Not so much in musical analysis or some shallow history that states this or that happened on such and such a date. Rather, I think we can gain a great understanding of cultural production by trying to link changes in hip-hop from its inception until now to historical changes in both global and local social and economic conditions. I think a book like Can't Stop, Won't Stop does this well. Instead of just rambling on about different groups that came to be in various years, Chang tries to understand how development projects in NY and changes in politics in Jamaica helped produce a musical form that in his words "brought peace in neighborhoods where the police couldn't". I'm not saying Chang is correct (although i tend to agree with this interpretation) but what he did with this historical materialist approach was open a door for a potential discussion that could bring us closer to understanding the relationship between economic trends, government policy and the production of culture. This sort of discourse is just as important as understanding any historical or sociological topic. If we have courses that teach about reasons for the rise of Nazism in Germany or Labour movements in the United States, then we not study why oppressed and abandoned people in US ghettos developed hip-hop culture? And why not understand the social reasons that contributed to it?