The August 11, 2017 Google Doodle is about the 44th anniversary of the birth of hip hop. The doodle is interactive: one is invited to experiment with scratching and mixing records on two turn tables [just two turntables, though, not two turntables and a microphone]. I must admit that I spent a little too much time playing with it today! I also reminisced about my earliest experience with hip hop: with other 7th grade kids I improvised my own lines to raps by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five…I think that one of my lines was “Like Melle Mel I’m here to say, all the pretty girls come my way!” I didn’t pay much attention to hop hop again, however, until rooming with a high school buddy in my first year of college. At one time Charles Isbell maintained an online hip hop reviews page, but now he’s too busy with administration, as he’s the Executive Associate Dean and Professor in the College of Computing at our undergraduate alma mater, Georgia Tech. I wonder how many other deans out there were hip hop heads back in the day…