“ ’ Jackin ’ for Beats ’ ” : DJing for Citation Critique

A challenge in teaching English composition is helping students envision plagiarism as “borrowing” – showing love to author(s) and/or text(s) that further their argument(s), versus “stealing” – biting someone’s style and words. Alastair Pennycook (1996) and Sarah Wakefield (2006) have contributed pieces to the elaborate plagiarism/citation puzzle, while Houston Baker situated the hip-hop DJ in seminal text Black Studies, Rap and the Academy (1993). Merging these moments introduces critical questions: Did Diddy invent “the remix” or become the illest beat-biter ever? How did DJ/Producers Pete Rock and Large Professor pay homage to previous musical genres to further hip-hop remix production without just taking 4-8 bar samples, copying sources and claiming unethical ownership? And how can this discussion provide students a window into citation conversations? This article will remix these “texts” to introduce the idea of DJ Rhetoric to discuss plagiarism. Through the lens of the hip-hop DJ in writing classrooms, one can foster an appreciation of the difference between “love and theft” in student citation. This article will couple examples from hip-hop music/culture while simultaneously remixing interviews from various hip-hop DJ/producers to help answer these difficult questions.

At that point, I couldn't deny there was something in the air, a funny type of cool breeze blowin' through the trees that forced me to focus on the fact that this sound was in the air.It was clear to me that somebody was bitin' my sun's style and tryin' to pass it off as his or her own… ah, the foulness of it all.Somewhere along the line, people straight forgot that classic Masta Ace line from that classic posse cut entitled "The Symphony" (which, of course, appeared on the legendary DJ Marley Marl's album In Control: Volume 1): "I project my voice so it's right in the crowd/ There's a sign at the door: 'No Bitin' Allowed!'/And if you didn't read it, I suggest you do so/ or you'll be stranded, just like Caruso/ Sleep if ya wanna, ga'head, get some shut-eye/ A man broke his jaw tryin' to say what I/ say on the microphone/ you shoulda left it alone/ just for the record, let it be known" (Masta Ace).It only makes me think about the ways in which originality and borrowing have changed based on technology, the Internet and a whole slew of other forces.Masta Ace stated it clearly in 1988.Twenty-five years later, it seems the game done gon' and changed, word.So I sat down to catch it before the wind flipped New England, and started to blow in another way -a different direction, density and temperature.
The Source…"that sound comes from somewhere…" In 2013, the wind in the academic air blows a chilly breeze entitled "plagiarism."Flip through any College Handbook and you're quick to find the "Statement of Academic Honesty and Integrity"; it starts in the handbook, appears on just about every forthcoming syllabus (especially in English classes), and becomes more complicated as the idea of "text" jumps off the page and into 21 st century Internet and online spaces.For students, this idea is complicated by notions of "summary", "paraphrasing" and "citation" as well as "cut", "copy" and "paste."It seems that students have a blurred and complicated perception of what scholarly research looks like in academia.Scholars like Laura J. Davies, Bill Marsh, Dominic A. Sisti and numerous others continue to push the research and the conversation in regards to the plagiarism debate, and more specifically, how to address and curtail the infamous epidemic.With this conversation in mind, the concept of this article, "DJing for Citation Critique", stems from a few sources.First and foremost, it is important to understand that the history of hip-hop sampling has been referred to throughout various academic texts as a borrowing, a new type of new media composition that is constantly working in the vein of archiving, quoting and citing -paying homage to all those "sources" that come before it and through it.
