Hip-Hop's Fifth Element: Knowledge, Pedagogy, and Artist-Scholar Collaboration

The aim of this first-of-its-kind project is to critically investigate hip-hop culture's fifth element: knowledge. Founded in the 1970s in New York City, hip-hop culture consists of four core elements: DJing, emceeing, graffiti, and dance. While hip-hop culture contains other elements beyond its core, many hip-hop artists and fans worldwide understand the fifth element to be knowledge. It refers to the fact that practitioners and fans understand the importance of the history, values, and artistry of the culture beyond their own background. With roots in the Universal Zulu Nation, a quasi-religious group led by hip-hop founder Afrika Bambaataa (Chang 2005), hip-hop's fifth element includes aims of self-realisation ('knowledge of self'), empowerment, and includes information about the history of the genre and its key practitioners (Gosa 2015). Because of its emancipatory potential, hip-hop is increasingly used in schools, at universities, and in a variety of youth and community education contexts. Knowledge is therefore central to hip-hop's inner logic, global popularity, and institutionalisation.
This project wants to close a research gap in the emerging field of hip-hop studies in Europe. While the fifth element is one of the most important elements in hip-hop culture, it has a somewhat marginalised position in hip-hop studies. Most hip-hop studies research currently focuses on rap music where the fifth element is often conceptualised as an additional element to the set of four core elements. The objective of this research project is to create a new hip-hop studies theory of the fifth element.
As an original intervention into art and academia, this project promotes a collaborative, egalitarian, and participatory approach between artists, scholars, and educators in Germany and the UK. It will compare and contrast the micro-politics as well as the transatlantic and European artistic and educational discourses of the fifth element.
The project will include an artist in residence from each country who will co-create a commissioned hip-hop work that will push the boundaries of knowledge, art, and academia. In addition to creating new pieces of hip-hop and publishing a theory of the fifth element, the researchers will also provide open access teaching and learning tools for disseminating the values of hip-hop culture.