Jabari Evans

Dr. Jabari M. Evans is an Assistant Professor of Race and Media in the School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of South Carolina. His research examines how Black youth and young adults use hip hop, social media, and digital platforms to build identity, community, and opportunity within creator and platform economies. Working at the intersection of media studies, hip hop studies, digital culture, and critical race scholarship, he is especially interested in the ways urban youth of color use expressive culture to navigate visibility, aspiration, and structural inequality.

Evans is the author of Drill Rap, Sex Work and the Digital Underground (Bloomsbury, 2024) and Hip-Hop Civics (University of Michigan Press, 2025). His scholarship has appeared in outlets such as the International Journal of Communication, Journal for Media Literacy Education, and Journal of Global Hip Hop Studies, and his work has been recognized by the International Communication Association and other scholarly organizations. He has held previous affiliations with Microsoft Research’s Social Media Collective, the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, and the blackBox Lab at Harvard Business School. He earned his PhD at Northwestern University in Media, Technology and Society.

Before entering the professoriate, Evans spent more than a decade in and around the music industry as a recording artist, songwriter, and cultural worker. That experience continues to shape his scholarship, teaching, and public commentary. His dual identity as both scholar and artist gives his work a grounded understanding of the relationship between creative practice, media industries, and Black cultural production. In addition to his academic work, he continues to write and record music, bringing the same critical and imaginative sensibility to his creative practice that defines his research.