scholarly journals “We Don’t Have Those American Problems”: Anti-Black Practices in Canada’s Rap Music Marketplace, 1985–2020

2021 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 320-352
Author(s):  
Francesca D’Amico-Cuthbert
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Rap Music ◽  
Creative Industries ◽  
Hip Hop Culture ◽  
Black Artists ◽  
For Profit ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Live Music ◽  
Label System

Beginning in the early to mid 1980s, Hip Hop culture appeared on Canadian stages and in homes, even as it was limited in supply on commercial radio and television. Unlike their American counterparts, mainstream Canadian emcees (many of whom were racialized as Black and identified with the city of Toronto) were notably dependent upon personal finances, under-resourced independent record labels, distribution deals, and state and not-for-profit grant monies to subsidize the conceptualization, production, and promotion of their art. Labelled “urban music” in an attempt to spatialize and covertly reference Blackness, Hip Hop in Canada, from the outset, was mapped against, in conflict with, and outside of the national imaginary. While building local scenes, an independent label system, and a cross-Canada college radio, television, and live music infrastructure and audience, Hip Hop artists developed spaces of resistance, circumvented industry-generated obstacles, and defined success on their own terms — all of which suggested that they were not solely at the will of the dominant white music industry. And yet artists simultaneously encountered anti-Black practices that constrained the creation and sustenance of a nationwide Hip Hop infrastructure and denoted an inequitable structuring of support for the arts in Canada. By examining the interface of Blackness, art, and the racial economy of Canada’s creative industries, this article will outline instances of Canada’s anti-Black racism as well as the challenges Hip Hop artists and industry professionals have faced in the areas of recording and label relations, music sales, broadcasting regulations, and the accolade system. These social relations — many of which are rooted in longer histories of race relations and anti-Blackness in Canada — resulted in industry-wide policies, practices, norms, and ideologies that unfairly disadvantaged Black artists and undermined the realization and marketplace potential of a Hip Hop infrastructure within and beyond Canada.

Hip Hop World News: reporting back

Race & Class ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 102-114
Author(s):  
Sam Berkson
Keyword(s):  
Hip Hop ◽  
Rap Music ◽  
Big Business ◽  
Hip Hop Culture ◽  
Black Artists ◽  
News Reporting ◽  
World News ◽  
Art Form ◽  
Black Art

Responding to the BBC 4 documentary, The Hip Hop World News, the author examines a number of debates that the programme, narrated by Rodney P, a pioneer of British rap music, and a believer in the revolutionary potential of hip hop culture, throws up. For hip hop also has many reactionary elements and has become big business for the corporations and rap ‘stars’ involved in its production. Beyond just pointing to individual rappers who have been ‘conscious’ political voices, such as Public Enemy’s Chuck D, we are shown structures embedded in the origins and ‘elements’ of hip hop that continue to make it a ‘voice of the voiceless’. Some people, like Lord Jamar, who is interviewed on the documentary, have argued that hip hop as a black art form can only be performed by black artists, yet, as Rodney P points out, hip hop has been adopted everywhere to express and transmit the situations and struggles of marginalised and oppressed groups all over the globe.

Rap/Hip-Hop

Music ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cheryl L. Keyes
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Rap Music ◽  
Latino Youth ◽  
Secondary Markets ◽  
Hip Hop Culture ◽  
Urban Street ◽  
Trade Magazines ◽  
Black And Latino Youth ◽  
Written Sources

Rap evolved as a vernacular term used among African Americans to define a stylized way of speaking. Over the years, black radio disc jockeys, musicians, literary figures, and 1960s political figures incorporated rap into their performances or way of speaking to appeal to black audiences. By the early 1970s, rap continued its development in the urban streets among “rhymin’ emcees” (MCs) accompanied by pre-recorded music, provided by a disc jockey on two turntables. This concept became associated with a youth arts movement driven and populated by black and Latino youth in New York City called hip-hop. Comprised of four elements—breakdancing (b-boying/b-girling), graffiti (writing), disc jockeying (DJing), and emceeing (MCing)—hip-hop also distinguishes a distinct form of dress, gesture, and language that embodies an urban street consciousness. By the late 1970s, the rhymin’ MC/DJ combination attracted music entrepreneurs who recognized the commercial potential with the release of the recording “Rapper’s Delight” by the Sugarhill Gang. Subsequently, music trade magazines such as Billboard contributed to popularizing the MC/DJ concept as rap music. Additionally, the production of hip-hop arts via the silver screen, advertising, and fashion industries further contributed to its rise to global prominence. Realizing its viability to a growing youth constituency, entrepreneurs placed significant value on certain elements of hip-hop believed to be more marketable to youth consumers in the popular music mainstream. For example, MCing and DJing became primary markets while breakdancing and graffiti served as hip-hop’s secondary markets. As such, rap music eventually eclipsed in popularity breakdancing and graffiti, thus solidifying this music category. Occasionally, critics and aficionados use rap music interchangeably with hip-hop. The sources herein will be used interchangeably as rap music/hip-hop along with their associates (breakdance and graffiti), and allied traditions. Similar to the burgeoning success of hip-hop culture in the mainstream popular culture, rap garnered the attention of academicians during the late 1980s, who perceived it as fertile ground for the study of popular youth culture. This is evident with a flurry of theses, articles, books, journalistic writings, and photo-essays leading to the establishment of hip-hop studies. Today, there are thousands of written sources on hip-hop. Rather than attempting to present all of these written sources, which would be beyond the scope of this bibliography, this article instead offers a survey of book sources and seminal journal articles that reflect the erudition, scholarly depth, and interdisciplinary scope of hip-hop studies.