Alongside the research that positions Hip Hop sampling as a textual borrowing, a second contextual framework guides my concept of DJing-for-Citation-Critique.This framework emanates from Sarah Wakefield's article entitled "Using Music Sampling to Teach Research Skills", in which she explains that "music sampling provides a metaphor for skillful incorporation of quotations… discussing, or better yet, playing a sampled song demonstrates to the class how quoted research should be used.The outside material ought to enhance their statements and arguments, flowing smoothly rather than standing out" (358-359).Wakefield is able to begin a student-centered conversation by highlighting the example of P. Diddy and his choices in sampling throughout his music career.The third piece of this conceptual framework sits with Alastair Pennycook's work dealing with plagiarism, its connections to Western ideologies with regards to composing and the relationship between authorship, ownership and knowledge.In his essay entitled "Borrowing Others' Words: Text, Ownership, Memory, and Plagiarism", he promotes an alternative view of intertextuality over the archaic black-and-white term called "plagiarism".Pennycook presents an interesting situation in terms of P academic citation with a layered quote where he reads an essay by Morgan citing Ann Raimes who quotes Giroux.When he read the Raimes piece, he sees that Raimes claims she is citing Faigley, who is citing Giroux.When he finds the Faigley source, he sees that Faigley seems to be paraphrasing Giroux; what becomes interesting in this conundrum is when he finds the actual Giroux text as referenced by Faigley in his bibliography: the phrase 'theoretical depth and methodological refinement' does not appear in the Giroux book on the page that Faigley references: (or at least in the copy I looked at).And so, as these words and ideas circulate around the academic community, it becomes unclear quite what their origins are.And does it matter?... within contemporary academic writing practices, with layers of citations, e-mail, cutting and pasting, and so on, the adherence to supposed norms of authoriality are becoming increasingly hazy.(Pennycook 216) This moment clearly demonstrates a necessity for envisioning texts and citation methods in ways that model an everchanging landscape in English Studies, specifically how we as practitioners approach citation with regards to the 21 st century new media writer.Simply put, technology has changed the outlook on citation and paraphrasing; how do we as English scholars begin to help our students envision this issue in a different way -one that reflects the newly-arrived advent of digital technology and cyberspace that complicate the former parameters of the teaching of writing?
Based on the intersection of these three conceptual frameworks, the aim of this article is to explore new ways to frame citation, quoting and plagiarism─ all of which can impact English composition classrooms─ by exposing us to the utilization and critique of the sampling in which Hip Hop DJs engage.This exposure can, at once, foster a new type of conversation, one that jettisons some of the archaic constraints of plagiarism as a "black and white" phenomenon, but it can also lay part of the groundwork for constructing key elements of DJ Rhetoric and Literacy.What Pennycook so eloquently demonstrates is an idea that appears in the movie "The Pursuit of Happyness".In the film, the protagonist, Chris Gardner (Will Smith), says how in the Declaration of Independence, "Thomas Jefferson calls the English 'the disturbers of our harmony.'"It interestingly demonstrates Pennycook's theories on plagiarism: a Western ideology that constrains, constricts and inhibits students' abilities to find their own voice in writing, as "plagiarism" becomes the disturber of their writing harmonies.With these layered concepts in mind, this article samples these three conceptual frameworks, using Pennycook to further Wakefield's conversation about research skills and Hip Hop sampling.
Since it has been further documented that the Hip Hop DJ has been at the historical forefront and burgeoning of hip-hop sampling, this writing theoretically functions similar to how the Hip Hop DJ both utilizes and critiques sampling.DJ Rhetoric and Literacy through the lens of the Hip Hop DJ allows us to look at this quandary in a different and innovative way.Pennycook's idea of transgressive versus non-transgressive intertextuality has been quite the radical challenge to literature and composition scholars stuck in the engendered and traditional ideologies of plagiarism.
However, this complex and organic understanding of intertextuality has been fully manipulated and exploited by the Hip Hop DJ, especially in the categorizing of music with three rhetorical terms: "biters", "jackers" and finally, "transformers".Because the central argument of this article revolves around these three fluid categories, it is evident that the Hip Hop DJ's lens promotes Pennycook's understanding of intertextuality in 21 st century literacies in ways that the 20 th century notion of plagiarism simply does not and will not work.Complicating the black-and-white of plagiarism to open up a conversation within the new media technologies' creation of the gray areas presents a more fruitful understanding of citation, paraphrasing and quoting for a community of writers.So in order to do this, we need to do a litle work─take this upcoming section as a sample of the samplings.

Lemme find it: ". . . the OFFICIAL 'DITC' Session (Do you REALLY know about that . . . (?)"
In order to begin, the first thing that must be done is to recognize sampling as a viable means of composition.A quick tour through contemporary academic works will bring us to some important scholars who have already defined the sample.So instead of re-creating the wheel, I will simply sample them.
