Although the first annual " Active Arts Youth Conference " billed itself as a tool for " inspiring, educating, and mobilizing the hip-hop generation, " it was quickly apparent that the weekend — which began with an " off the hook " Dead Prez show at the Somerville Theatre and segued into a Saturday of workshops, speeches, and harangues at Northeastern’s Curry Student Center — wasn’t really about hip-hop. Instead, the proceedings focused on the emotional themes that pervade the genre: racism, class struggle, disfranchisement, hopelessness, and monopolization of the mass media by the man.

There was, for instance, palpable racial tension in a fourth-floor classroom where a panel of five experts — including Bay Area activist Davey D and Nomadik, a female DJ from Emerson’s WERS — intended to discuss the subject of hip-hop as a media tool. The workshop began innocuously enough with an address by Murray Forman, an assistant professor of communications studies at Northeastern whose Kenny G ringlets, snow-white face, and brown moccasin-loafers seemed way out of place in the roomful of doo-rags and dreadlocks. In his pre-scripted lecture ( " rather than freestyling — which is what I sometimes do — I’ve written something down, " he said with a straight face), Forman applauded the " B-boys and spray-can bandits " who " never gave up, never gave in. " He dropped in the pronoun " we " to describe the hip-hop community, empathized with the " black and Latino stress on the streets, " and goaded the 50-plus audience into reciting rule number four of Biggie’s " 10 Crack Commandments " : " Never get high on your own supply. "

As the author of the recently released tome The ’Hood Comes First: Race, Space, and Place in Rap and Hip-Hop (Wesleyan University Press), Forman was ostensibly qualified to deliver this preamble. Yet halfway into his talk, one of his fellow panel members piped in. " No offense, but I don’t know how you became a professor of hip-hop, " said Jamarhl Crawford, a Boston-based rhyme-spitter whose nom de rap is UNO the Prophet a/k/a Nat Turner Devil Burner. " You used words like ‘we’ and ‘our’ three or four times. I’m sorry, but I don’t consider you part of my hip-hop culture. " Forman appeared taken aback, but Crawford didn’t relent. " I don’t understand how that happens — how a brother like me who’s in hip-hop is supposed to listen to a lecture about hip-hop from you. "

A self-described " socially conscious MC, " Crawford had a point. But his definition of the word " conscious " seemed to connote rage more than awareness. Later in the seminar, Crawford admitted that not only does he regularly employ terms like " cracker, " " honky, " and " ofay " because " it makes me feel good, " but that his discography as UNO the Prophet includes not one, not two, but three tunes ( " I write in trilogies " ) that revolve loosely around the theme of " kill whitey. " ( " Get it? " he said proudly, pointing to his black " IXYT " T-shirt. " I ... X ... why-tee. I ex whitey! " ). Crawford swears that " Kill Whitey, " a song with the lyrics " We gonna have to kill ’em quick/They talk shit and suck dick/And smell like wet dog/Selling hog on the Sabbath at the synagogue " is just a parody of gangsta rap meant " facetiously. " While railing away at Forman, the 32-year-old writer, poet, and activist seethed, " I know that we don’t travel in the same streets. You say ‘our community.’ We’re not in the same community. "

There was a smattering of handclaps from the audience.

" On the other hand, " Forman retorted, trying to save face, " I don’t think you know quite what streets I walk on — "

" I know you don’t walk on my streets, " Crawford shot back.

And for the next 60 minutes or so, Professor Murray Forman didn’t say a word.

That afternoon, things were a little more harmonious, even if the discussion shifted away from hip-hop as a genre. The diverse crowd at " All American: Like Lynchings and Smallpox Blankets, " a workshop that sought to " look at modern surveillance tactics and technologies used against political targets, " was — with the exception of a couple of sportswear-clad B-boys — decidedly un-hip-hop: a skinny kid in wild blond dreads, two lesbian couples (one with complementary pink and purple hair), a Puerto Rican activist with a pencil-thin mustache, a late-middle-aged Chinese couple, a portly native American, a lanky beanpole in thick beard and straw hat, and a dignified elderly lady with a long silver braid.

In the class, Bruce Ellison — ponytailed defense attorney for imprisoned Native American activist Leonard Peltier — argued that COINTELPRO and the other sleazy tactics used by the FBI to smash the American Indian Movement and the Black Panthers in the 1970s (snipers, arming militias of goonish Vietnam vets) are not very far removed from the current national climate, as typified by the hastily passed USA Patriot Act — a law, Ellison says, that exists for no other purpose than the suppression of dissent.

One of the reasons the government succeeded in smashing dissent in the ’70s, he continued, was because " we — the black and the brown and the red — weren’t talking to each other.... The government is unified, and they’re counting on us not to be. If something comes out of this conference, I hope it’s solidarity. "

Remembering Mr. IXYT, we wondered if that was wishful thinking.