Street smarts

Noah Berger photo

01 May 2002 | Shake Shandoof, foreground, and Lahgoon Steelfingaz of the Oakland-based hip-hop group “UV Nutz” perform on lower Sproul Plaza in conjunction with last week’s conference, “Hip- Hop and Beyond,” sponsored by the Department of African American Studies.

Conceived as a dialogue between hip-hop artists and
academia, the three-day event drew on anthropology, folklore, linguistics and history to increase understanding of the popular youth culture — which spawned rap music, break dancing and other urban art — and its journey from urban America to suburbia and around the globe.