The Intersection of Academia and Music: Laveda's Journey as a Political Scientist and Conscious Hip-Hop Artist

1. Introduction

The intersection of academia and music is an interesting and fruitful one. Similar to journalism, scientific innovations, and activism, music can tell stories of real and imagined experiences and issue opinions on topics specific to the artist or a more universal audience. Both enshrining and prompting cultural norms, music has the authority to influence and spark emotions in the listeners. Various genres have their own connotations and purpose, with several using music as a platform for socio-political activism, exploring societal ills or ethnic problems. Many students and scholars are involved in music, some of which explicitly use their academic research to inform their art. These individuals are an example of the unity of the academic and artistic spheres within one individual. Their role has the potential to challenge the neoliberal concept of the academic as uncaring about the cultural heritage and political engagement of students. However, despite this potential, very little attention has been given to those people in this academic context.

1.1. Background of Laveda: Political Scientist and Rapper

Born in Memphis Tennesse from humble beginnings, Laveda thrived through hard work and education.  In his dissertation "I am a conscious hoodrat rapper and a political scientist: is there a connection?", the scholar presented his image both as an academic (PhD researcher) and a musician (with several musical works at the time with little recognition). He gives a preview for our understanding of how this conjunction takes place by previewing an analytical approach about the connection between the academic field and the music based on hip-hop. In the article, he explains how his songs reflect the socio-political chaos of the community, since they are messages he tries to convey. In his experience, he exhibited the battle of facing the study of international relations with one's music, even in his music community. Since the environment of the topics dealt with on both sides negatively affected each other, the researchers qualified the two areas satisfactorily. The proposal is to give an overview of the interconnection that musically claims international relations questions, as well as an awareness of the musical proposal that addresses the need for social contexts, thus contributing to education.

Laveda explores the common themes between hip-hop culture and international relations, some of which touch on his experience with teaching international relations, the impact of the state and failed states on international relations, and some of the references in his music. He goes on to highlight the importance of international relations in everyday life and how one of his earlier songs, "I am Speaking," was inspired by the famous words of Kamala Harris. He contrasts his musical life with his academic life, showing how there are some commonalities and some disparities that exist when working in both environments. Some of the social problems that are exposed in his songs are racism, the death of George Floyd, and the impact of the pandemic on femicide, among others.

2. Academic Roots and Musical Inspiration

As a child, I began to be raised in a home studio. My father is a musician with the State Street House Band, who were the house band for the old Ponderosa Park. This life and world of music has been my grounding, providing the catalyst for exploring my very own career discovery as an artist. Also, being surrounded by and empathetic to the everyday human condition, I would spend the majority of my childhood in festivals or bars while my father performed on private and public stages. The music both validated our family while telling stories of his everyday experiences and the lives of others with themes of life and death, happiness and sadness, austerity and abundance, joy and love, and politics that have or have a sense of belonging to a community.

In my academic environment, there is an increasing demand for marketable professors. These are professionals who can write top-notch academic publications but also answer pop culture questions differently due to the entertainment portion of their careers. Some entertainers were becoming increasingly more involved in social and political conversations, with broad, diverse participation in the conversation. For me, combining an academic foundation with the musical atmosphere of social participation is not only reflective of my own skill set but productive for audience engagements and overall intellectual growth, shaping a world of truth and understanding through music that tells the hardships of humanity.

My journey to becoming a recording artist is rooted in both passion and timing. My education and training prepared me to tackle critical issues and prescribe policies to address social problems. My home environment continually gave me the validation that good music demands. My debut album "Deluxe/Normal" is a mix of intellectual narrative, political rants, analysis, and poignant storytelling. As I continued to mature, I increasingly noted the intersection of academia and some genres, specifically hip-hop.

2.1. Influences from Political Systems and Social Issues

Even before my formal education, from family and social institution schools, churches and mass like media, I built an understanding of the power held by the government. Although I did not have the words or concepts to completely understand what I had felt, to have been wrong, or how it could be better when wrong. After listening and reading first-hand source material, new school and old school hip-hop, Panther political messages, barbershops' political views, MTV rolling idea-ridden musical content, and the politics held behind these different voices, I developed the impetus to educate myself. I have learned that having not learned be believes holds validity gives me a reason to give back. With my formal education, education consumed more than just the classroom. I use sociology, political science, history, and language to reeducate in a way that I never knew how to discuss on my own growing up. Also, thanks to my more diverse environment, I now realize the values of spoken word and relationships gained in barbershops, MTV, and other social institutions, media.

I mentioned briefly influences that affected my political ideology, but I feel it is important to share specifics. I am a Hispanic American woman who identifies the following in both ethnicity and nationality: African, Mantense, and United States of America. I am deeply rooted in country, a drainage minority place in a band making it difficult to wax politically active for environmental injustices. You will notice I never mentioned race; that part of the problem. Race, ethnic, citizenship, or national origin injustice exist to create different quality of life, class not race.