Shop talk: The influence of hip hop on Filipino‐American barbers in San Diego

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Vito
Keyword(s):  
Hip Hop ◽  
San Diego ◽  
Rap Music ◽  
Life Story ◽  
The United States ◽  
Filipino Americans ◽  
Filipino American ◽  
Hip Hop Culture ◽  
Sense Of Identity ◽  
Shop Talk

Barber culture frequently intersects with hip hop. Barbershops often incorporate rap music, street wear apparel and popular culture into their daily environment. In tandem, an important part of hip hop culture is the haircuts and designs that people choose to get. Many Filipino-Americans across the United States utilize barber and hip hop culture to help create their own unique sense of identity ‐ a sense of identity forged in the fires of diaspora and postcolonial oppression. In this first instalment of the GHHS ‘Show and Prove’ section ‐ short essays on hip hop visual culture, arts and images ‐ I illustrate the ways in which Filipino-Americans in San Diego use barber shops both as a means of entrepreneurialism and as a conduit to create a cultural identity that incorporates hip hop with their own histories of migration and marginalization. I interview Filipino-American entrepreneur Marc Canonizado, who opened his first San Diego-based business, Goodfellas Barbershop Shave Parlor, in 2014. We explore the complex linkages between barbershops, Filipino-Americans and hip hop culture, as well as discuss his life story and plans for the future.

scholarly journals Rap Music

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Austin McCoy
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Rap Music ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Hip Hop Culture ◽  
Cultural Form ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Latinx Youth

Rap is the musical practice of hip hop culture that features vocalists, or MCs, reciting lyrics over an instrumental beat that emerged out of the political and economic transformations of New York City after the 1960s. Black and Latinx youth, many of them Caribbean immigrants, created this new cultural form in response to racism, poverty, urban renewal, deindustrialization, and inner-city violence. These new cultural forms eventually spread beyond New York to all regions of the United States as artists from Los Angeles, New Orleans, Miami, and Chicago began releasing rap music with their own distinct sounds. Despite efforts to demonize and censor rap music and hip hop culture, rap music has served as a pathway for social mobility for many black and Latinx youth. Many artists have enjoyed crossover success in acting, advertising, and business. Rap music has also sparked new conversations about various issues such as electoral politics, gender and sexuality, crime, policing, and mass incarceration, as well as technology.

scholarly journals HIP-HOP AS A DISCURSIVE SPACE OF THE SUBCULTURE

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 403-407
Author(s):  
Ya.M. Yanchenko
Keyword(s):  
Hip Hop ◽  
Rap Music ◽  
Crime Rates ◽  
Direct Connection ◽  
Specific Character ◽  
Discursive Space ◽  
Hip Hop Culture ◽  
Video Clips ◽  
High Crime ◽  
High Level

The goal of the article is detection and description of the main linguistic peculiarities of the discourse of hip-hop subculture. The lack of research devoted to hip-hop language and high popularity of rap music give grounds to consider this problem relevant to solve. The article examines the factors of the formation of the subculture and their impact on the linguistic representation of the mental world of the hip-hop culture representatives. It is concluded that there is a direct connection between conditions and lifestyle (economic instability, high crime rates, racial decimations) of hip-hop representatives and the use of language. The article confirms the importance of the category of participants in the discourse, which leads to a high level of axiology and subjectivity of hip-hop discourse. The presence of intertextuality, which is manifested both in the structure of the text of rap songs and in their content, is explained. The article describes the specific character of creolization of songs of this genre, which assumes its materialization at two levels: visual (video clips) and melodic (tempo, rhythm of music).

