Versus Hip Hop on Trial Debate

Jesse Jackson, KRS-One, Q-Tip, Estelle, ?uestlove, P. J. O’Rourke, Jaron Lanier, and 14 other rappers, poets, academics and pundits came together in London on 26 June to debate the motion, ’Hip-Hop on Trial: Hip-Hop Doesn’t Enhance Society, It Degrades it’, chaired by the BBC’s Emily Maitlis, and moderated online by Jemima Khan. Presented by Intelligence Squared and Google , it was the third in their new joint debate series, Versus. The first ever global debate on hip-hop saw fierce arguments put forward by speakers who were live on stage, and also beamed into the event via Google Hangouts, a live multi-person platform.