Josef Sorett studies religious and spiritual expressions in hiphop music and culture. He has a master of divinity degree and is a graduate student in African-American studies at Harvard University, where his dissertation is on race, religion and the arts in 20th-century America. He has worked extensively with young people in nonprofits and religious communities.

Hampton, Va., hiphop artist Sean Slaughter writes a column, Freestylin‘, for GospelFlava.com, the gospel music industry newsmagazine. He can discuss the relationship between gospel and hiphop.

Derrick P. Alridge is an associate professor in the college of education at the University of Georgia. He wrote “From Civil Rights to Hiphop: Toward a Nexus of Ideas,” an article in the 2005 Journal of African American History (Vol. 90).

Charles E. Jones chairs the African-American studies at Georgia State University. He recently took part in the second annual Hiphop Summit Behind Prison Walls at the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ USP Coleman II high-security prison near Ocala, Fla., where participants discussed the role of hiphop in crime and violence in black communities.

Brad Mathias is president of Bema Media LLC, the parent company of iShine, the world’s largest preteen Christian media group in Nashville. He can discuss the hiphop genre of Christian music.

Dr. Layli Phillips is executive director of the Wellesley Centers for Women in Wellesley, Mass. She was formerly the associate professor of women’s studies at Georgia State University in Atlanta, where she is also a faculty affiliate in the African-American studies department. Her teaching and research are on women and hiphop, womanism, black feminism and black […]

Dr. Dawn-Elissa Fischer is an associate professor in the department of africana studies at San Francisco State University. She teaches courses on international Black popular culture, information technology and visual ethnography. She was the education outreach coordinator for Stanford University’s Hiphop Archive and the founder of the National Hip-Hop Political Convention. She works with youth in […]

James Scandrick directs the Institute on Black Church Sacred Music and Worship at Nashville’s American Baptist College.

CEO, pastor and rap recording artist Del Lawrence, aka Mr. Del, was a member of a secular – and explicit – rap group, Three 6 Mafia, before he became a Christian in 2001. Since then, he says, he has been rapping for God. Lawrence leads City of Refuge Church in Memphis, Tenn.; records with EMI Gospel; […]