“Anyone familiar with Hip Hop knows rap is considered a competitive sport. Hence, conversations about it can become as contentious as conversations about the NFL playoffs on ESPN. One only has to briefly pay attention to conversations about ‘Top 10’ lists of rappers, songs, albums, and other Hip Hop topics to understand what I mean. While I am a fan of those conversations, I don’t participate often, if at all, because while it’s mostly ‘all in fun,’ it often gets hostile, even among academics who stand firmly on their credentials in ways that sometimes ‘shut down’ other participants. Instead, I want this project to to give us opportunities to think about the impetuses for and implications of the ways we converse about Hip Hop.”
—Dr. Heidi R. Lewis from the Introduction to “F*ck All That Mumble Shit?: Discourse Analysis and Mumble Rap”