In his 1991 article "The Fine Art of Rap", Richard Shusterman forges through a quite convincing (and witty) argument positioning an emerging rap music not only as a powerful postmodern form of cultural poetry (with its roots deeply planted in a African-American underclass), but also as fine art.When identifying the role of the Hip Hop DJ in the section "Appropriative Sampling", he shows an early understanding of how "the music derives from selecting and combining parts of prerecorded songs to produce a 'new' soundtrack.This soundtrack, produced by the DJ on a multiple turntable, constitutes the musical background for the rap lyrics [which] in turn are frequently devoted… to praising the DJ's inimitable virtuosity in sampling and synthesizing the appropriated music" (Shusterman 614).Two years later in his seminal text, Black Studies, Rap and the Academy, Houston Baker not only works toward defining the Hip Hop sample, but also clearly places the Hip Hop DJ in the center of that discourse.Baker shows how Hip Hop DJs would abandon any particular song if they felt that only 20 or so seconds contained the worthwhile music.So with two turntables, two copies of the same record, and some really quick hands, Hip Hop DJs began to sample, or loop, that 20 second beat live.As the technology grew, so did the sampling technique, which included various soundbites and riffs, which demonstrated a unique type of archiving and referencing: The result was an indefinitely extendable, varied, reflexively signifying hip-hop sonicsindeed, a deft sounding of postmodernism.The techniques of rap were not simply ones of selective extension and modification.They also included massive archiving.Black sound (African drums, bebop melodies, James Brown shouts, jazz improvs, Ellington riffs, blues innuendos, doo-wop croons, reggae words, calypso rhythms) were gathered into a reservoir of threads that DJs wove into intriguing tapestries of anxiety and influence.A year later, Andrew Bartlett helps to flesh out the definition of sampling, labeling it as a new form of digital collaboration that entails a dialogue between various pieces of musical soundbites and representations that become overlayed to create a sole 'text': "Sampling in hip hop is not collaboration in any familiar sense of that term.It is a high-tech and highly selective archiving, bringing into dialogue by virtue of even the most slight representation... with digital sampling, expropriated material is (often minutely and momentarily) recognizable, yet placed so that it often sounds radically anomalous, especially when the sampled material is overlapped or layered" (Bartlett 647-650).
Jeff Rice brings us full circle to a more contemporary definition of sampling, as the "hip-hop process of saving snippets of prerecorded music and sound into a computer memory.These sounds become cut from their original source and pasted into a new composition" (Rice 454).These sources can be vast: from music, TV shows, speeches, and even video games, all of which are used methodologically to construct a new work based on recontextualized sources or citations (Rice 458).
The critical point that Rice later presents that deserves our attention is in his book The Rhetoric of Cool, where in the chapter "Appropriation", he states:

The mere mention of sampling as a research method tells me to explore hip-hop's usage of digital sampling (inspired by the role DJs play in hip-hop) in order to learn more about how this practice informs rhetoric . . . crying plagiarism has done little to teach writing how appropriation works for various purposes . . . to cry theft is to refuse to recognize the mix's role in new mediabased expression and how that role may destabilize rhetorical and pedagogical expectations …to teach the mix through appropriation, we have to reject the disciplinary fixation on theft (represented in the general fear of plagiarism─
whether that fear is posed as an economic one or a pedagogical one) and recognize that appropriation as mix signifies more than just borrowing texts…we become as mixed and appropriated as the compositions we write.With this in mind, sampling not only functions as a worthy source of information for composing, but it also lends to a transactional practice, a back and forth interplay between sampling as "text constructing" and the identity of the Hip Hop DJ who "mixes", writes or constructs that text.There is a lineage in the formation of the sampled text; that sonic "text" thus stands as a testament of the musical influences that both precede it and live with it contemporarily.As a form of "new media-based expression", the intricacies of 21 st century understanding of the sample cannot be useful in a 20 th century context called plagiarism.Rice shows how this lending and borrowing of texts in the sample can be a critical location for students to see intertextuality at work.Finally, after allowing the academic definitions, I took it to the source to make sure I included the culture I am writing about: Hip Hop.So I called my man Mr.Len: Hip Hop DJ and producer whose worked with Hip Hop artists from Company Flow (as a founding member and DJ) to Jean Grae, Prince Paul to Pharaoh Monch and countless others.When I told Len I was writing this article, we went into one of many frequent extensive conversations about the Hip Hop DJ and sampling.Len put it simply: "Yeah mayn─the DJ was the one who sampled WAY before the producer.That comes from Kool Herc.The true hip-hop DJs sampled based on the name 'DJ'─ cuz they Jockeyed the Disc and rode the beat.They would ride that two or three second riff, and stretched it into minutes . . .live!" What all of these academic and DJ scholars do is not only help us understand the idea of the sample, but place the Hip Hop DJ at the forefront of sampling origins and conversations as a new type of "composer".They also push us towards looking at sampling as a creative way to engage students in the process of composing.What we find in all these texts is the sample being used as re-creation towards the aim of composing but also archiving─the types of quotation and citation sourcing we ask our composition students to do in their writing.These scholars also highlight the importance of the advent of the sample as composition, and with that, Hip Hop culture and pedagogy's "whatever" mentality, that bumps back against a sometimes oppressive and outdated academy that sees composing and writing in simple "black and white" terms: "mainly -either you write it OUR way or it's wrong…you wrote it yourself, or you had to steal it, and NOW you in trouble sun!!!" Second, we must recognize that just as sampling comes to the table with a rich legacy, so too do the roots of Pennycook's understanding of transgressive versus nontransgressive intertextuality.Around the same time the landscape is being established for the Hip Hop sample, there's another set of records playing from another set of crates in relation to the Hip Hop DJ's "citation critique" contextual framework.Pennycook's notion of intertextuality extends from a movement in recontextualizing, reinterpreting and re-envisioning plagiarism; throughout the 1990's, the scholar who avidly carried this torch was Rebecca Moore Howard.Her overwhelming concern involves reconsidering and revising the notion of the word "plagiarism": from probing students' intentions when deliberating over the individual cases of "patchwriting as academic dishonesty" to completely abandoning the word "plagiarism" because of its negatively engendered and punitive etymology.

