‘Stir it up’: Hip hop scholars and/as practice-based researchers

This editorial begins with the announcement of the inaugural winners of European Hip Hop Studies Network’s Murray Forman Mixtape Award – an early career scholar award named after our friend, colleague and fellow Global Hip Hop Studies ( GHHS ) editor. Following this background, it goes on to examine the term ‘hip hop scholar’ in relation to the inherited (armchair) image of the western academic. Here, we espouse a wider reading of the word ‘scholar’ to encompass a range of modes of meaning-making, critical thinking and research extending from traditional writing-centred scholarship to creative artists, activists, educators and other practice-based researchers. The article then theorizes such ‘radical’ scholarship by linking the work of the hip hop group A Tribe Called Quest and the anti-apartheid activist, Steven Biko. The remainder of the introduction turns to summarizing the issue before concluding with a brief discussion of GHHS ’s inclusion in the important research databases Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and Scopus – a milestone for hip hop scholarship.