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.”

Mo’ Money Mo’ Problems

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nigel Lezama
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Conspicuous Consumption ◽  
Black American ◽  
Dominant Culture ◽  
Luxury Goods ◽  
Hip Hop Culture ◽  
Sole Purpose ◽  
Fundamental Level

At the most fundamental level, bling—the display of prestige through luxury goods—is the latest iteration of “conspicuous consumption,” coming from hip hop culture. However, hip hop artists have not consistently focused on luxury consumption for the sole purpose of celebrating—and thereby reinforcing—elite signs of the wider (and whiter) dominant culture that has historically sought (and currently seeks) to circumscribe the influence of black American culture. This chapter focuses on three tracks, from the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, that highlight ways that hip hop has questioned, satirized, and hollowed out the meanings ascribed to dominant cultural capital. Luxury hip hop and hip hop luxury also subversively reconfigure the meanings of elite symbols and highlight hip hop’s power to redefine dominant cultural signs of power.

Performing Post-Racial Asianness: K-Pop's Appropriation of Hip-Hop Culture

2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 121-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chuyun Oh
Keyword(s):  
Performance Studies ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Local Context ◽  
Audience Reception ◽  
Critical Race Studies ◽  
African American Culture ◽  
Hip Hop Culture ◽  
Dance Studies ◽  
And Gender

Drawing on theories from performance studies, dance studies, and critical race studies, this paper explores the ways in which Korean pop (K-pop)'s appropriation of hip-hop reveals a complex moment of global cultural flow. Western audience reception of K-pop is likely limited to framing K-pop either as a form of contemporary minstrelsy or a postcolonial mimicry, e.g., making fun of African American culture or a bad copy of American pop. This perspective, however, understands K-pop through the lens of American culture and only considers external signs of the performances. It fails to capture the local context in Korea, such as how and why the performers appropriate hip-hop, such as the process of embodiment and training process to learn hip-hop movement, rhythm, and styles, etc. By analyzing K-pop singer G-Dragon's (GD) music videos, this paper argues that Koreans' appropriation of American culture is neither minstrelsy nor postcolonial mimicry. K-pop's chameleonic racial and gender hybridity reveals incommensurability of contemporary Asian-ness, which I have called post-racial Asian-ness as non-racialization.

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.

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.

“His Master’s Voice” and (R)evolutionary Signifyin’

2021 ◽  
pp. 199-240
Author(s):  
M.I. Franklin
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Black Culture ◽  
Black American ◽  
Music Business ◽  
Hip Hop Culture ◽  
Cultural Borrowing ◽  
The Revolution

Chapter 6 turns to sampling as it is usually understood: integral to Hip-Hop culture. The track in point is “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” by Gil Scott-Heron, a track that others have sampled, or alluded to, countless times since its release in 1970. The chapter analyses this well-known track for its other, equally formative sonic dimensions. Lyrics do matter here for they are part of African and African American practices of “signifyin’.” Through her “sampling back,” namely, a form of answer rap, Sarah Jones inverts this iconic track thirty years later to launch a blistering critique of sexism in not only the Rap/Hip-Hop business but also the music business in general. The chapter considers the ways in which Jones’s signifyin’ on “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” literally and sonically, illustrates how musico-cultural borrowing and or as sampling are part of a broader repertoire of African American signifyin’ practices, as these are, in turn, understood as Black culture and, thereby, Black American politics.

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.

Introduction

2011 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-3
Author(s):  
Christopher Driscoll
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American Academy ◽  
Annual Meeting ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Hip Hop Culture

At the 2010 annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion held in Atlanta, GA, a group of young scholars organized a wildcard session titled “What’s This ‘Religious’ in Hip Hop Culture?” The central questions under investigation by the panel were 1) what about hip hop culture is religious? and 2) how are issues of theory and method within African American religious studies challenged and/or rethought because of the recent turn to hip hop as both subject of study and cultural hermeneutic. Though some panelists challenged this “religious” in hip hop, all agreed that hip hop is of theoretical and methodological import for African American religious studies and religious studies in general. This collection of essays brings together in print many findings from that session and points out the implications of hip hop's influence on religious scholars' theoretical and methodological concerns.

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