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Adam Bradley is a study in contrasts: a hip-hop expert who grew up in Salt Lake City, dissecting the literary devices of Shakespeare in one breath and Slick Rick in the next. He teaches in English, but his RAP Lab is in the chemistry building

Relatively few sentences juxtapose the words 鈥減rofessor鈥� and 鈥渉ip-hop.鈥� Ditto for 鈥淢ozart鈥� and 鈥淢os Def鈥� or 鈥淓mily Dickinson鈥� and 鈥淟auryn Hill,鈥� or even 鈥渓iterature鈥� and 鈥渓aboratory.鈥� Adam Bradley, an associate professor of English at the University of Colorado Boulder, is assiduously changing that.

It鈥檚 also striving to help Colorado prison inmates break the cycle of destructive behavior without severing their social ties.

Like his scholarship, Bradley is a study in contrasts. He鈥檚 a hip-hop expert who grew up in Salt Lake City. He can dissect the literary devices of Shakespeare in one breath and Slick Rick in the next. He teaches in the English Department, but his RAP Lab is in the Cristol Chemistry Building, bustling with chemists wearing lab coats and eye protection.

"We want to understand what鈥檚 going on with the language and the flow of lyrics, but also what鈥檚 going on culturally when something like hip-hop, which is born in an African-American context, gets taken over to a country like Poland, which is 98 percent white.鈥�

The RAP Lab is a 鈥渉umanities hothouse鈥� for cutting-edge research, teaching and outreach. Here, Bradley and a cadre of student and post-doctoral researchers are striving to understand the differences and similarities between American hip-hop and Polish hip-hop.

鈥淲e want to understand what鈥檚 going on with the language and the flow of lyrics, but also what鈥檚 going on culturally when something like hip-hop, which is born in an African-American context, gets taken over to a country like Poland, which is 98 percent white,鈥� Bradley says.

For now, the Colorado-Poland work is in the 鈥減roof of concept鈥� stage鈥攖o show there鈥檚 valuable information to be gleaned by comparing American and Polish rap.

Bradley and a colleague in Poland are compiling a global catalog of artists and scholars. So far, they鈥檝e found potential collaborators in 26 countries; they could help answer questions about how hip-hop is expressed in other cultures and countries.

Why start with Poland? A Polish scholar of hip-hop contacted Bradley and told the CU-Boulder professor how much his scholarship had influenced him.

Like the global hip-hop initiative, the RAP Lab got involved with Colorado prison inmates after an unsolicited contact.

Lisi Owen, executive director of the Colorado Prison Law Project, heard Bradley on Colorado Public Radio discussing his Hip-hop in the Classroom initiative, which helps students understand how hip-hop and literature employ many of the same devices鈥攖hereby helping students relate to and possibly even study literature.

Owen told Bradley that two inmates had been developing something called the Gang Awareness Program (GAP) and suggested that Bradley make a hip-hop-related presentation to them.

After extensive discussions with the inmates, Bradley decided what they needed was not 鈥渇or me to go in and run my own little show, but rather to support what they鈥檇 already done.鈥�

The inmates themselves have developed GAP, 鈥渢he idea being, quite radically, to conceive of something driven by the inmates themselves rather than imposed from the outside.鈥� The core principle is to 鈥渙ccupy but not abandon鈥� the gangs in the prisons.

This differs from most gang-related programs, which insist that inmates renounce their gang affiliations, resulting in very low rates of success.

The inmates have created a program that allows for self-transformation, 鈥渟ometimes revolutionary change, without renunciation.鈥�

The RAP Lab鈥檚 role is primarily supporting the inmates鈥� work: sending books, making connections to outside experts, providing an ear. Bradley鈥檚 students are also researching other prison programs鈥� efficacy so as better to support GAP鈥檚 development.

Bradley emphasizes that the work with inmates reflects a common theme in literature, 鈥渢hat people are complex, far more capacious than we allow鈥攖hat they can contain contradictions and can transform themselves.鈥�

鈥淲e see it in literature. We allow it in literature, but sometimes we don鈥檛 allow it in life.鈥�

To learn more about the RAP Lab, see听

Clint Talbott听is director of communications and external relations for the College of Arts and Sciences and editor of the听College of Arts and Sciences Magazine.