The impossibility of being Drake: Or, what it means to be a successful (Black) Canadian rapper

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Boutros
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
The United States ◽  
Music Criticism ◽  
Public Performance ◽  
Discursive Analysis ◽  
Black Canadian ◽  
Imagined Nation ◽  
Discursive Constructions

This article takes Canadian hip hop artist Drake, his celebrity and his body of work as a point of departure for an examination of discursive constructions of race, hip hop and Canada in intersection. Canada’s role in the global hip hop movement has always been contested; circumscribed from abroad by its proximity to the United States and at home by its ideological positioning of Black citizens and Black cultural production vis-à-vis the imagined nation. Framed by broader questions of the role of hip hop in the Canadian public sphere, this discursive analysis analyses the work and utterances of Drake as well as discourses produced about Drake through music criticism and by other hip hop artists. Drake’s public performance of Blackness via hip hop is framed by overlapping and competing ideologies. Drake ‐ whose public persona seems to embody a number of seemingly competing identities ‐ is ‘impossible’ in so far as he is the product of intersecting, circulating conceptualizations of Blackness that render only some performances of Blackness both commercially viable and authentically hip hop, while others remain impossible, unacceptable, unutterable or unimaginable both inside and outside the nation state.

How Brenda’s Baby Got California Love

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcus Anthony Hunter ◽  
Zandria F. Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Black People ◽  
Black Panther Party ◽  
Police Brutality ◽  
Black Music ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
Black Life ◽  
And Gender

Centering the lives, music, and experiences of Tupac Shakur and his mother, Afeni Shakur, this chapter explores the migration stories of black people across the Black Map through the lens of hip hop music, the Black Panther Party, the Up South, Out South, and West South. Emphasizing the importance of cultural production and black music, the authors highlight the role of race, place, police brutality, and gender in black life and politics. Focused on the connections across space and time, this chapter demonstrates the key role black power politics, police brutality, and hip hop in the politics and migrations of black people throughout the chocolate cities.

Sino Caribbean Performance and Music

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tzarina T. Prater
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
African Caribbean ◽  
Integral Role ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Nationalism And Identity ◽  
Colonial Capitalism

Studying Sino Caribbean participation in the two cultural juggernauts of Caribbean cultural production, music and Carnival, reveals the vexed position of these modes of performance in relation to conventional historical narratives of colonialism, as well as struggles related to multiple and resilient essentialist discourses of nationalism and identity formation. The complex diasporic histories of music and Carnival are tied to violent exploitive labor formations at the core of colonial capitalism. Sino Caribbean experiences are marked by marginalization, conflict, and rebellion as well as acclimation, inclusion, and challenge to diasporic theories and critical praxis. This labor history is frequently ignored by cultural chauvinists whose critical lenses do not engage beyond the Anglo-American academic bastions. Outside of music aficionados and Caribbean communities, very few are familiar with the integral role of Sino Caribbean peoples in the production and dissemination of reggae, jazz, and by extension, hip-hop music. This historical and critical lacuna can be addressed by shifting away from Atlantic- and Pacific Rim–bound ideological articulations of diaspora that ignore the contiguities of African, Caribbean, and Asian experiences in the Caribbean, and by focusing on this history as integral to a greater understanding of colonial and neocolonial political and economic formations.

Copyright

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Ginsburg
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Fair Use ◽  
Free Expression ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Public Performance ◽  
Economic Rights ◽  
The Public ◽  
Distribution Right ◽  
Exceptions And Limitations

This chapter offers an overview of copyright in general in common law and civil law countries, with an emphasis on the United States (US) and the European Union (EU). It addresses the history and philosophies of copyright (authors’ right), subject matter of copyright (including the requirement of fixation and the exclusion of “ideas”), formalities, initial ownership and transfers of title, duration, exclusive moral and economic rights (including reproduction, adaptation, public performance and communication and making available to the public, distribution and exhaustion of the distribution right), exceptions and limitations (including fair use), and remedies. It also covers the liability of intermediaries, and new copyright obligations concerning technological protections and copyright management information. It concludes with some observations concerning the role of copyright in promoting creativity and free expression.

