The Politics of Rap Music

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The Politics of Rap Music

• Is rap a legitimate medium of political
  expression?

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(No Transcript)
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Content Standards!

• 11.8.8 Discuss forms of popular culture, with
  emphasis on their origins and geographic
  diffusion (e.g., jazz and other forms of popular
  music, professional sports, architectural and
  artistic styles).
• 11.11 Students analyze the major social
  problems and domestic policy issues in
  contemporary American society.
• 11.11.6 Analyze the persistence of poverty and
  how different analyses of this issue influence
  welfare reform, health insurance reform, and
  other social policies.
• 11.11.7 Explain how the federal, state, and
  local governments have responded to demographic
  and social changes such as population shifts to
  the suburbs and racial concentrations in the
  cities.

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Cultural History

• Cultural history combines the approaches of
  anthropology and history to look at popular
  cultural traditions and cultural interpretations
  of historical experience. It examines the records
  and narrative descriptions of past knowledge,
  customs, and arts of a group of people.

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The Bronx in the 1970s
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The Post Industrial Context

• Industrial --gt Service Economy
• Suburbanization white flight, reduced tax base
  for cities, red-lining
• Urban Renewal
• Poverty, Violence, Crime
• Hip-hop culture

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Hip-Hop Stylistics

• Rap Music flow, layering, rupture DJ and MC
• Graffiti long, winding, sweeping letters,
  interrupted, italics and shadowing suggesting
  motion
• B-boying (break-dancing) flowing and complex
  movements interrupted by abrupt starts and stops

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The Theory

• Continuity and Circularity
• Layering
• Highlighting of threats through break or
  rupture
• Management of threat (continuing the flow)
• Use of public space (originally, at least)
• BLUEPRINT FOR RESISTANCE

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Wild Style, a 1982 movie by Charlie Ahearn,
connects early hip-hop genres art (graffiti,)
breaking, and rap.
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Black Oral Traditions Toasting

• A toast is a lengthy, recited narrative or poem
  describing a series of exploits by a central
  character, focusing on the main character's
  heroic acts and exercises of wit.
• Characters announce their intentions to survive
  in style, which can mean "heroic masculinity" or
  conspicuous consumption.

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Black Oral Traditions Signifying

• According to Black literary scholar Henry Louis
  Gates Jr., the practice derived from the
  Trickster archetype found in much African
  mythology, folklore, and religion a god,
  goddess, spirit, man, woman, or anthropomorphic
  animal who plays tricks or otherwise disobeys
  normal rules and norms of behavior.

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Signifying

• The expression itself derives from the numerous
  tales about the Signifying Monkey, a folk
  trickster figure said to have originated during
  slavery in the United States. In most of these
  narratives, the Monkey manages to dupe the
  powerful Lion by signifying. Signifyin(g) directs
  attention to the connotative, context-bound
  significance of words, which is accessible only
  to those who share the unique cultural values of
  a given speech community.

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Black Oral Traditions Playing the Dozens

• The dozens is an example of the African American
  oral tradition in which two competitors, usually
  males, go head-to-head in an improvised
  competition of often good-natured, ribald trash
  talk (think Yo Mama.)
• Its an element of an African-American custom of
  verbal sparring, of woofin' and signifyin',
  intended to defuse conflict nonviolently,
  descended from an oral tradition rooted in
  traditional West African cultures.

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So

• How does this add complexity to understanding of
  rap music?
• How do these traditions contribute to an
  interpretation of rap as political or
  resistant?
• Why was gangsta rap a particular target for
  critics of rap?

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Political/Cultural Rap Public Enemy
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NOI Rap Brand Nubian
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Gangsta Rap NWA
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Straight Outta Compton NWA (Niggaz with Attitude)
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Guerrillas in tha Mist Da Lench Mob
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Questions

• Why was gangsta rap so much more heavily
  critiqued and policed than other forms of rap?
• Why was gangsta rap a MUCH bigger crossover genre
  of rap at the time?
• And the big cultural history questionwas gansta
  rap as much REFLECTIVE as RESISTANT? CONTEXT has
  multiple and multifaceted implications.

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Gangsta Rap Made Me Do ItIce Cube