Fahamu Pecoureally is the shit.

Fahamu Pecou
Image by Allison Smith
I attended the opening conversation to Pecou�s conversation series �Intersessions: Art x Hip-Hop Dialogues� this past Monday at the Woodruff Arts Center. The inaugural conversation highlights the publication of the latest issue of Art Papers magazine guest edited by Pecou about art and hip hop. 

Also the product of Pecou�s mission to reclaim the conversation between art and pop culture, �Intersessions� is an intriguing and innovative segue into longstanding discussion of �high� and �low� art. Hip Hop often exists at the crux of what is considered sophisticated and street; it�s existence registering through different social lenses of race, class, and performance. Pecou�s twitter byline is particularly aware of this negotiation: � This is Basquiat with a passion like �Pac.�

Pecou�s first guests were High Museum curator Michael Rooks and quintessential hip hop figure T.I. Aside from T.I.�s multi-faceted celebrity � rapper, actor, budding fashion icon, T.V. Dad, Tiny�s boo thang � T.I. signifies existence in the interstitial space between performance and reality that hip hop frequently treads. The series' focus on hip hop as art is especially useful for renegotiating hip hop�s departure from complex culture to "only" rap music. �Intersessions� resuscitates the discourse of hip hop as art for a generation who may be less familiar with hip hop�s other elements.

And those other elements were definitely in the building. Upon entering the theatre a live DJ greeted

me with a great mix of hip hop. Some attendees flexed their B-boy and B-girl stances in the aisle or in their seats. T.I.�s music could be heard in the mix. If the tag could be removed I�m sure graffiti art would�ve laced the walls (idea for future sessions, Fahamu?). 

As the conversation started, T.I. shared his initial experiences with hip hop through his memorization of LL Cool J lyrics and improvisation of LL Cool J�s lyrics to carve out his own hip hop identity. T.I. demonstrated hip hop as a site of knowledge and exploration of self, a critical element frequently overlooked in discussing hip hop as a cultural form. T.I.�s early childhood memories also made me think about hip hop as a form of cultural memory and how it serves recent generations of black and brown folks as a site of testimony and witnessing their life experiences. How does one use hip hop as a cultural memory in a moment where the anxieties of race, class, and art are being pulled apart in the name of postracialism? What I call that Kum Bah Yah shit? Pecou keeps this question center stage,  complicating ideas of race, place, and space through not only the literal visualization of hip hop but its more subtle manifestations in art and cultural discourse.

Art Papers Magazine Cover Jan 2014
"Fitted Crown" by Rashaad Newsome
The most striking part of the night�s conversation is how the panel approached the purpose of curating, a unifying bridge between hip hop as culture and art. Rooks� discussion of curating as a means to excavate and frame art narratives blended beautifully with the discussion of hip hop as a site of curation. The concept of hip hop curating is dope. Fab Five Freddy as an initial hip hop curator is dope. Club promoters as hip hop curators is dope. I thought about the type of hip hop curation at work in John Jennings and Stacey Robinson's mastermind art project Black Kirby. I also thought about the recent passing of Buddy Esquire, a pioneering hip hop flyer artist, and the countless unknown artists who use hip hop as a muse to record their experiences and surroundings. Folks like Esquire and Fab Five Freddy make me think about hip hop as an accessible and mobile art form: flyers outside clubs, on car windows, or, in my case, scattered on tables in my school�s Student Union Center speak to an additional requirement of hip hop�s artistic premise � mass consumption.  While the panel spoke extensively on the role of hip hop�s commercialization, I was curious to hear more about how Internet access impacts the concept of hip hop as an art form in the digital age? Does the idea of new social media compound the idea of hip hop as contemporary art? I will be on the lookout for more of Pecou�s �Open Mic� series he hosts on his Twitter account.

�Intersessions� is a great segue into these messy and complicated questions of hip hop as a cultural expression and mode of production. I�m most struck, however, by Pecou�s closing statement about the role of artists:

�Historians will tell what happened, artists will tell how it felt.�

As a scholar with research interests in (very) contemporary African American cultural expression and production,  Pecou�s statement makes me think back to DuBois�s discussion of black art as propaganda and how that extends into today�s conceptualization of black art. What is black art�s purpose in 2014? How does this purpose manifest when black art is hypercommodified and consumed within a mainstream popular space inoculated with the ideal of multiculturalism? Perhaps more importantly, what type of propaganda and memory will hip hop curate as a space of black recognition for future generations?

For folks in the A(tlanta), the next Intersessions dialogue is scheduled for March 14th with Rico Wade, one of the founding members of Organized Noize. You know I�ll be in the building.