What all of these academic and DJ scholars do is not only help us understand the idea of the sample, but place the Hip Hop DJ at the forefront of sampling origins and conversations as a new type of "composer".
In her article "Sexuality, Textuality: the Cultural Work of Plagiarism", Howard lays out a comprehensive history on the legacy of the word (and all that travels with it): "[Plagiarism] is derived from the Latin term for kidnapping, a term whose meaning the Roman poet Martial extended to include not only the stealing of slaves but also textual appropriation" (Howard 479).Howard also illuminates the argument that given the engendered and negatively marred term "plagiarism", along with all its historical and cultural metaphors, meanings and connotations, requires us more so to abandon the term than to actually try to reconfigure its etymology: Gender, weakness, collaboration, disease, adultery, rape, heterosexuality, and property: This whole set of metaphors and associations lies behind every utterance of the word plagiarism, rendering fruitless our pedagogical efforts to teach useful textual strategies and to adjudicate this plagiarism thing…the term plagiarism, denoting a heterogeneous variety of textual activities, is doing cultural work that few of us would deliberately endorse.But notwithstanding attempts (my own included) to redefine that category, as long as the term marks any sort of academic activities, rules, or events, it will continue to do the distasteful, hierarchical work that its metaphors describe, even if some of us eschew or reject those metaphors.With this in mind, plagiarism throughout the academy becomes a difficult term to define, an err-filled concept to unilaterally universalize across a disciplinary committee that handles such cases, and an ideal that simply cannot be "washed clean and worn again"; Moore clearly advocates for an extensive "spring cleaning" and a new wardrobe in addressing the concept of "plagiarism".
After cementing her argument in regards to plagiarism, Howard moves forward by offering solutions that might jumpstart the conversation for writers, scholars, English Studies, and the academy at large.She constructs a working draft for a new "academic honesty" collegiate policy (see "Plagiarism, Authorships, and the Academic Death Penalty"), taking into account student motives in cases that could involve various degrees of plagiarism that remove the negative and highly engendered stigma placed on the word.In this document, she deciphers potential student decisions in patchwriting (a source of inquiry for Pennycook in describing certain aspects of intertextuality).As well, Howard writes intertextually─using the scholars from various writing disciplines that have come both before and with her (thus, "a sample of the samplings")─to construct a comprehensive argument for viewing the word "plagiarism" with all its negative metaphors and engendered binary attitudes, and why the prevalent discussion of the word is a Western ideological contortion that should be done away with completely.
Howard introduces a new framework for intellectual and pedagogical conversation in regards to what is necessary in the 21 st century for an emerging set of student writers based on all that has come before and through this necessary shift; detailing the large circumference of landscape, spanning over three centuries, involved with an academic and literary conversation on plagiarism becomes Pennycook's intellectual playground in his attempts to set the boundaries on the field where intertextuality can breathe and play.Essentially, the product of her sampling of plagiarism blazes trails for Pennycook's intertextuality sounds.
