Tue., Feb. 28, 7 p.m., free, Penn Bookstore, 3601 Walnut St., 215-898-7595

Bill Cosby got a lot of shit in 2004 for mounting disparaging tirades against hip-hop youth culture. And, for sure, dude took his ranting way too far. But maybe somewhere in all that insanity was a point—after all, many emcees do portray and perhaps propagate a rough style of urban living. Often, the folks getting richest are the skeezy white record execs, a power structure with racist and classist undertones in itself. But this doesn't make hip-hop as an artistic reflection of harsh street reality any less important, and it doesn't mean Cosby's view is the rule. Next Tuesday, Rutgers Law professor and hip-hop scholar Imani Perry will analyze the breadth of the genre, rather than just its "positive" and "negative" approaches. Perry posits that there is ample gray area to be explored and that black culture in America is hardly as black-and-white as Cosby would like us to believe.