From Jim Crow to Jay-Z

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miles White
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Black Male ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Young Male ◽  
Black Masculinity ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Body ◽  
Hip Hop Culture ◽  
Action Films ◽  
Jay Z

This multilayered study of the representation of black masculinity in musical and cultural performance takes aim at the reduction of African American male culture to stereotypes of deviance, misogyny, and excess. Broadening the significance of hip-hop culture by linking it to other expressive forms within popular culture, the book examines how these representations have both encouraged the demonization of young black males in the United States and abroad and contributed to the construction of their identities. The book traces black male representations to chattel slavery and American minstrelsy as early examples of fetishization and commodification of black male subjectivity. Continuing with diverse discussions including black action films, heavyweight prizefighting, Elvis Presley's performance of blackness, and white rappers such as Vanilla Ice and Eminem, the book establishes a sophisticated framework for interpreting and critiquing black masculinity in hip-hop music and culture. Arguing that black music has undeniably shaped American popular culture and that hip-hop tropes have exerted a defining influence on young male aspirations and behavior, the book draws a critical link between the body, musical sound, and the construction of identity.

Race Rebels

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miles White
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Black Male ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Black Body ◽  
Black Music ◽  
Hip Hop Culture ◽  
Elvis Presley ◽  
Male Subjectivity ◽  
New Millennium

This chapter discusses whiteness, masculine desire, and the animating absent black presence now inverted since its inception in minstrelsy. It shows how the triumph of hardcore rap makes it clear that the transgressive black body, primitivism, and cross-racial desire continue to find value in the marketplace of global popular culture well into the new millennium. The chapter also looks at a number of successful white performers of black music styles, including Elvis Presley, Vanilla Ice, Eminem, and Brother Ali; and addresses whether there are more or less ethical ways in which white and other youth may engage hip-hop culture and appropriations of black male subjectivity.

Real Niggas

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miles White
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Black Males ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Crack Cocaine ◽  
Hip Hop Culture ◽  
Young Males ◽  
Public Enemy ◽  
Jay Z

This chapter discusses the performance of blackness and masculinity in hip-hop performance, the trope of the bad nigger and the notion of the hard man, and how African American performers have engaged the sign of blackness in both pejorative and empowering ways. For young males—blacks, whites, indeed of many racial and ethnic stripes—hardcore rap transformed black males from the 'hood into totemic performers of a powerful masculine authenticity and identity at a time in which there appeared to be few real men left. The chapter also discusses the crack cocaine epidemic in the 1980s and how the intrusion of gang and drug cultures contributed to the transformation of hip-hop culture, the performance of masculinity within that culture, and the influence of a number of seminal artists including Run-DMC, N.W.A., Public Enemy, and Jay-Z.

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 Jay-Z and O.J.: Sport and the Performance of Race in Hip-Hop Music

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 192-206
Author(s):  
Kellen Jamil Northcutt ◽  
Kayla Henderson ◽  
Kaylee Chicoski
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
The United States ◽  
Video Data ◽  
Hip Hop Music ◽  
Jay Z ◽  
The Impact

The purpose of this study was to understand the symbolic messaging in hip-hop music as it relates to the lived experiences and realities of Black Americans in the United States. The study examined the song and music video titled “The Story of O.J.,” by hip-hop artist Jay-Z to gain a better understanding of how Jay-Z interpreted the impact of Black Americans’ lived experiences in the United States on their identity and ability to progress economically and socially, regardless of social standing, within subcultures such as sport. Employing a content analysis method, data were collected and analyzed using critical race theory. The results of the analysis of lyrical and video data identified three major themes: (a) battle with Blackness, (b) economic enslavement and financial freedom, and (c) systematic subjugation.

scholarly journals THE INFLUENCE AND THE ADVANTAGE OF AMERICAN HIP HOP TO THE RISING ASIAN RAPPERS

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Mayza Nisrin Abielah
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Gain Control ◽  
The United States ◽  
Asian Immigrants ◽  
Cultural Imperialism ◽  
Dominant Culture ◽  
Hip Hop Culture ◽  
The World

Cultural imperialism aims at how dominant culture affects other cultures to gain control of certain cultures and create the view that their dominant culture is the center for all countries in the world, which will create uniformity around the world. Therefore, this study will discuss how Asian rappers are influenced by American hip hop culture and how they benefitted from their careers’ success. The theory used in this study is cultural imperialism by John Tomlinson to see the influence of cultural imperialism in American hip hop culture to Asian rappers. The method used in this study is qualitative research by Creswell. The result shows that America’s cultural imperialism influences Asian Rappers by adopting its culture, language, and style of American hip hop. However, its influence is not harmful since the Asian rappers use this to gain more recognition from people, especially in Western, and to be accepted in representing Asian immigrants in the United States.

