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This episode is a sit-down conversation with Toni Blackman. Toni is an artist, hip-hop activist, writer, and cultural ambassador. She holds the distinction of being the first hip-hop ambassador to the U.S. State Department, and her work has had a significant impact on the global perception of hip-hop.

She has decades of experience in the U.S. and throughout Africa. She is one of the most well-traveled and experienced hip-hop artists out there and her work has earned her recognition and respect in hip-hop communities around the world.

We met up at the King Fahd Hotel in Dakar, Senegal this past December to talk about her work and to get her thoughts on hip-hop culture globally and the implications of changes in the industry for hip-hop artists. She talks about the idea of “conscious capitalism" and artists balancing art, business, and social impact.

You can make money and make social impact at the same time… I want more artists to know that and understand that.

She also talks about the relationships between hip-hop artists in the Diaspora and hip-hop artists in Africa and offers advice for both. As an artist and activist dedicated to promoting the positive impact of hip-hop and mindfulness, she is recognized for her innovative work and contributions to hip-hop culture. She inspires and engages audiences through her art, education, and social entrepreneurship. Toni Blackman has left an indelible mark on the world of music and cultural diplomacy.

Music and art play a functional role in the lives of people of African descent.

You can find Toni on all major social media platforms, including Instagram and Twitter as @ToniBlackman, and her website at ToniBlackman.com.

Apple Music is celebrating the 50th anniversary of hip-hop with the “Hip Hop DNA” series. One episode is focused on South Africa. The Hip Hop DNA series shows the diversity of hip-hop sounds, histories, and communities worldwide through radio episodes, playlists, and album selections. This episode on South Africa spotlights the country’s hip-hop scene. It dives into the roots of hip hop in South Africa, looking at the early days in the 1980s and 1990s when legendary Cape Town groups like Prophets of Da City and Black Noise gained prominence. It also mentions groups like Skwatta Kamp and Teargas that achieved radio success in the 2000s and early 2010s. Also covered are the more recent hip hop stars – AKA, KO, and Cassper Nyovest – and a new generation of “kwasi-trap” rappers, such as Bravo Le Roux.

SABC – released a series of documentaries to celebrate hip hop’s 50th anniversary internationally and 40 years in SA. The documentaries were shown on Sundays and ran from November 12th – 26th, with a special broadcast of this year’s Back to the City music festival. The first documentary, directed by SPeeKa, was titled “Slaghuis Joint Elements” and told the story of one of the country’s most impactful hip-hop movements, Slaghuis. The next documentary, “Ladies First Women in SA Hip Hop” looked at the gendered dynamics of rap in SA and how women have both shaped and been affected by the music. The final documentary, “Champion’s League,” looked at SA’s battle rap scene and focused on issues of freedom of speech and how youth culture has influenced the art form.

Kendrick Lamar has teamed up with the philanthropic organization Global Citizen on an effort to establish a music touring circuit across the continent. A kickoff event for the “Move Afrika” tour will take place in Kigali, Rwanda at BK Arena on Dec. 6, with Lamar as headliner performing alongside other artists from Tanzania and Rwanda. Lamar is also working with his creative partner Dave Free and his company, pg Lang, on the tour, which has agreed to curate annual shows across the continent for the next five years as part of the initiative. Global Citizen focuses on eradicating poverty, so the Move Afrika project comes with a focus on job creation and attracting other of the world’s greatest artists to the continent. You can get tickets for the December show in Rwanda at moveafrika.org.

THE 21ST ANNUAL CELEBRATION OF THE B-GLOBAL INDIGENOUS UGANDA HIP-HOP SUMMIT will be held in Kampala. This year it will be held December 20-23, and they will be celebrating hip hop's 50th this year. The B-Global Indigenous Uganda Hip Hop Summit is an educational platform that celebrates and encourages indig

A new play by French rap legend, Kery James and French director and writer Marc Lainé. In À huis clos, Kery James plays Soulaymaan, a lawyer whose brother is murdered by the police. Soulaymaan decides to take justice into his own hands and takes the judge who released his brother's murderer hostage. The play debates ideas around democracy, love, and forgiveness; and two visions of the world collide at the heart of a fascinating political drama.

