Keen On

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