Hip-hop permeates modern global society, and yet, there remains remain various divisions within it. Following up on an interdisciplinary academic conference, the Lehman Conference on Hip-Hop, this special issue highlights a number of aspects in hip-hop’s development, and looks toward an ever increasing globalization of what was, initially, a neighborhood based cultural practice. The authors assembled here examine hip-hop within such contexts as social protest, entertainment, and identity formation, and also as a response to dominant structures, such as race, gender inequality, and capitalism. Their investigations consider hip-hop’s roots and branches, and its connections to politics, culture and consumption. This special issue also focuses, in detail, at some of hip-hop’s many practices, raising questions about its use for expressing the thorny topics of race, class, national identity, gender and sexuality. But the overall theme is one, which was expressed in the conference’s initial theme: from local to global practice. It is this process, in particular, which we are attempting to better understand. We are also particularly concerned to explore ways marginal groups within hip-hop and the larger society, like LGBTQ communities (especially of color) and women of color also use hip-hop as a form of protest to critique social ills.
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