”