If you read a poem or you listen to a song and
then like you catch a pattern, it felt like you

were solving a puzzle, it feels like magic. That
was the thing that drew me to making music.

My name is A.D Carson. I'm assistant
professor of hip-hop in the Global

South. I am a rapper, you know try to
make art that hopefully people listen to.

As a young student, of course the creative stuff
was encouraged but it was always extra. It felt to

me like it shouldn't be extra, it felt like it
was the thing. I believe that art is necessary

for us to be able to interpret the world in
ways that will connect us to other people.

The students come from all across the university,
varying levels of experience and expertise, and I

find them to be really curious. And I think
that curiosity is probably the best thing

that you could have as a hip-hop artist or
as a person who's looking to study anything.

Where we really get down to business is when
we have our open hours, when everybody is there

and they're just bringing their questions, they're
bringing their music they're bringing their ideas.

It's really really helpful time the unstructured
time to just be in a room with creative people

making stuff. They have so much to bring to
our conversations about knowledge production,

about argumentation, about what's happening in
the world right now. How do you make an expert

in something that has been historically excluded
from the space? It's a question that I hold about

myself and it's a question that I continue to hold
about hip-hop in academia. How did we get here?

And what makes the work good? What makes
the work valuable? What makes the work

rigorous? There are lots of classes that I've been
in and that I've taught where I just went to do my

work and then I left and I didn't know anybody,
didn't know anybody's name. I hope that it's

impossible for students to come into my class and
not learn each other's names and learn about one

another and so it's not just a matter of creating
a connection between me as an instructor and them

as students, but it's a connection between
them as people who share a community not

just in the classroom, but at the University
and eventually, you know, the world.