My friends, happy Thursday!
For “Hip-Hop Is Universal,” MSNBC’s celebration of hip-hop’s 50th anniversary, I’ve been holding conversations with experts who can speak to the way the genre seems to intersect with every discipline imaginable.
As I wrote in my introductory post, hip-hop speaks to everything in our world and beyond — to race, money, power, sex, tech, space and more. And the people I’ve spoken with thus far have all driven this point home in their own brilliant way.
As a hip-hop fanatic myself, I’m relishing these chances to sit down and nerd out with people who love the genre, too, and have found ways to fuse it with other passions.
My first interview was with Dr. Taj Frazier, associate professor of communication at the University of Southern California, director of USC’s Institute for Diversity and Empowerment at Annenberg and, perhaps most famously, host of “Hip-Hop and the Metaverse” on PBS.
I’m going to start sharing the audio from the interviews here on The ReidOut Blog — maybe even some video clips from time to time. And we’ll see how things blossom from there. Check it!
Frazier’s PBS series highlights the way hip-hop is being deployed in cutting-edge technologies, in places like virtual reality concerts, art exhibits and production studios. And artificial intelligence-driven rappers. And AI-enabled instruments and songwriting aids.
You can watch every episode from season one for free; each episode is about 10-15 minutes. Here’s a quick teaser:








