Hip Hop America drew a capacity audience from USC and the Los Angeles community to Doheny Memorial Library for a discussion about hip hop’s influence in contemporary American life.

The Visions and Voices event was co-sponsored by the USC Libraries and the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities as part of the Dialogues series.

Los Angeles Times music critic Ann Powers moderated the conversation among USC School of Cinematic Arts professor Todd Boyd, USC Annenberg School for Communication professor Josh Kun and American studies and ethnicity doctoral candidate Imani Kai Johnson.

The USC scholars have studied aspects of hip hop ranging from the politics of the hip-hop generation to the music’s transformation by Latino migrant cultures and the kinesthetic forms of collective knowledge in dance cultures that emerged in 1970s New York.

Powers began by discussing the difficulty of defining a musical culture that is omnipresent in America and, increasingly, around the world. “Trying to define hip hop,” she said, “is a little like asking what air is.”

The three panelists agreed that hip hop’s influence has contributed paradoxically to its demonization.

“People have this illusion of knowledge based on a surface-level understanding of the culture,” Boyd said. ”Hip hop is a life force, and it’s much deeper than the music that most people have access to.”

Added Johnson, “My research shows a history of people coming together because of and in spite of economic struggle. Knowing this history is necessary to elevate conversations about hip hop above the simple debates that circulate and recirculate.”

Kun emphasized the nature of hip hop as an evolving “immigrant art form.”

“It has always been internationalist, born of the cultural crossroads,” he said. “But we’re only now acknowledging it as a transatlantic phenomenon in a way that expands our ideas of blackness.”

Johnson amplified this theme, citing the contributions of African-American, Puerto Rican and Caribbean b-boys and b-girls to the emergence of hip hop in the South Bronx during the 1970s. She said, “Blackness means diasporic, in contrast to the fixed, limited use of the term by the media.”

Citing hip hop’s 30-year history, Boyd said, “Most people are only familiar with the last 10 years…. It was only in the late 1990s when people started paying attention … when Eminem became famous.

“They erased the history that was there and started a new history.… There’s been a lot of cultural colonization.”

Boyd also contrasted the lyricism of innovators like Chuck D, Common Sense, Kanye West and Mos Def to ephemeral commercial expressions of hip-hop culture, which he called “so much garbage … (D4L’s) ‘Laffy Taffy’, (Lil’ Wyte’s) ‘U.S. Soldier Boy.’ ”

The panelists often returned to the contradictions of hip hop as a political art form that dominates the entertainment industry. Artists have built commercial empires, selling everything from mix tapes to clothing and bottled water. Many, like Kanye West, view their success as an avenue for political expression.

But hip hop’s influence extends beyond record sales. Responding to a question from USC Rossier School of Education graduate student Amir Alhambra, the panelists credited hip hop with enriching the English language.

“The beauty of hip hop lies in its ability to transform language,” Boyd said. He cited the role of celebrated lyricists as well as the disparate regional hip-hop cultures in the South, New York and Los Angeles.

“They had to make regional dialects sound good,” he said.

Recalling how he used Public Enemy tapes to teach students about writing personal memoirs and autobiographies, Kun emphasized hip hop’s significance as a popular mode of storytelling that has incorporated “migrant languages, cultures and musics.”

Audience members added their perspectives, asking whether hip hop had negative effects on African-American communities, if the Internet expanded its global reach, how early MCs incorporated Five-Percent Nation of Islam doctrines and when rap became hip hop.

Graduate student Alhambra said, “It was a highly informative discussion …. the multicultural panel helped me better understand how hip hop relates to the current state of the world.”

USC College history professor Steven Ross, a frequent collaborator with the USC Libraries, is co-director of the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities.

“The goal of the Dialogues series is serious fun,” he said. “We put accomplished faculty in a room with curious and intelligent undergrads, making the Dialogues a place where ideas are exchanged, developed and questioned – where dialogue emerges.”