Freedom Moves: H. Samy Alim celebrates the Past, Present and Future of Hip Hop on its fiftieth birthday

In this KEEN ON episode, Andrew talks to FREEDOM MOVES co-editor H. Samy Alim about Hip Hop knowledges, pedagogies and futures

H. Samy Alim is the David O. Sears Presidential Endowed Chair in the Social Sciences and Professor of Anthropology at UCLA. He also serves as the Associate Director of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies, where he is Faculty Director of the UCLA Hip Hop Initiative with Tabia Shawel and Samuel Lamontagne, and editor, with Jeff Chang, of the University of California Press Hip Hop Studies Book Series. Alim has been researching and writing about Hip Hop Culture for over 25 years. His most recent book, Freedom Moves: Hip Hop Knowledges, Pedagogies, and Futures (2023, with Jeff Chang and Casey Wong) travels across generations and beyond borders to understand hip hop’s transformative power as one of the most important cultural movements of our times. Alim is author or editor of twelve books and has written extensively about Black Language and Hip Hop Culture globally—across the U.S., Spain, and South Africa—in his books, including Street Conscious Rap (1999, with James G. Spady and Charles G. Lee), Roc the Mic Right: The Language of Hip Hop Culture (2006), Tha Global Cipha: Hip Hop Culture and Consciousness (2006, with James G. Spady and Samir Meghelli), Talkin Black Talk (2007, with John Baugh), Global Linguistic Flows: Hip Hop Cultures, Youth Identities, and the Politics of Language (2009, with Award Ibrahim and Alastair Pennycook) and Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies: Teaching and Learning for Justice in a Changing World (2017, with Django Paris).

Name as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.