Because these scholars have advocated for a different view of composing, it makes sense that this leads us to Pennycook's analysis, which requires us to complicate mere "plagiarism" with the idea of intertextuality, where the connection between texts, authorship and knowledge are continuously writing and re-writing each other.The issue is not as simple as "stealing" and theft, but instead, degrees of recycled thoughts and writing to the point where the intertextuality becomes "transgressive"─ a violation of the one and/or many sources that may have contributed to the words, ideas or composition a student may present as his or her own.We now have a sense of the source of our So approaching this conversation with the Hip Hop DJ's perspective of "biters", "jackers" and "transformers" in mind, Pennycook's notion of intertextuality can help us to further the conversation that Wakefield presents.While she gives her students more extensive examples of P. Diddy and Vanilla Ice, this writing utilizes the philosophies of the Hip Hop DJ to add on and continue a deeper conversation.So instead of Diddy being labeled by students as an artist using "too many samples", DJ rhetoric would speak to this situation by presenting three categories for Diddy's work: Diddy as "biter", "jacker" and finally, as "transformer."After all, it is DJ rhetoric that would speak to the ways in which the practices, modes, methods and cultural critiques of Hip Hop music get defined and classified.Thus, the idea of "biters", "jackers" and "transformers" comes from a categorization the DJ has traditionally made in commenting on and critiquing music.
"Biters" would be considered artists who simply take a loop, disregarding the context the loop comes from and potentially creating a composition that goes completely against the grain of what the original source represents.For example, walking on a crowded college campus, a student named Murv stops me and says, "Hey-that's a cool t-shirt!Where did you get it?"I tell the student, "I got it from a website: www.dontbitemystyle.net─check it out!"A week later, Murv is seen by Lillith wearing an IDENTITICAL t-shirt.When Lillith asks Murv, "hey-that's a cool t-shirt!Where'd you get it?"Murv's response is "Secret styles…I got it from a undisclosed location I found myself and I ain't tellin' you about it!"Murv has officially become a "biter."He is similar to the DJ who seemed to have snatched up Mr.Len's APT set at the novel launch party.Wakefield presents an excellent example of chief biter #1 -Vanilla Ice.In her conversation with students, she states "Vanilla Ice, whose 'Ice Ice Baby' includes an obvious backbeat from 'Under Pressure' (Queen/David Bowie) and who denied the similarity, also fits into a lesson where the instructor wants to discourage overreliance on quotation and promote honesty in research" (Wakefield 359).While Wakefield does a good job in highlighting this moment, another aspect of Vanilla Ice that is not present in her work is Ice's complete disregard of the original source in his actual "writing"─as the only time Vanilla Ice was probably "under pressure" was when he denied the sample AND when Suge Knight held him off the hotel balcony by his ankles . . .but alas, I digress.Wakefield's example shows how it is important to reference and cite properly.This can be best described by Pennycook's examination of "transgressive intertextuality" because of Ice's direct refusal of his original source.
The next category includes "jackers", who can be seen as borrowers or sharers: someone who lifts directly, but is sharing, so never denying where that piece of writing came from.For example, walking through a crowded college campus, I am stopped by Herbie, who says, "Hey manthat's an dope t-shirt!Where'd you get it?"I respond to Herbie with, "a website called www.dontbitemystyle.netyoushould check it out!"A week later, Herbie -wearing the same t-shirt in a different color -is approached by Murv.When Murv (our resident "biter") asks, "yo man, where'd you get that t-shirt from?"Herbie is quick to say "I got it from this website, www.dontbitemystyle.net.This dude I met last week put me onto it.You should check it out."While Herbie may have the same t-shirt in a different color, he doesn't deny the source of his knowledge in regards to the website, or who told him about it."Jackin'" is a concept originally introduced by Ice Cube in his 1990's EP "Kill at Will" on a song called "Jackin' for Beats."The first line of the song: "Gimme that beat fool!/ It's a fulltime jack-move!"(Cube), clearly relates to Pennycook's notion of institutional resistance that students can possibly present in their intertextual writing.This song is an intertextual composition, as Cube rocks over various beats that at the time were hot on the Hip Hop music radar.This idea in practice dates back to DJ Kool Herc and his Caribbean influences.So this process actually demonstrates the vast legacy that Hip Hop has in terms of its musical/cultural roots.Sharing comes from the Jamaica dancehall dub plate and "riddim" mentality, where various dancehall artists share the same beat to create multiple songs.The contemporary example for Hip Hop now would be mixtape culture, which is dominated by "freestyles"─artists rhyming on other artist's beats.