3. Conscious Hip-Hop: A Platform for Social Commentary

Music, especially hip-hop, has gained prominence as a powerful form of entertainment that is now viewed as a conscious level of political commentary. Many intellectuals have spent countless hours analyzing hip-hop to understand how the medium functions as a tool of communication and narrative storytelling. Over the years, Laveda has taken breaks from the academic hustle to slow down with music, music as a coping mechanism, as a place of comfort, and as a way of making sense of this world. In 2010, Laveda was selected to distribute large grants of approximately $100,000 from the Azimut Vivant Foundation, set up specifically to assist the most vulnerable individuals and their families in Haiti following the devastating earthquake. Upon his return, he decided to attend a public lecture by one of his advisors, Professor Jelke Boesten. After the lecture, Laveda explained in private that he was interested in a career in the music industry. Professor Boesten suggested that he do something related to his job with Jean Luc for what he loved, instead of focusing solely on making money.

In Laveda's opinion, hip-hop is a by-product of any society that exists within a capitalist system. Unlike most artists that have long-term career-oriented goals in music, Laveda sees his conscious hip-hop as part of his role as a part-time public academic/activist in his objective to educate and raise the political consciousness of oppressed and marginalized communities. Laveda's musical journey is based on his lived experiences, especially the internalization of his relative privilege during his 1993 Bertelsmann Foundation internship at Emory University. The question that he sought to answer was "How do we as scholars use our positionality with a purpose, in a way that more closely aligns our work with our positive capabilities, focusing on the greater good for oppressed and marginalized communities?"

3.1. Defining Conscious Hip-Hop

The most conceptually simple definition is that "conscious hip-hop" is music of a particular kind which emerged in a specific political-economic context at a definitive point in time. Distinguishing musical content from the identity of artists is crucial here. A similar focus on the demonstration of "conscious" ideas through content tightly links the approach to those used in sociological and anthropological research, which investigates meanings conveyed through song lyrics, albeit in textiles often more distant historically and culturally. "Moral" accusations inevitably resulted in contestation and disagreement; some suggestions were founded in history, sociology, and theory, others not. On proposing a definition, it was then up to researchers to test their predictions and confirm whether songs were of the conscious type or not.

"Conscious hip-hop" seems to be different things to different people. Researchers have helped to clarify matters with an impressive number of variations, operationalizing approaches which range from the most simple to those built of complexity, stringency, and nuance.

4. Lyrical Analysis: Wordplay, Metaphor, and Political Commentary

For my research of this text, comparisons are heavily based on Lorenziuk and Crain's "Guess 'Who's Coming to Dinner': The Kresge Foundation and the Symbolic Co-optation of Hip-Hop Culture and Identity". The self-aggrandizing thieves steal from the magic that moves minds toward higher good—ignoring the right-hand path of true fulfillment. It is the ball scratching of a Black man-woman-son-daughter. What happens when the music is silent, the cameras in waves have washed ashore on cartoons of an outdated cultural moment, and Wild Style T-shirts worn in the closet entourage of an all-white street gang are invited to the prophet's banquet? The fire comes next—the choice of strength or submission.

Laveda incants for prevalent humility, emphasizing these feelings with a heightening flurry of thoughts designed to overwhelm listeners' conscious thoughts. We are the Rolling Stones, we endure, but at what cost? Televisions show withdrawals of White businessmen, burnt out on signifying nothing, sitting on nothing, in the black cave of their Blackberry. The genius and wisdom derived from rap music and entertainment is only appreciated by those on their way to purgatory—however much fun the journey, the self-righteous souls only conditionally share their wealth with mind, soul, and wallet on the journey far from the riverbanks.

Lyrical Analysis: Wordplay, Metaphor, and Political Commentary "Maybe I should leave the stage, get back in the kitchen, cook my role in federal cage"

With suave versatility, Laveda slides through the contrasting vibes of "Find A Way", a hearty discovery piece, and "Hard 2 Hate", a track with a stinging narrative on the burdens performance capitalism places on African Americans in this post-civil rights era. A drone-like alarm simulates a police siren. We hear the irate cry of "Put that thing on vibrate!" in the background of the belligerent production courtesy of Nahshonic. Violently, the alarm becomes serious as it combines with a strongly distorted bass line that only heaps misery on its subjugated top line. "Maybe I should leave the stage, get back in the kitchen, cook my role in federal cage" are the words Laveda touts to describe the difficult 'second job' of African American entertainers.

As a student of political science, Laveda interrogates the domestic politics of the African American community through a holistic lens. In "Parallel", S1 powers up and opens the track with politically conscious bars of which Laveda shouts out as the conspiracy theory the government doesn't want African Americans to know about. S1's passion for enlightening individuals on political matters feels like a study guide for Laveda to do the same for those en route to Black consciousness. "Struggle", the last track adds tints of Goodie Mob to the Dungeon Family concoction. Even with poetic metaphor and tongue-twisting lyricism, "Struggle" seems to rely more on contemporary lyricism as opposed to the highly 'scholarly' content listed in "Parallel" and "Home Study".

