World Up

As the regular readers know, a large part of what World Up tries to focus our attention to is the academic side of this globalization of Hip Hop culture and how people from around the world are taking this music and “lifestyle” they grew up with and remixing it within their own cultural context. We’ve written a lot on M.I.A. in the past, mostly because she is one of the only artists who has embraced all of this and crossed over into the mainstream and amazingly not just hip hop but she has very much crossed over into pop and dance scenes as well. And while, like anyone else, she has her detractors, we feel she is a wonderful example of all the things we find fascinating and important about this globalization.
That being said, we were delighted to find this in our inbox today. The 2nd part of a a fascinating article from a recent blog discovery, The Pedagogy of Hip Hop, please take a minute and check it out here. http://thepedagogyofhiphop.com/?p=296
It delves deeper into MIA, her song Paper Planes, and the new 3rd World Order she represents.

In addition, we would like to big up The Pedagogy of Hip Hop Blog. Its a perfect example of what World Up is about and the line of thinking in which we like to explore (yes, we also just love good music and writing about that) using Hip Hop as a jump-off to look at/contextualize globalization. Hip Hop is a broad theme we see tying together things like social entrepreneurship, education and social media, graffiti and street art movements, extreme soccer and breakdancing, Angolan Kuduro music and Mongolian Hip Hop…..but at the root of it Hip Hop is about pushing urban culture forward, breaking barriers and status quo, creating something out of nothing and most importantly the rhythm of a modern heartbeat.