Hip-hop history 101

CHARLESTON - As students settle down and cool off, KRS-One addresses the class, via documentary, about his decades-old feud with MC Shan.

His name might not be well-known to those in the classroom, but that's why they're here. It is part of a hip-hop class taught by Roneka Matheny this summer at the College of Charleston.

Matheny said she normally teaches an Introduction to African American Studies class in which students discuss hip-hop in the final weeks of the semester. A cramped syllabus, however, led her to create a whole new course.

"I just wanted to do an entire class on it because I thought it was important," she said, "since so many students don't know the history of the music."

Much of the class focuses on that history although Matheny said students are more steeped in it than she was initially willing to give them credit for.

When the topic of discussion turned to the 1995 duet "You're All I Need to Get By" between rapper Method Man and songstress Mary J. Blige, some of the students hummed the tune's melody.

In addition to history, students study the music itself. They listen to songs from a playlist that spans the genre's lifetime. Every Friday, they watch documentaries and films that chronicle its legends.

Friday's viewing was of the documentary "Beef," which relives some of rap's most storied rivalries.

Paul Bradley Jr., both a student and Matheny's teaching assistant, said he was drawn to the class by questions he had about the infamous killings of rappers Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac, whose back-and-forth was featured in the film.

Over the few weeks he's been taking the class, he has come to understand the complexity and ambiguity of their cases and of the genre as a whole.

Other films include "Krush Groove," which gives Run DMC "A Hard Day's Night" treatment, and "Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes."

The latter explores issues of misogyny and homophobia in hip-hop, topics that take up a significant portion of a syllabus that features a caveat warning students of "obscene and offensive material" to be encountered during the class.

The course, titled Hip Hop: Evolution and Impact, is part of the college's SPECTRA program targeted at incoming minority and first-generation students.

As participants in the program, many of the students were assigned to the class automatically, though many of them said they would have taken it anyway.

One student, Ebony Coleman, said she did not listen to that much hip-hop before taking the class. She sees it as part music theory, part sociology and part history, showing her another side of the genre.

"Its not the usual kind of thing you would think about," she said.

Reach Melvin Backman at 937-5550 or mbackman@postandcourier.com.