Hip-Hop in the Golden Age, Jacobs School of Music Indiana University, Bloomington

February 16–17, 2019

In honor of black history month, and in celebration of the 30th anniversary of De La Soul’s groundbreaking album 3 Feet High and Rising, Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music presents the interdisciplinary conference “Hip-Hop in the Golden Age.” Our keynote speaker will be Prince Paul (Paul Huston) of De La Soul.

Hip-hop’s golden age (ca. 1988–95) was a time of unprecedented creativity. Having crossed over into mainstream culture but not yet bound by the restrictions of major labels, rappers and producers explored seemingly limitless avenues of beat production, flow, and lyrical topics. This conference will explore any and all aspects of the golden age of hip-hop, including the historical circumstances that gave rise to it, and its impact on later artists: thus, paper presentations need not deal explicitly with hip-hop produced during that time. We envision this as an interdisciplinary conference, and welcome proposals from scholars in a variety of different disciplines, including those outside music.