Held during the congressionally recognized Hip-Hop History Month, this conference will take place in Atlanta, GA on November 6- 7, 2023.   The goal of this conference is to celebrate, acknowledge, and promote the importance of Hip-Hop culture in our lives and society. Specifically for this conference, we are interested in highlighting questions around Hip-Hop culture’s inclusion in different regions, southern women emcees and Hip-Hop, Hip-Hop’s future including the role of AI, the continued global expansion of the genre, and numerous other topics. This conference is especially beneficial and relevant in Georgia as Atlanta is now deemed the “Hip-Hop Mecca.” 

The 2023 Global Conference on Hip Hop Education will expand upon our previous theme, which focused on the foundation of the culture and explore how this culture both migrated out of New York to states like California (i.e. the Golden State), and into popular culture and academia in the late 1970s to mid-1980s. Our conference theme “From the Golden Era to the Golden State,” will guide us as we explore the foundation of this culture, understand what brought about an increase in cultural diffusion, and how lessons learned from the golden era can inform current pedagogies, interventions, research, scholarship and practices.

From Toronto to Havana, to London and Stockholm, we will consider the relationships between hip-hop street culture practices, archiving and preservation. Hip-Hop Diaspora: Archiving and Celebrating 50 Years of the Culture will focus on how global hip-hop voices collective marginalities through decolonial historiographic efforts and forges lasting people-to-people relations that echo economies of Black teaching beyond US borders.

Howard Journal of Communications Special Issue: Exploring the Past, Present and Future of H

The 2023 WDSF Africa Breaking Championship took place in Rabat, Morocco, May 6-7. 58 Breakers took part in the Championships, which was officiated by nine international judges, including Kaweesi Mark from Uganda and Vee from South Africa. Moroccan b-girl Elmamouny and b-boy Billy become the first athletes to qualify in the Olympics for breaking.

Moroccan b-girl Elmamouny defeated South Africa's Midian Leah to take the women's title and Moroccan b-boy Billy defeated Moroccan b-boy Tawfiq for the men's title, both winning the inaugural African Championship.

The World Breaking Championship 2023 took place in Leuven, Belgium on September 23-24. The WBC featured 115 b-boys and 92 b-girls from 62 countries, including Algeria, Botswana, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Morocco, Senegal, and Tunisia.

Victor Montalvo (USA) won the men’s competition, Philip Kim, “B-Boy Phil Wizard,” (Canada) came in second place, and Nakari Shigeyuki (Japan) came in third. Dominika Banevic (Lithuania) won the women’s competition, beating Ayumi Fukushima (Japan).

South African hip hop legend Emile YX? hosted a series of talks, discussions, and exhibitions in South Africa, celebrating 40+ years of hip hop in that country. Emile YX? is a member of one of South Africa’s oldest hip hop crews, Black Noise. Emile led these “Hip Hop as Healing” conversations to celebrate the impact of hip hop on youth. The event kicked off at the University of Cape Town (September 28th-29th) and closed at the Back to the City Hip Hop Festival in Johannesburg (October 7th).

The Jam Cypher Battles were held on October 7 in Lagos, Nigeria. Loudbase Ent hosted Top 8 Street Dance Battle Nigeria edition. Top 8 Street Dance Battle was founded in Ireland and funded by the Arts Council of Ireland. The event includes workshops and dance battles and brings together breakers, rappers, DJ,s and graffiti artists.

Fashion Killa: How Hip-Hop Revolutionized High Fashion by Sowmya Krishnamurthy

MC Caro My Way (Liberia)

Wale the Sage Running from Time (Nigeria)

Wordz People Forget to be People (South Africa)

Alfdaniels Mabingo (2022) Re-Contextualising Breakdance Aesthetics: Performance, Performativity, and Re-Enaction of Breakdancing in Uganda, Journal of African Cultural Studies, 34:4, 404-421, DOI: 10.1080/13696815.2022.2132473

In this episode, we speak with Dr. Alfdaniels Mabingo who wrote a fascinating article on breakdance in Uganda for the Journal of African Cultural Studies. Uganda has one of the largest breakdance scenes in the world, and Mabingo examines how the youth have reconfigured, localized, and re-interpreted breakdance aesthetics in that country. He argues that as breakdance spread, and youth innovated the art form, breakdance became part of Ugandan culture. In this sense, breakdance is no longer just a Western import, but Ugandans have evolved a breakdance into a Ugandan art form.