scholarly journals RAP e Comunicação: comunidades imaginadas globais materializadas em práticas e processos comunicacionais locais

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (27) ◽  
pp. 104
Author(s):  
João Vitor Pinto Ferreira ◽  
Carlos Eduardo Marquioni
Keyword(s):  
Hip Hop ◽  
Rap Music ◽  
Imagined Communities ◽  
Imagined Community ◽  
Hip Hop Culture ◽  
Musical Genre ◽  
Local Contexts ◽  
Historical Contextualization ◽  
Benedict Anderson ◽  
Raymond Williams

O RAP é uma base do movimento Hip-Hop; no artigo, o gênero musical é analisado culturalmente (Raymond Williams) considerando o compartilhamento de significados observado entre os indivíduos que estabelecem uma espécie de “comunidade imaginada” (Benedict Anderson) de abrangência global a partir da música, que conta com adaptações a contextos locais. A partir de contextualização histórica, são apresentados casos de ocorrência do RAP no Brasil que evidenciam – complementarmente às (ou para além das) críticas sociais do gênero (eventualmente confundidas pelo senso comum como apologia ao crime) – casos de manifestações de afeto que permitem estabelecer relações com as origens do gênero musical. RAP and Communication: global imagined communities materialized in local communicational practices and processesAbstractRAP music is one basis of Hip-Hop movement; in this paper, the musical genre is analyzed culturally (Raymond Williams), from the sharing of meanings observed between the individuals that pertain to a kind of global “imagined community” (Benedict Anderson) established from the musical genre that has adaptations to local contexts. Starting from a historical contextualization of RAP music, the paper presents cases of its occurrence in Brazil that materialize affect manifestations, enabling to relate contemporary occurrences of RAP with the origins of the musical genre – complementarily to (or even beyond) the usual RAP’s social critics (typically mistaken for apology for crime in commonsense). Keywords: RAP; hip-hop; culture; imagined communities; communication.

Spaghetti Funk: Appropriations of Hip-Hop Culture and Rap Music in Europe

2003 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 463-479 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jannis Androutsopoulos ◽  
Arno Scholz
Keyword(s):  
Hip Hop ◽  
Rap Music ◽  
Hip Hop Culture

Blame It on Hip-Hop: Anti-Rap Attitudes as a Proxy for Prejudice

2009 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 361-380 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Reyna ◽  
Mark Brandt ◽  
G. Tendayi Viki
Keyword(s):  
Hip Hop ◽  
Rap Music ◽  
Social Benefits ◽  
Negative Attitudes ◽  
Negative Stereotypes ◽  
Hip Hop Culture ◽  
Three Samples ◽  
Legitimizing Beliefs ◽  
American Society ◽  
The Uk

This research investigated the stereotypes associated with rap music and hip-hop culture, and how those stereotypes may influence anti-Black attitudes and justifications for discrimination. In three studies—using a representative sample from America, as well as samples from two different countries—we found that negative stereotypes about rap are pervasive and have powerful consequences. In all three samples, negative attitudes toward rap were associated with various measures of negative stereotypes of Blacks that blamed Blacks for their economic plights (via stereotypes of laziness). Anti-rap attitudes were also associated with discrimination against Blacks, through both personal and political behaviors. In both American samples, the link between anti-rap attitudes and discrimination was partially or fully mediated by stereotypes that convey Blacks' responsibility. This legitimizing pattern was not found in the UK sample, suggesting that anti-rap attitudes are used to reinforce beliefs that Blacks do not deserve social benefits in American society, but may not be used as legitimizing beliefs in other cultures.

scholarly journals Migrant rap in the periphery

AILA Review ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 1-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sirpa Leppänen ◽  
Elina Westinen
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Rap Music ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Hip Hop Culture ◽  
Rapid Social Change ◽  
Social Settings ◽  
Audience Responses ◽  
Fluid Process

Focusing on a YouTube performance by an emergent Finnish Somali rapper and the audience responses it has generated, this paper looks at ways in which rap music engages with the issue of belonging. Drawing on recent theorizations of belonging as a multi-dimensional, contingent and fluid process, along with sociolinguistic work on globalization and superdiversity, Finnish hip hop culture and popular cultural practices in social media, the paper investigates how belonging is performatively and multi-semiotically interrogated in its online context. It shows how rap can serve as a significant site and channel for new voices in turbulent social settings characterized by rapid social change and complex diversity, as well as provide affordances for critical responses to and interventions into xenophobic and nationalist debates and discourses of belonging.

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