Public Invited to Hip Hop Discussion on Framingham State Campus

Filmmaker Bryon Hurt will lead a discussion on how hip hop music affects culture on the campus of Framingham State University on Wednesday, Feb. 24. The public is invited.

After a screening of Hurt’s documentary Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes at 7 in the Dwight Performing Arts Center, the filmmaker will lead a discussion on music and culture. That is expected to start about 8:15 p.m.

Hurt, a life-long hip-hop fan, was watching rap music videos on BET when he realized that each video was nearly identical. Guys in fancy cars threw money at the camera while scantily clad women danced in the background. As he discovered how stereotypical rap videos had become, Hurt, a former college quarterback turned activist, decided to make a film about the gender politics of hip-hop, the music and the culture that he grew up with, according to PBC.org.

The result is HIP-HOP: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, a riveting documentary that tackles issues of masculinity, sexism, violence and homophobia in today’s hip-hop culture.

The film explores such pressing issues as women and violence in rap music, representations of manhood in hip-hop culture, what today’s rap lyrics reveal to their listeners and homoeroticism in hip-hop, according to PBS.

The film includes interviews with famous rappers such as Mos Def, Fat Joe, Chuck D and Jadakiss and hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons; along with commentary from Michael Eric Dyson, Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Kevin Powell and Sarah Jones and interviews with young women at Spelman College, a historically black school and one of the nation’s leading liberal arts institutions.