I always say, maybe breakdance is kind of this baby that arrived (in Uganda) by clinging on to the back of this mother that was rap.

The central thesis of Mabingo's article is to show how Ugandans have been able to localize breakdance and make it their own. He also talks about his research methods and his interest in what he refers to as “the jua cali theory”, which is about taking the imported and the local and repurposing them to create something new.

As a scholar and practitioner, Alfdaniels Mabingo was always fascinated as he watched young boys and girls who walked long distances to dance and share talents. He saw this as not just a practice but also a movement. He felt that these self-driven young individuals added character to the city of Kampala.

Alfdaniels association with breakdance groups such as Breakdance Project Uganda (BPU) in the last fifteen years, deepened his interest, and hence decided to interrogate breakdance. He realized that the more he investigated and researched breakdance, the more he noticed how breakdance also provides certain social services within the communities in Kampala and beyond. This service he calls the "functionalities of breakdance." Breakdancers such as B-boy Abdul, worked to inject locally manufactured ideas to make the breakdance responsive and understood in communities. He saw dancers explore ways of blending elements of breakdance and some elements of indigenous Ugandan dances, customs, and music.

The arrival of hip hop culture through breakdance, music, and fashion in Uganda influenced performers such as B-Boy Abdul. Alfdaniels says that in the 1990s, there was a desire among people from Uganda to imitate what was happening in the United States of America. Young Ugandans were heavily influenced by MC Hammer and 2Pac. Later, there was a desire to create something locally that spoke and appealed to Ugandan youth. B-Boy Abdul realized this after attending a competition in the United Kingdom with the "Top Floor" dance crew when their dance was categorized by the judges as not being breakdance. After his return to Uganda, B-Boy Abdul saw the need to take breakdance in Uganda to the next level by fusing breakdance with some elements of indigenous Ugandan dance.

The strength of breakdancers in Uganda, and …across the African continent… is the ability to look beyond the contours of their own space and their own aesthetics and imagination.

Dr. Alfdaniels Mabingo is a dance researcher, scholar,

A new exhibit opens at the National Museum in Ghana in Accra. The exhibit runs from August 27 - December and focuses on hip hop’s global influence and the influence and contributions of Ghana in the global culture of Hip Hop.

They will be exhibiting texts on hip-hop, including Ice Cold: A Hip-Hop Jewelry History by Vikki Tobak, Back In The Days by Jamel Shabazz, Living the Hiplife by Jesse Weaver Shipley, Hip Hop Africa: New African Music in a Globalizing World by Eric Charry, and The Hiplife in Ghana: West African Indigenization of Hip-Hop by Halifu Osumare, and Hip Hop in Africa: Prophets of the City & Dustyfoot Philosophers by Msia Kibona Clark.

They will also be screening films showcasing Hip Hop’s influence globally and Ghana’s influence and contributions to The Culture

An upcoming event in the UK will "highlight how global hip hop practitioners and hip hop scholars remember, historicise and archive the culture locally". It will highlight the local Milton Keynes hip hop scene from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s.

"Apart from standard academic talks and keynote addresses, the conference will also feature novel formats of knowledge production and dissemination, such as knowledge-droppin cyphers, graffiti literacies, or scratch-in-the-surface of ideas sessions. We want to emphasize that knowledge production within hip hop is both an intellectual and an embodied practice, so we explicitly invite participants to experiment with novel ways of presenting their ideas - in a hip hop way."

The International Council for Hip Hop Studies/le Conseil International Pour Hip Hop Et Recherche: CIPHER is a public scholarship project mapping hip-hop knowledge from communities across the world. The conference will be held at the University College in Cork, Ireland. Proposals due: September 2023

These are some of the artists featured in the article:

ZuluMecca | https://www.instagram.com/zulumecca

K.Keed | https://www.instagram.com/whodat_keed/

Dope Saint Jude | https://www.instagram.com/dopesaintjude

Mx Blouse| https://www.instagram.com/sandiblouse

Keko | https://www.instagram.com/kekotown1

Noti Flow | https://www.instagram.com/notiflowmusic

Join us for a dynamic fusion of academic discourse and cultural celebration. Engage with renowned scholars, influential artists, and passionate enthusiasts as we explore the multifaceted dimensions of Hip Hop's impact on society, music, fashion, and activism. 