Here, I present three useful examples to help students see both sides of the coin.After sampling from the Isley Brothers' "Between the Sheets", Jay-Z's song entitled "Ignorant Shit" with Beanie Siegel features verses by Jay-Z, who later in the song introduces Beanie Siegel.Two years later, Drake and Lil' Wayne borrow and share from Jay-Z, with a song called "Ignant Shit".This coupling demonstrates Pennycook's intertextuality.Drake borrows the musical composition in the form of the beat, but also shares by referencing Jay-Z at the beginning of the song, by using a very similar conversation in the intro to evoke the original song recorded by Jay-Z and Beans, as well as the actual song structure, where Drake's long verse ends with him introducing Wayne for another long verse (identical to Jay and Beanie).Here, borrowing and sharing differs from biting because the latter source references its predecessor.So Drake makes no discursive and/or rhetorical moves to deny Jay-Z and Beanie Siegel's version of the song; instead, he demonstrates his scholarly prowess in understanding both Hip Hop music and lyricism.So while Drake and Wayne evoke the original, they are able to push the sonic "text" further with their written compositions (which pay homage to those which came before it), but also conceptually, changing the title to "Ignant Shit" to reflect a new persona in regards to music, language and locale.This is a critical staking-holding moment in Hip Hop's cultural economy."Jackin'" gone well is a chess move: an intricate demonstration of a song's importance to the culture, thus an acute persona in regards to the history of hip-hop culture."Jackin'" gone wrong is a nightmare: it is based on a checkers-like strategy, which could influence an artist's perception of being knowledgeable and credibility in understanding (or overstanding, depending on how you envision this concept) both the music and culture . . . in hip-hop culture, it leads one to the unwanted category described previously.
While Wakefield presents Diddy and his infamous "this is the remix…take dat, take dat, take dat…that's right!" movement, a more complex example that takes place before Diddy is MC Hammer, with his song "U Can't Touch This", which includes a loop from Rick James' classic soul song "Superfreak".On the one hand, there is CLEARLY a complete difference between Hammer's emcee composition and that of Rick James.One would think, to be blunt, that the Superfreak is indeed touchable.As well, Hammer actually thanks God in a composition where Rick James discusses very unholy topics in his text.However, MC Hammer complicates this idea, as he has credited Rick James as a co-writer of this composition.This example highlights the fine line between "biting" and "jacking" that can be used in student-centered conversations to illustrate HONDA .PHOTO BY CARLOS REC MCBRIDE the delicate line between transgressive and nontransgressive intertextuality.
Another, and even more complicated example of jacking can be pulled from popular culture's shunning of a Hip Hop citation.In the recent Nike commercial series with Lebron James entitled "MVPuppets", the Lebron puppet is shown in the barbershop with his teammate Ilgauskas.While they go through a complicated handshake, the song that plays in the background is "The Message" by Cymande: the original source sampled by Masta Ace in his song "Me and the Biz".While Nike is working intertextually, sharing this visual concept from their 1996 commercials for the Anfernee "Penny" Hardaway sneaker campaign, this work was done after Masta Ace shot his video for "Me and the Biz" in 1990: a song where Masta Ace acts as if Biz Markie is on the song, but he is doing a voice mimicking his fellow Juice Crew rapper.In the video, Ace is seen with a Biz Markie puppet, that he works as a ventriliquist.While Nike seems to be borrowing and sharing from themselves, when they use the Cymande song and re-use the puppet concept, they inadvertently evoke Masta Ace, but never reference Ace at all, neither with the Penny nor the Lebron campaigns.While this example demonstrates an "unwriting" of a hip-hop musical legacy in the sense of leaving Masta Ace out of the conversation, it is a fruitful location, and an interesting dynamic to begin a studentcentered conversation about the outcome of instances where borrowing and sharing work towards citation, or even malfunction.This example shows a collective memory that does not cite a source and instead writes that source out of a collective history for a population that has for years been a demographic that has kept Nike afloat: the Hip Hop community.Is it sharing?Intertextual transgression?I leave that answer to you and your students in the classroom.
