This chapter summarizes in brief an ethnography which demonstrates a close collaboration between the subject and researcher; the role one hip hop artist plays in a counterdiscourse to Christianity's conservative posture in Kenya; a methodological approach that blurs any assumed distance between object and subject; and the intersections, overlaps, and collaborations that have taken place in the life and work of Julius Owino—more famously known as Juliani—as an artist and the author's own as the ethnographer. This chapter provides the groundwork for later discussion by briefly examining the life and career of Juliani as well as his own relationship with the author, and by providing overviews of the major themes underpinning this volume as a whole—hip hop, youth culture, and Christianity.
