Hip Hop: A Global Lingua Franca for the Dispossessed

Of all the stories that I failed to write during my years as a journalist, one, in particular, stands out: The year was 1999. I was 34, and the Washington Post’s newly arrived foreign correspondent in South Africa. Someone had told me, almost in passing as I recall,...
If Revolution Had a Soundtrack: 50 Year’s of Hip Hop

If Revolution Had a Soundtrack: 50 Year’s of Hip Hop

As the world celebrates 50 years of hip hop, Black Owned Conversations takes the opportunity to appreciate the irony that this soaring, celestial music owes its existence to the relentless and ruinous dispossession of African Americans by the white settler...