Epilogue

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miles White
Keyword(s):  
Black Male ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Black American ◽  
Male Body ◽  
American Power ◽  
Hip Hop Culture ◽  
Mediated Images

This concluding chapter examines how, in the post-MTV world of video culture and the post-hardcore rap world of commodity thugs, mediated images of the black male body remain a fantasy of masculine desire that encapsulates extreme alternatives of heroism and villainy for white and other youth who often have few other references for black American culture. It reiterates on the conclusions drawn from the previous chapters; and furthermore examines the implications of Barack Obama's 2008 electoral victory, his engagement and association with hip-hop culture, his triumph over American power expressed through whiteness, and his overall role as what the author here terms as “the first hip-hop president.”

The Fire This Time

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miles White
Keyword(s):  
Black Male ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Black Masculinity ◽  
Male Body ◽  
Cultural Complex ◽  
Racial Perceptions ◽  
Hip Hop Music ◽  
Geographical Locations

This chapter focuses on comparisons between minstrelsy and constructions of black masculinity in hip-hop music and culture, particularly the context of hard and hardcore styles of rap performance. Since minstrelsy, blackness has been one of America's primary cultural exports. Furthermore, hip-hop music and culture have been integral in the construction of a new cultural complex of racial perceptions about black masculinity and the black male body. In addition, the chapter shows how black masculinity can be relocated and transposed not simply to other geographical locations, but onto other kinds of bodies in representations that reproduce and perpetuate pejorative understandings of black subjectivities.

Hip-Hop’s Authentic Masculinity: A Quare Reading of Fox’s Empire

2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 225-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathian Shae Rodriguez
Keyword(s):  
Hip Hop ◽  
Black Masculinity ◽  
Black Culture ◽  
Music Videos ◽  
Popular Media ◽  
Media Content ◽  
Hip Hop Culture ◽  
Television Shows ◽  
Black Gay Men ◽  
And Behavior

Black masculinity in the hip-hop culture often promotes instances of homophobia, effeminophobia, and misogyny. To reify an “authentic” black masculinity, individuals within the hip-hop genre police its boundaries through discourse and behavior. This policing is evident in popular media content like songs, music videos, interviews, television shows, and film. These media depictions can, over time, cultivate the attitudes and opinions of the viewing public about homosexuals and their place within black culture, specifically in hip-hop. Through a quare lens, the study investigates how Fox’s television show Empire helps construct and maintain stereotypical representations of black gay men against the milieu of hip-hop. Empire reifies queer stereotypes and highlights conventions of black masculinity and hip-hop authenticity.

scholarly journals Book Review. The Rhizome of Blackness: A critical ethnography of Hip-Hop Culture, Language, Identity, and the Politics of Becoming.

2015 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Leigh-Anne Ingram
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
North American ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Black Identity ◽  
Black Youth ◽  
Critical Ethnography ◽  
Hip Hop Culture ◽  
Language Identity ◽  
Black Popular Culture

This book review analyzes Awad Ibrahim's 2014 book, entitled: The Rhizome of Blackness: A critical ethnography of Hip-Hop Culture, Language, Identity and the Politics of Becoming, published by Peter Lang. This review introduces the rhizomatic analysis used in the book to theorize the complex and multifaceted nature of Black identity within the North American context. It gives an overview of the critical ethnographic projects Ibrahim uses to illustrate the ways that Black youth are forced to deny their complex identities to fit into dominant White society, while also finding a heteroglossia of expressions in a third space through Black popular culture. The book review supports Ibrahim's proposal of using Hip-Hop and Black popular culture for a project of diversification to validate Black youth, while asking if using Hip-Hop might foreclose other opportunities to learn about expressions of Black culture beyond the confines of North American Corporate media. The book review argues that the Rhizome of Blackness provides important messages for educators about Black identity and the social construction of identity and nationhood.

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