Monday, March 17, 2003
There are times when Boyd's ability to connect the dots is both audacious and smoothly persuasive.
There he is, in the same class, listing the social forces that shaped rap: the '70s oil embargo, Japanese car imports, U.S. auto plant cutbacks, school integration and white flight and a shrinking urban tax base, drug dealing, Ronald Reagan's war on labor unions, cuts in social programs -- think about this, he injects with total certitude: Were it not for cuts in school-music funding in the '70s, the first generation of rappers would have been accompanied by instruments; they wouldn't have had to sample other tracks.
And there are times when Boyd crosses the line into, well, into Todd Boyd territory, where most academics fear to tread.
That notorious PhD
¶ 3/17/2003 05:04:00 PM
There he is, in the same class, listing the social forces that shaped rap: the '70s oil embargo, Japanese car imports, U.S. auto plant cutbacks, school integration and white flight and a shrinking urban tax base, drug dealing, Ronald Reagan's war on labor unions, cuts in social programs -- think about this, he injects with total certitude: Were it not for cuts in school-music funding in the '70s, the first generation of rappers would have been accompanied by instruments; they wouldn't have had to sample other tracks.
And there are times when Boyd crosses the line into, well, into Todd Boyd territory, where most academics fear to tread.
That notorious PhD
¶ 3/17/2003 05:04:00 PM
