CCGRS Speaker Series: Jay Smooth

Hip-hop scholar and cultural commentator Jay Smooth will present "Hip-Hop, Race, and Politics: The Way We Talk about Things" on Tuesday, April 12, at 5:30 p.m. in WSU's CUB Auditorium. Admission is free and open to the public, and a reception will follow the talk. Born and raised in New York with a love for hip-hop and passion for social justice, Jay Smooth started his career at WBAI radio, where in 1991 he founded New York's longest running hip-hop radio show, the Underground Railroad. In 1997 he founded one of the first hip-hop websites at hiphopmusic.com, where he pioneered the form now known as hip-hop blogging. Most recently Jay Smooth has won widespread acclaim for his commentaries on politics and culture at Illdoctrine.com. The site's unique mix of humor and incisive analysis has garnered millions of views and been frequently featured by NPR, Current TV, and MSNBC, where Rachel Maddow hailed him as a "genius." Ill Doctrine videos including "How to Tell Someone They Sound Racist" (https://youtu.be/b0Ti-gkJiXc) have become part of the curriculum in many schools and universities.