“We gon be alright:” containment, creativity, and the birth of hip-hop

2021 ◽  
pp. 147447402110036
Author(s):  
Rashad Shabazz
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Segregation ◽  
Recording Artist ◽  
House Music ◽  
Prison Populations ◽  
The Relationship

In the United States, Black cultural production is bound up with geographic containment, restrictions on mobility, and racial segregation. Jazz, hip-hop, house music, and the Minneapolis Sound (the music associated with late recording artist, Prince) were mid-wifed by some of the most repressive systems of geographic order. Indeed, containment and creativity, geographies of trouble and hope are hallmarks of Black cultural production. This dialectic calls into question the belief that art can only be created in conducive or untroubled spaces. Hip-hop provides a perfect case study to challenge this assumption. Born in the Bronx, NY in the early 1970’s, hip-hop was a cultural movement that emerged in against the backdrop of racial and economic segregation, mass incarceration, and joblessness. Yet, hop-hop “danced its way of these constrictions” and created geographies of hope. In doing this, hip-hop shows that Black cultural production and the radical imagination from which it springs, have the capacity to create counter-spatial imaginaries that challenge those under which it was produced. To that end, this article addresses the relationship between creativity and containment. Through linking the rise of carceral power, racially restrictive housing practices, a deindustrializing economy, and expanding prison populations with the hip-hop, I demonstrate the dialectic between systematic spatial containment of poor and working-class Black and Latinx Americans and the role it played in creation of the world’s most powerful cultural force.

The Role of Gender and Sensation Seeking in Film Choice

2008 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 97-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Smita C. Banerjee ◽  
Kathryn Greene ◽  
Marina Krcmar ◽  
Zhanna Bagdasarov ◽  
Dovile Ruginyte
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Sensation Seeking ◽  
Negative Mood ◽  
Positive Mood ◽  
The United States ◽  
High Arousal ◽  
Subject Design ◽  
Happy Mood

This study demonstrates the significance of individual difference factors, particularly gender and sensation seeking, in predicting media choice (examined through hypothetical descriptions of films that participants anticipated they would view). This study used a 2 (Positive mood/negative mood) × 2 (High arousal/low arousal) within-subject design with 544 undergraduate students recruited from a large northeastern university in the United States. Results showed that happy films and high arousal films were preferred over sad films and low-arousal films, respectively. In terms of gender differences, female viewers reported a greater preference than male viewers for happy-mood films. Also, male viewers reported a greater preference for high-arousal films compared to female viewers, and female viewers reported a greater preference for low-arousal films compared to male viewers. Finally, high sensation seekers reported a preference for high-arousal films. Implications for research design and importance of exploring media characteristics are discussed.

Confronting the Problems of Professional Sports: A Public Policy Response to Franchise Relocation and Stadium Subsidization

2005 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taylor F Brinkman
Keyword(s):  
Local Community ◽  
Professional Sports ◽  
The United States ◽  
Direct Result ◽  
Sports Organizations ◽  
Sports Leagues ◽  
Sports Finance ◽  
Sports Venues ◽  
Benefits And Costs

During the past decade, forty-six professional sports venues were constructed in the United States, while only 16 expansion teams were created by the major sports leagues. Nearly two thirds of these newly built stadiums and arenas were funded with public tax revenues, despite substantial evidence showing no positive economic impact of new sports stadium construction on local communities. In reviewing the economic literature, this article investigates the role of professional sports organizations in the construction and public subsidization of new sports venues. Franchise relocation and public stadium subsidization is a direct result of the monopoly power of professional sports leagues, whose franchise owners extract large subsidies from their host communities by threatening to relocate to viable alternative locations. After explaining how the most common methods of stadium subsidization project a disproportionate allocation of the benefits and costs of hosting a professional team to local community interests, this article outlines several considerations for local policymakers who seek to reinvigorate public discussion of equity concerns in professional sports finance.

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