Hi. I’m Dr. Msia Kibona Clark, an Associate Professor in the Department of African Studies and the Director of the Hip-Hop Studies minor at Howard University.

As a professor of African cultural & feminist studies, my work focuses on African cultural representations in hip hop and popular culture. My work includes over two dozen scholarly works in African cultural studies, including the text Hip-Hop in Africa: Prophets of the City & Dustyfoot Philosophers.

My work also explores African feminism’s role in cyberfeminist spaces. My 2023 book African Women in Digital Spaces: Redefining Social Movements on the Continent and in the Diaspora is a collection of poetry, essays, & scholarship on African feminist conversions around race, gender, and sexuality, co-edited with Ghanaian feminist activist and scholar Dr. Wunpini Fatimata Mohammed.

I also teach Hip Hop & Social Change in Africa at Howard University and George Washington University, as well as Black Women & Popular Culture at Howard University. My digital scholarship includes producing The Hip Hop African Blog and Podcast, as well as my work as a photographer, documenting hip hop culture.

Hip-Hop Studies

As part of a hip-hop studies committee formed at Howard University in 2019, we held our first Hip-Hop Studies conference in 2023. Our first conference celebrated 50 years of Hip-Hop. Our second conference was held in 2024. Both conferences brought together about 200 academics, students, artists, and activists for three days of presentations and performances.

Howard University launched its Hip-Hop Studies minor in 2024, becoming the second HBCU, after Morgan State University, to establish such a program. Howard’s connection to Hip-Hop dates back to 1991, when the university hosted the first academic Hip-Hop conference. Since then, Howard has remained a pivotal institution in Hip-Hop culture, celebrated for its iconic Homecomings, influential alumni in the Hip-Hop industry, and faculty dedicated to advancing the field. The new minor provides Howard students with an exciting opportunity to explore Hip-Hop through scholarship, performance, and industry engagement.

Press

 

HIP-HOP IN AFRICA CLASS

Students participating in a graffiti workshop at Words Beats & Life

 

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Recent Publications

*See CV for the complete list

Books

Kibona Clark, Msia, and Mohammed, Wunpini Fatimata (Eds). (2023). African Women in Digital Spaces: Redefining Social Movements on the Continent and in the Diaspora. Mkuki na Nyota Publishers.

Clark, Msia Kibona (2018). Hip-Hop in Africa: Prophets of the City & Dustyfoot Philosophers. Ohio University Press.

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

Clark, Msia Kibona. (2024). Vernacular Verses: Language, Identity and African Hip-Hop. Journal of African Cultural Studies, 36 (3), 343-348.

Clark, Msia Kibona. (2023). Hip Hop studies as a model for anti-imperialist research in Africa. Contemporary Journal of African Studies, 10 (2), 27-46.

Clark, Msia Kibona (2018). Feminisms in African hip hop. Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism, 17 (2), 383-400.

Book Chapters

Kibona Clark, Msia (2023). Decolonizing African Studies approaches to research on African women in Hip-Hop. In: Q. Williams and J. N. Singh (eds.) Global Hiphopography. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Kibona Clark, Msia (2023). Women, Hip Hop, and Social Discourse in South Africa. The Culture: Hip Hop & Contemporary Art in the 21st Century, 108-111. The Baltimore Museum of Art.

Essays

Kibona Clark, Msia (2021) Hip hop and Pan Africanism: from Blitz the Ambassador to Beyoncé. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/hip-hop-and-pan-africanism-from-blitz-the-ambassador-to-beyonce-151680.

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Teaching

Hip Hop and Social Change in Africa

Paco from the G Hip-Hop Center in Senegal visits the Hip Hop class
Ghanaian artist M.anifest during his visit to campus.

Black Women & Popular Culture

Social Media and Political Change in Africa & the U.S.

Students in Social Media & Political Change read Feminista Jones’ Reclaiming Our Space

Introduction to African cultural studies

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RECENT Talks & Presentations

With Nigerian producer Teck Zilla and graffiti artist Dhoro Styles at the Hip Hop cafe Rap Joint Lagos in Nigeria.

2024 July. Algorithmic Resistance: Addressing Algorithmic Representational Harm Against African Women. Digitalisation, AI and Feminist Futures Conference. Maputo, Mozambique.

2024 February. Black History Month Keynote. Hip Hop: A Shared History of Struggle and Resistance between Coloured South Africans & African Americans. Norfolk State University.

2023 June. Hip Hop, Afrobeats, and the Importance of Genre Classification. Keynote: Seminar Series “Youth on the Move”. Lagos Studies Association. University of Lagos (Nigeria).

2023 April. Hashtaging Activism: The Role of Social Media in Documenting African Women’s Organizing. Rethinking Print Culture, Media, Digital, and Oral History as Archive, Evidence, and Method. Johns Hopkins University.

2023 February. African Women in Digital Spaces: Redefining Social Movements on the Continent and in the Diaspora. Book talk roundtable at the University of Bayreuth.

2023 June. Keynote at the Lagos Studies Association conference (Nigeria)

2022 February. A John B. Slaughter Endowment Lecture: Hip Hop and the African Diaspora. The University of Maryland College Park.

October 2019. The Politics of Language in African Hip Hop. Paper presented at the African Studies Association of Africa conference at the United States International University-Africa in Nairobi, Kenya.

June 2019. Today at Apple: Hip Hop and Representation. StoryMakers Festival. Apple Carnegie Library in Washington, DC

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The Hip Hop African Blog & Podcast

This is an initiative that initially began as an in-class assignment for students in the Hip Hop in Africa course. The course is a joint course taught with students at Howard University and George Washington University, taking the course together. Students must come together in groups of two or three and select a research topic related to the course. Students are also allowed to do the project individually. After completing their research, students must record a 15-minute audio podcast.

The idea to use a publicly accessible blog as the platform that students used to engage in the research was based on a desire to cultivate an archive of information that anyone could access. It also was another platform for artists to be exposed to different audiences. Students were tasked with finding and reviewing articles, films, and artists. Thus far students have written more than 1,000 blog posts, all of which is organized by country, tagged with the names of artists featured, and categorized by theme.

The website has since gone from averaging 6,000 views in 2014, to 27,000 in 2016, and almost 88,000 in 2018. Our visitors primarily come from the U.S. and South Africa. We also receive a large number of visitors from the European Union, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania, & the UK.

The blog and the podcast were launched with the goal of taking a scholarly approach to conversations around hip hop in Africa.  On iTunes, we are ranked among the top five podcasts dealing with similar themes, specifically, African hip hop podcasts and African Studies podcasts.

The podcast has featured interviews with artists like Blitz the Ambassador (Ghana/US), M.anifest (Ghana), Modenine (Nigeria/UK), Thiat of Keur Gui (Senegal), and Yugen Blakrok (South Africa).

The Hip Hop African Blog and the Podcast are hosted at hiphopafrican.com. The Hip Hop African Podcast is also on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, & other podcast platforms.