Osei Alleyne is a joint Africana Studies and Anthropology student at the University of Pennsylvania, Osei Alleyne holds a MA in Communications from Temple University. Philadelphia and a BA in History from Concordia University, Montreal. A Hip Hop and Spoken Word artist who continues to share stages with the likes of The Roots and Mos Def, Osei is interested in tracing the oral tradition in urban music through earlier forms such as Reggae and Calypso back to original griot traditions of West Africa. Osei has designed and taught university level courses in Hip Hop, Media and Cultural Communication and as an avid futurist has presented at conferences on representations technological futurism and human destiny in popular culture. Having lived in both Trinidad and Tobago and Canada and toured in the Caribbean and the US. Osei hopes to apply his international experience and intellectual curiosity to his doctoral work in the Department of Africana Studies at University of Pennsylvania.