The last category is "transforming".This is a moment where intertextuality works at its best: it lends the writer a new voice through a creative usage of ideas and texts that precede it.The transformative category of sampling within Hip Hop is shown when artists are not only borrowing or sharing, but when they are able to use that intertextuality to transform the initial text of a song in order to create a completely new work, while still archiving and referencing the ideas which they originally were cited from.It is a transactional process, where the borrowing or sharing leads to fresh, innovative and creative ways to express a similar idea from the sample that preceded it.So walking through the crowded college campus, I am stopped by Shawn, who says "Nice Tee my dude!Where'd you git that?"Of course, my response is "www.dontbitemystyle.net─youshould check it out."A week later, Murv stops Shawn because he has on a completely different t-shirt that Murv's never seen.So when Murv─resident biter─asks Shawn the infamous question, Shawn gives a unique answer: "I saw this dude who had a No Mas t-shirt on, told me he got it from dontbitemystyle.net.So I went to the website, and they had all sorts of fly gear.So I bought this one, cuz it was different.I haven't seen anyone wit' this one yet!"Shawn's answer epitomizes "transforming."While "jackin' as sharing/borrowing" might use a concept to further a new textual conversation, "transforming" becomes an evolution of the text, an evolution that students should strive towards in their journey between citing various resources and finding their own voice.An example of this is the Snoop Dogg remix of "I Wanna Rock" featuring Jay-Z.This song originally begins borrowing or sharing the introduction of the Rob Base song "It Takes Two."It is a small form of borrowing; however, in Jay-Z's opening verse, he specifically references Rob Base's flow from the original song.Jay's actions represent and demonstrate the act of archiving while also re-creating to present a new type of writing that both highlights the author's new ideas while also archiving the original source from which it is borrowed.
Another intricate example of this work on a global level is Prince Paul's album Prince among Thieves.When I asked Prince Paul about this album, he described it as a intertextual process: "When I sat [down to write], I wanted to parody every wild movie, or black movie or every movie I've ever seen, and I put in my own thoughts as I wrote it" (Prince Paul).So in writing the screenplay for this album, Paul shows that this album is not only a text, but also a transformative process that shows the intricacies of citing.In this story of Tarik (an aspiring rapper), Tarik uses the Big Daddy Kane "Young, Gifted and Black" instrumental for his demo, which he is presenting to be signed to Wu-Tang's record label.The conversation between Tarik and his best friend Tru starts off with Tru saying, "Yo didn't Kane use that?"Tarik responds with "Yeah, but he didn't flip it like this tho…" Not only does Paul use the beat and reference Kane, but Kane also appears later as a character in the story the album tells.He also transforms "Steady Mobbin" from Ice Cube's Death Certificate album for a song called "Steady Slobbin".What makes this album significant is that it functions as a complete text, telling an intricate story with each song.This album is a story (and a "text") because no one song truly stands alone: it is only when you listen to the album from beginning to end that you understand its conceptual nature and how each song in sequential order furthers the complete story of the larger "text."What Paul is able to do is also transformative because the story revolves around the idea of a "Prince among Thieves"─an honorous character amongst biters and crooks.This challenges the way Hip Hop albums have traditionally been composed, as a text that contains elements of research and a variety of citation methods: from sharing and borrowing, to transforming.

"I'ma play wit' dat": Considering where it goes after finding out how it goes…
Still, none of these categories are "permanently fixed."Artists can inhabit any one, or two, or even three simultaneously, or at many points during their careers.What all the examples present is an extension of Wakefield's conversation, and a conduit by which students can begin to understand the importance of the various modes of citation.As well, this composition functions as an intertextual paper, citing various sources to describe each category through DJ literacy by evoking terminology that springs from DJ rhetoric.
In his essay entitled "Intertextuality in the Transcultural Contact Zone", Pennycook reaches his conclusion with a very intertextual moment for describing the importance of these ideas: "It is precisely here at this point of intertextual engagement, we suggest, that Bakhtin's dialogue and battle for meaning occur, as teachers and students struggle to locate themselves in the constantly shifting transcultural contact zones that characterize today's global universities [and] as students struggle to establish ownership over and investment in the written academic texts they produce" (Pennycook 136).Engaging in DJ rhetoric to formulate a Hip Hop DJ critique can be valuable to helping students understand the idea of citation and referencing; this should be done through the idea of intertextuality, as opposed to a continuous dwelling within the realm of "plagiarism"─the grand disturber of harmony.This conversation will also help students understand the nature of intertextuality, and how being able to identify with the areas of "bitin'", "jackin'", and finally "transforming", can allow for them to find their voice in their own writing (while sampling various sources), as well as understand the severity of issues involving transgressive intertextuality.With this, we give students a new approach in thinking about how they can reference and cite information.And some of the best examples are clearly demonstrated through DJ rhetoric.We will close with three different Hip Hop DJ anecdotes.
