Mark Anthony Neal: Breaking Down Barriers in Black Academic Spaces

Duke professor, cultural critic, and author Mark Anthony Neal joins Lawrence Ross for 20 Questions on The Write Shade — and this one is a masterclass. From the South Bronx and Sunday mornings at the Apollo to the founding of hip hop studies, Neal breaks down what Black popular music teaches that formal education can't, why he wrote himself into a book about Black masculinity, and how Michael Jackson became a vessel for the entire Black performance tradition. We get into the post-soul aesthetic, being a "tweener" between the civil rights and hip hop generations, co-teaching The History of Hip Hop with 9th Wonder, the homophobia Black studies still won't fully sit with, and what the "New Black Man" he imagined in 2005 would make of hip hop in 2026. Plus: Nas vs. Jay-Z, the genius of the sample, Byron Hurt's Beyond Beats and Rhymes, and why this generation is fighting active erasure they never saw coming. Grab Mark's books through our bookshop (link supports independent Black-owned bookstores): 👉 https://bookshop.org/shop/thewriteshade 🖊 Three things you can do with a book: read it, gift it, or put it on your shelf and make folks think you're smart. Whatever you do — BUY THE BOOK. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⏱ 20 QUESTIONS — CHAPTERS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 00:00 Welcome — the Bronx, the Knicks & Mr. October 03:03 What Black popular music taught him that school couldn't 06:33 Soul Babies & where "post-soul" came from 10:16 New Black Man: writing himself into Black masculinity 17:13 Left of Black & paying tribute to Gil Noble 24:34 Co-teaching the history of hip hop with 9th Wonder 32:14 Taking Jay-Z, MJ & Beyoncé seriously as thinkers 38:13 The homophobia Black studies still won't sit with 40:39 New Black Man in Exile & the Booker B.B. Brown story 44:00 Building a home for arts & digital culture at Duke 46:13 📚 Buy the book break 47:41 Michael Jackson & the Black performance tradition 52:14 That's the Joint & the future of hip hop studies 57:03 NPR, The Root & where he can finally say the thing 1:05:18 Phi Beta Sigma, brotherhood & accountability 1:09:10 Looking for Leroy & "illegible" Black masculinities 1:15:31 Byron Hurt's Beyond Beats and Rhymes 1:18:42 What the Music Said & writing before streaming 1:23:37 The "debris" this generation is navigating: erasure 1:27:55 What the New Black Man would make of hip hop in 2026 1:33:46 One record, one book, one moment that made him ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ABOUT MARK ANTHONY NEAL ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Mark Anthony Neal is the James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of African American Studies at Duke University and served as chair of the department from 2017–2025. A South Bronx native, he is the author of What the Music Said, Soul Babies, Songs in the Key of Black Life, New Black Man, Looking for Leroy, and Black Ephemera, and co-editor of That's the Joint! The Hip-Hop Studies Reader. He is the host of the Davey Award–winning webcast Left of Black, co-taught The History of Hip Hop with Grammy-winning producer 9th Wonder, appeared in Byron Hurt's landmark documentary Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, and is a member of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc. His new book arrives this August. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ABOUT THE WRITE SHADE ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ The Write Shade is the home for Black Authors and Bold Books. Every week we sit down with the writers shaping Black literature, history, and culture — in the long-form conversations they deserve. Building the archive now so folks in the 22nd century can come back and discover how brilliant we've always been. 🔔 SUBSCRIBE so you never miss an episode: [CHANNEL LINK] 🌐 THEWRITESHADE.COM Black Authors. Bold Books. #MarkAnthonyNeal #HipHopStudies #BlackMasculinity #TheWriteShade #BlackAuthors #MichaelJackson #9thWonder #PostSoul #NewBlackMan #HipHopHistory #BlackBooks #20Questions #Duke #PhiBetaSigma #BlackScholars