Hip hop, as a cultural product of Africa and African descendant peoples is a rich field of inquiry. Hip hop as a viable platform that highlights calls for social change is the life-giving breath of hip hop. Nevertheless, a viable work that dives deep into the sociopolitical and philosophical foundations of hip hop as a human expression of African futures is still yet to be written. Most work on hip hop is still grasping with it at its surface level. Still justifying its existence. Resisting the clutches of the ever-evolving attempts of racial capitalism to control it, hip hop as the historical and ancestral culmination of art, philosophy, politics, collectivism, questions of humanity is simultaneously evolving. Africa, as Dr. Msia Clark writes in her book, Hip Hop in Africa: Prophets of the City and Dustyfoot Philosophers (https://hiphopafrican.com/2017/12/17/hip-hop-in-africa-prophets-of-the-city-and-dustyfoot-philosophers/), is where the origins of hip hop can be found. According to Dr. Clark, when Africans were forcibly taken from their homelands, enslaved, they carried with them their human traditions, their cultural traditions that linked them with heaven and earth. One of these traditions were the rhythmic meditations on life, love, politics, the future—we call music. These traditions were forged in the conditions within which those Africans found themselves, the Americas, South, Central, North—to become jazz, the blues, gospel…and of course hip hop. Therefore, to understand the roots of hip hop in Africa—its origins—adds a depth and breadth to studying hip hop that is vital to understand its salience and ability to invent the future. What we will hear next is a recent conversation with Dr. Msia Clark on her recently published book…Hip Hop in Africa: Prophets of the City and Dustyfoot Philosophers Dr. Msia Kibona Clark is an Associate Professor in the Department of African Studies at Howard University. She is originally from Tanzania and received her doctorate in African Studies from Howard University in 2006. Her research has focused on African migration and identity, as well as hip hop and popular culture in Africa. Dr. Clark has published several scholarly publications on African migration, African immigrant identities, relations between African migrants and African Americans, and hip-hop culture’s intersections with social change, gender, and politics in Africa. She has published two books (Hip Hop and Social Change in Africa: Ni Wakati and Hip-Hop in Africa: Prophets of the City and Dustyfoot Philosophers) and over ten scholarly articles and book chapters, and currently produces the Hip Hop African blog and monthly podcast hosted at hiphopafrican.com. Dr. Clark is also an accomplished photographer. She has participated in exhibits in Tanzania and the U.S. Her work was also featured in the book project Mfon: Women Photographers in the African Diaspora. Our show was produced today in solidarity with the native, indigenous, African, and Afro-descended communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; and Ghana; and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all people.