The Hip Hop Doc Is in the House You’ve got to be on your toes with the trendiest techniques if you want
to reach the youth of America. Raising awareness about HIV among the
MySpace set takes video games, celebrities—and music. Rani Whitfield,
the 38-year-old African-American physician known as the Hip Hop Doc,
believes that hip hop in particular is a powerful way to reach a
generation at serious risk. Since 2000, the Baton Rouge, Louisiana,
native has been using the music—not the hip hop with misogynist lyrics
and materialist attitudes, he says, but the socially conscious stuff—to
grab the attention of young African Americans and relay pressing health
information about HIV, obesity, substance abuse and hep C.
You’ve got to be on your toes with the trendiest techniques if you want
to reach the youth of America. Raising awareness about HIV among the
MySpace set takes video games, celebrities—and music. Rani Whitfield,
the 38-year-old African-American physician known as the Hip Hop Doc,
believes that hip hop in particular is a powerful way to reach a
generation at serious risk. Since 2000, the Baton Rouge, Louisiana,
native has been using the music—not the hip hop with misogynist lyrics
and materialist attitudes, he says, but the socially conscious stuff—to
grab the attention of young African Americans and relay pressing health
information about HIV, obesity, substance abuse and hep C.