4.1. Themes and Motifs in Laveda's Lyrics

Laveda does not specify a sole responsibility of his music’s cultural weight to the state; rather, it is the state that moves his and gets his to start telling any story at all. In other words, the state "sets the narrative," and Laveda wants to tell similar stories about his place in his home life. We see historical rhyming throughout his music, deliberately telling the world that she’s coming in the vein of conscious rappers of the past. He also tells that he is a student, cherishing knowledge, and putting herself as a one-time student saying "I ain’t in the game."

Laveda does not just tell "a" story with his primarily lyrical content, but rather several—both equally energized—laid on top of each other. Such content weaves and links various themes and motifs. As an example, Laveda will tell one story in which he plays his part as a conscious rapper entirely through a series of historical-keeping rhymes; however, it is rhythm and storytelling that tie it to the story of the state, highlighted further through rhyme on occasion.

The "state" and "people" two perspectives in conscious hip-hop, such as "state" and "people," are presented throughout sections of his music; Laveda sings in the voice of the state system (self-reflection and criticism) and alternatively in the voice of marginalized citizens. Such narratives align with those studied by conscious hip-hop scholars such as political historians and hip-hop scholars.

This section examines the types of themes and motifs identified in the lyrical contents of Laveda’s music. The lyrical themes and motifs of conscious hip-hop, according to political historians, can include topics such as identity, race, social oppression, and social justice. The lyricism of Laveda’s music contrasts two narratives: the state and the people. The state narrative reflects messages and perspectives of a state system, including self-reflection and criticism. Conversely, the people narrative reflects messages and perspectives of working-class African-Americans attending a state system.

Laveda’s music is characterized by its rich, stylized storytelling with images and messages that interweave political, historical, and interpersonal perspectives. Most of Laveda’s music provides two narrative perspectives: that of the state and that of the people. The lyrics also offer rhymes, questions, riddles, and memories that are remarkable in their delivery.

5. Impact and Influence: Advocacy through Music

For generations, hip-hop has been a creative space filling in the gaps where public policy has failed marginalized peoples as an embodied resource grounded in building resilience. Anti-feminist policy responses to Afro-Caribbean sovereignty were added to the list of reasons why a conversation centered around female activism, storytelling, and artistic expression was necessary for continued sovereignty. In 2017, I self-financed a delegation-recording trip to Puerto Rico, the first musical stop in my dissertation project on which the latest single, "Jesus Is A Smoove Psycho and the 400," was initially conceived and brought into being. This song poses a grounding policy question about how women, often brought into politics because of familial political legacies, make policy decisions around reproductive justice after they are elected to office. The song reveals how a lack of empathy for racial newcomers shapes how Caribbean female lawmakers work to address the public health crisis that is reproductive justice inequality for their constituents overseeing residence. The fact that an audience can gather all that information in five minutes and 10 seconds is magical. And when the song goes viral for a few weeks, our politics and the message it conveys actually become a part of popular culture.

As a political scientist specializing in Black immigrant activism, intersectionality, and regenerative organizing, I have increasingly grown committed to a career path that weaves my passions for research, teaching, mentorship, and social change. My commitment to disrupting academia and re-imagining a political science pipeline that is more inclusive and focused on liberation recently led me to start graduate school at Brown University. And when I am not doing all things academia, I care about leveling the playing field around health justice for Black folks and immigrants and do that through mentorship at A Call to Men. These days, my research project is about documenting the resilience of female Afro-Caribbean hip-hop artists as political actors who deploy the genre to address gendered violence and promote feminist policy initiatives. Hip-hop has long fascinated me as an academic, and conscious hip-hop energizes me as an artist because of the ability to articulate powerful messaging in both realms. The full creative process has always been an outlet to assimilate the day's context as a political being into something that sparks conversation and change, but it's not until I fully explored academia that I understood my purpose in it.

5.1. Promoting Social Justice, Equality, and Political Awareness

Social justice-focused opinion can also come from those who might not want to do it, but recognize that they have to. Reflecting upon the major U.S. labels' youth-targeted acts, African American lawyer and music executive David Banner explains why artists such as Laveda did pay attention to the hard work of their more political musical contemporaries. While artists and executives who would prefer glamorous interpretations are coming off like Bob Marley, you know what I'm saying? They're coming off both like Bob Marley and Sean Paul and then they come back and want to do this fake 'conscious' record. It's a battle in hip hop, and these kids smell bullshit. They remember the stuff you did ten years ago, and now you wanna come talk about 'I'm peddling the cause of the Black community' and it's like, wake up. With conscious material, the southern-focused Lil Jon also suggests that, due to their work, players become conscious and familiar with the strings by which the country and society are controlled - resonating with hip-hop's consistent and adamant claims to political knowledge.

If you have a political scientist in power with a dope beat - that's a sure-fire means by which people are going to get knowledge. Many perspectives are examined in "Passing Me By," but in particular, Ice Cube returns to themes that dominate the second album, Death Certificate: youth culture and socio-political consciousness-raising within the dense California soundscape. Other notable theorists and critics align conscious material with humanized politics, driven by concepts of affinity, accessibility, accountability, and choice. As Torres explains, closely associated with such political consciousness-raising, conscious hip hop "serves to question pop culture and mainstream American society."