Maybe it was the umpteenth coke-dealing anthem or soft-porn music video. Perhaps it was the preening antics that some call reminiscent of Stepin Fetchit.

The turning point is hard to pinpoint. But after 30 years of growing popularity, rap music is now struggling with an alarming sales decline and growing criticism from within about the culture’s negative effect on society.

Rap insider Chuck Creekmur, who runs the leading Web site Allhiphop.com, says, “a lot of people are sick of rap. … The negativity is just over the top now.”

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With hip-hop itself hitting its third decade, hip-hop studies has become one of the most explosive subjects to hit academia in decades — as UCLA Professor H. Samy Alim says, “It’s reinvigorating the academy.”[…]

“There is a literary flood,” says Jeff Chang, a writer, UC Berkeley graduate and sometime Chronicle contributor, whose award-winning book “Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation” is one of the primary texts in many classes. “It’s becoming a tidal wave. Right now, I have six or seven books on my desk for me to review or blurb. They weren’t there a year ago.”

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The Black Youth Project looked at opinions on politics, sex and health among nearly 1,600 black, white and Hispanic people between 15 and 25 in what researchers called one of the most comprehensive reports of its kind.

The project focused on the ‘Hip-Hop Generation’ and the later ‘Millennium Generation,’ groups whose parents or grandparents lived through the civil rights era, said Cathy Cohen of the University of Chicago, the survey’s lead investigator.

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Ben Gilbarg and Amir Hoagland have a different way of giving back. Their nonprofit organization, 3rd EyE Unlimited, teaches kids how to ignite social change and kick-start rap careers.

“There are a lot of pitfalls in the industry, and we teach them that hip-hop isn’t just what you see on television,” Gilbarg said from 3rd EyE’s New Bedford office. “We build kids into leaders, not just through rapping, but by having them produce television shows, design fliers and organize events.”

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As rapper Ludacris takes the stage at Sundays’ Grammy Awards show in Los Angeles, more than a dozen anxious volunteers will huddle up at a North Side call center for runaway children, hoping his performance sets the phones ringing.

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Late in the afternoon of Jan. 16, a SWAT team from the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office, backed up by officers from the Clayton County Sheriff’s Office and the local police department, along with a few drug-sniffing dogs, burst into a unmarked recording studio on a short, quiet street in an industrial neighborhood near the Georgia Dome in Atlanta.[…]

Later that night, a reporter for the local Fox TV station, Stacey Elgin, delivered a report on the raid from the darkened street in front of the studio. She announced that the owners of the studio, known professionally as DJ Drama and DJ Don Cannon, were arrested for making ‘’illegal CDs.'’

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Lateef the Truthspeaker may not be the best known rapper to rise out of the Bay Area, but he’s certainly one of the most prolific. The Grammy-nominated lyricist has appeared on albums the likes of DJ Shadow, Blackalicious and Fatboy Slim. He’s played with the groups Latyrx and Maroons. And he was one of the founding members of SoleSides, a collective of hip-hop enthusiasts that met up at UC Davis in the early ’90s and went on to launch the highly successful indie label Quannum Projects.

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