When I heard that a University of Rochester psychologist was
heading a team of researchers tasked with exploring what cool means, some breezy
cats out of the Bay area immediately appeared in a musical flashback. Right on
if you are a true R&B aficionado who guessed Tower of Power. Back in the
day, I had the in-person pleasure of hearing frontman Lenny Williams blast the
lyrics “What is Hip?” over a powerful horn section. A concert of epic
proportions, hip permeated each and every note the vocalist sang and musicians played.
Of course, with the reference to ‘hip,’ Williams wasn’t inquiring
about a body part but more about a state of mind. From where I come, hip and
cool have always shared that unique commonality. Like everything else, language
evolves over time to take on different meanings but what remains unchanged is
my personal popular culture opinion: If one must ask, then one truly doesn’t know. 