Delve into thought-provoking panel discussions, captivating performances, and interactive workshops. Uncover the intricate narratives that shape the genre's past, present, and future. From breakdancing to lyricism, graffiti to social justice, this conference is a platform for understanding Hip Hop culture like never before. Don't miss out on this exhilarating opportunity at Howard University!

"Co-produced by Live Nation, Mass Appeal and Yankee Stadium, Hip-Hop 50 Live will celebrate the genre's 50th birthday in The Bronx this August."

August 11th 1973 is a historic date in the Hip Hop community & as 2023 marks 50 years of this global cultural phenomenon, tuko na form! On August 11th, UnKut Africa presents The Block Party (Hip Hop 50 Edition).

"The Hip-Hop Block Party returns to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture on Saturday, Aug. 12, 2023, celebrating the culture and music that has been originated and shaped by Black America for decades. This year’s celebration will honor 50 years of hip-hop’s artistry, innovation, and global transcendence.   

The 2023 Hip-Hop Block Party will feature multi-generational performances by some of hip-hop’s most influential DJs, artists, and cultural influencers. Attendees will also be able to participate in interactive activities, such as graffiti art, breakdancing and more. There will also be hip-hop-focused tours of NMAAHC’s renowned galleries, revealing the genre’s connection to centuries-old improvisation and social-consciousness traditions."

The fourth annual Chattanooga Hip-Hop Summit is a conference that celebrates Chattanooga Hip-Hop culture through an entrepreneurial lens and is primarily a Black-led initiative serving majority Black communities in Chattanooga and the Southeastern United States.

Our aim is to: (1) bring in industry experts to help educate local and regional artists and those in the hip-hop industry, (2) highlight the talents of our local artists, and (3) bring hip-hop to the forefront of our community as a legitimate industry or career path.

Freestyle Lab by WorldStrides is a weekend of workshops and rehearsals with 

Jude Lemfani Abaga, also known as M.I. Abaga He is a Nigerian rapper, songwriter, and music producer. He was born originally in Jos, Northern Nigeria, and released his debut album in 2008. He was the CEO of the label Chocolate City from 2015 to 2019 and then started his label in 2020 with incredible music. Before getting into the music industry, he studied in the U.S. for a while, then came back to Nigeria and got his music career launched in 2003.

“Hip-hop, as an art form, requires integrity for you to be respected.”

He has received several music awards, including the MTV Africa Music Awards and BET Awards. He is also involved in different initiatives to bring about social and political change in Nigeria; he was declared the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime Goodwill Ambassador against the smuggling of migrants in 2012. In his role, he was charged with speaking out on and drawing attention to the smuggling issue in Nigeria’s most recent election; his organization TASCK, a creative agency in the last general elections launched a campaign encouraging people to vote.

Having been in the industry for over two decades, M.I. has nuggets of wisdom to share with people in or who are eyeing the music industry. He believes that all upcoming artists should not limit themselves to one genre of music but should instead try different things to find out what they are most comfortable with.

“Every artist has to pick their point, be true to it, and make a case.”

In this episode, M.I. takes us through his music career journey. From how he got into the industry, the challenges he has encountered, how he is mentoring young talents, his experience working with other artists, to his relationship with Afrobeats. He will also enlighten us on the tension between success and integrity for artists. Where do they draw the line?

M.I. is on a mission to solve a big problem in Africa. He is working towards ensuring that creatives starting their careers don’t have to go through traumatic experiences. Through his agency, he is offering them support and infrastructure to help them build sustainable businesses for them from the onset.

Listen to learn more from MI.

“The goal is not to attempt to be perfect. The goal is to attempt  to create with integrity, trust and know, and when you get feedback that doesn’t agree, learn, and grow.”