When asked about the significance of DJing to writing, legendary female DJ Spinderella stated very clearly "[DJing] is a form of research" (Spinderella), which clearly connects the idea of the DJ's research legacy entitled "diggin' in the crates" to aspects of research in English Composition classrooms.But when asked what advice she would give to new up-and-coming DJs, she makes a relevant point about not only being able to work with the new contemporary technology, but she also urges DJs to heed this beacon call:

if you really really want to maintain, and challenge yourself and keep your integrity, and [the integrity] of DJing─the art form itself─you'll learn from the beginning. And that's just a really good feeling to say "I'm a DJ and I learned on vinyl and I use vinyl as well". I'm proud to say that I am one of those DJs who learned from the beginning, but even if you're not and you're just starting to DJ today: challenge yourself to do those things, to learn with the origins. (Spinderella)
It is here that DJ Spinderella is not only giving valuable lessons on the importance of research techniques, but she is labeling the range we can see between "biter", "jacker" and "transformer".Essentially, she is expressing the importance of acknowledging the new and contemporary landscape of information (she says later in the interview "I'm knowledgeable enough to have come this far, with 25 years doing it, but I have to say I'm still learning"), while impressing the importance of understanding the foundation of the culture.Thus, there is new writing in the culture of the DJ, but it is constantly influenced by the writing and the sources that have come before it.Sound familiar?DJ Skeme Richards eloquently put Hip Hop culture on blast when he talked in his interview about the importance of the cultural legacy of Hip Hop, and rightfully preserving it for the upcoming generations.Besides clearly seeing Skeme's passion about the state of Hip Hop's cultural history, he clearly places the DJ's art of "diggin'" in the paradigm of research and then demonstrates the importance of the research and understanding a historical context to socio-cultural moments.In writing, this can be likened to understanding the inherent characteristics of intertextuality, and that within different pieces of writing, there may be other authors and/or scholars whose work and writing are relevant to the conversation.
Finally, an internationally-known Philadelphia DJ by the name of Ca$h Money shared with me the importance of his legacy on both Hip Hop culture, but on DJ culture as well, by explaining the history of the "Battle Style" turntable set-up.In the interview, Ca$h describes why turntables were turned 90 degrees, set up with the tone arm at the top: That's MY style.Grand Wizard Rasheen─the guy that I learned from─that's how he used to spin.Why he turned them that way─I guess it was to fit on the table that he had, cuz the table was mad small.When he was teaching me, I just thought that was the way to do it.I seen everybody else doing it the regular way, but I was a little sloppy.My sleeve would honestly hit the tone arm.I learned from Rasheen, and the world learned from me.So you can look at any tape from 1987 on─no one was doing that.I was the only one spinning that way.Everyone was copying off of me, and the people they were teaching, they never told them any different.So they think "oh this is Battle Style."NAH─that's Ca$h Money style.I didn't know anything about putting a patent on anything like that.Who's thinking that?It was just comfortable for me . . . the set up on that "Ugly People Be Quiet" [record cover] was what everybody was trying to be, that set-up.And what's crazy is the turntable companies, that's how they started making the turntables─with the tone arm at the top!That came from me and Grand Wizard Rasheen.(Ca$h Money) It is here with DJ Ca$h Money, that we can see the entire paradigm of DJ rhetoric focusing on "biters", "jackers" and "transformers" and enacting its practice.From the DJ champions who came after Ca$h, to the pupils those champions mentored, all the way down to the companies who began producing turntables specifically with the Hip Hop DJ in mind.And it is here where Skeme Richards shows us the importance of the DJ working intertextually, as well as the relevance and significance of the Hip Hop DJ as cultural historian: If you ask any of these kids now: who was the first person to turn a turntable sideways, "Philly Style"?They'll be like "I don't know, that's just the way it's supposed to be done."NO─Ca Now can you think of a better way to express these ideas to students?If so, ga'head and make it happen.But if not, let the DJ walk you through it.
Class is now in session.

Works Cited
samples and the records required to rock this set.Now we can let a Hip Hop DJ show us what they all sound like with each other."Tight, Tight!/ Peace to the ones that DON'T bite!" How these sound together: In the Midst of the Mix aka R.I.5.Jay Dilla (Ruff Draft) $h Money started that.It's called "Battle Style" but really, it's "Philly Style".If you ask who the first person was to do a transformer [scratch], and they can't tell you, then it's like "see─you didn't do your homework.You're a DJ, but you didn't do your homework."So I believe in digging, I believe in knowing history.You don't write a book on a subject until you go back in history.If you're into art, you can't just say "oh, I like this" but then you don't know Van Gough's history, or you don't know Picasso's history, or Andy Warhol's history.People aren't diggin' in this generation . . .but we dig.The dudes that have been doin' it, we STAY digging!(Skeme Richards)