Properly Compensating Artists in Academic Hip Hop Research

Abstract

<p>Who are hip hop scholars writing for, and how can they write in ways that benefit both artists and their readership? The structure of academia limits the ethical production of knowledge to the elite few who have attained university funding or who have external funding. For instance, independent scholars/practitioners do not have access to the level of funding that tenure-track professors have. Audience access to academic work is likewise restricted to those who can get behind a paywall. In this chapter, I discuss how traditional academic funding models prevent ethical research, why collaborative approaches are preferable and require adequate funding, and how this affects hip hop studies specifically. Finally, I outline some potential interim solutions, with a clarion call for further work in this area.</p>