Hip-Hop Music and Social Identity - An Analysis on the Construction of Jim Smith in the Movie ‘8 Mile’

When it comes to American hip-hop music and rap music, people always think of the African American singers in loose clothes, the flashing lights on the dirty stage, all kinds of alcohol and cigarettes, as well as many drunken scenes. However, such a familiar scene is indeed an authentic portrayal of the United States. If you have heard about hip hop music, it is not difficult to find that many hip-hop lyrics are often full of dirty abuse, cold ridicule and sharp criticism. In a sense, hip hop music and rap music can be considered a kind of 'voice resistance' from the lower class of American society. However, it has not changed their current situation, and hip hop music and rap music are still regarded as inappropriate for children and teenagers. It is noteworthy that in recent years, with the popularity of hip-hop music, people from all over the world have gradually paid attention to this unique music style. At the same time, more and more people from the lower class of the United States are also be concerned by the U.S. government.

Waikīkī: A paradisiac‐parasitic pacific paradise

Waikīkī is a world-renowned leisure destination; at least, that is the image flung vehemently around the world about Hawaii. This framing of Hawaii as paradisiac is parasitic, it eats away and denigrates the enduring relationship that Hawaii the land and the people have. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen a shift in the way our home feels. Tourism, a self-proclaimed necessity of Hawaii’s economy, was not only put on hold, it was essentially eliminated. Through this project I would like to present pre/post-colonialist modalities of Hawaii, to contest and disarm this space densely affected by militourism. Hawaii has been framed as a leisure destination first by colonialists and much later by hip hop music. My approach to contesting these projections is to refuse this notion and feature lines from songs, chants and prayers related to Waikīkī which are pre/postcolonial and have been influenced by colonialism through hip hop.

“The Ultimate Drive by”: Racionais MC’s, Ice Cube, and the Pursuit of Blackness

Considering that hip-hop music is the foremost contemporary artistic expression of Black lives I discuss American rapper Ice Cube’s track “I wanna Kill Sam” and Brazilian group Racionais Mc’s’s track “Racistas otários”. The two tracks have in common the fact that they address the experiences of Black people through their relationship with public policies and institutions that claim to promote the emancipation of Black people in Brazil and in the USA. I, then, demonstrate that the Racionais and Ice Cube symbolically (re)dimension contemporary “Blackness” as a result of the constant physical and symbolic clashes that started back in the slavery regime.

Rap, Islam and Jihadi Cool: The attractions of the Western jihadi subculture

Recent scholarship has explored the potential of subcultural theory for understanding the convergence of Western street and jihadi subcultures. The role of jihadi rap in this radical hybrid culture, however, is yet uncharted. We argue that subcultural analysis allows an understanding of the aesthetic fascination of jihadism, sometimes referred to as jihadi cool, and that jihadi rap should be seen as an integrated part of this cultural amalgam. To better understand the role of hip-hop in the hybrid street-jihadi culture, this paper offers a historical analysis of the relationship between hip-hop and Islam and detailed insight into the more contemporary, and marginal, phenomena of jihadi rap. We track the continuities and discontinuities from the presence of Black Islam in early hip hop to recent convergences between hip hop and jihadism. Our analysis draws on Lévi-Strauss concepts of bricolage and floating signifiers. Subcultures and hip-hop music are seen as bricolages that draw on a multitude of cultural references with their own particular history. In these cultural bricolages, Islam often acts as a floating signifier, with different and often ambiguous meanings. We argue and demonstrate that Islam has a long history of being part of hip-hop rebellion and attraction and that this, channelled through jihadi rap, can contribute to jihadi cool and the contemporary pull of Western jihadi subcultures.

"The Cashtro Hop Project" Hip Hop music and an exploration of the construction of artistic self-identity

While Hip Hop culture has regularly been legitimized within academia as a social phenomenon worthy of scholarly attention (witness the growing number of studies and disciplines now taking Hip Hop as object for analysis), this is the first Hip Hop-themed project being completed within the academy. Indeed, academic and critical considerations of one's own Hip Hop-based musical production is a novel venture; this project, as a fusion of theory with practice, has thus been undertaken so as to occupy that gap. The paper's specific concern is with how (independent) Hip Hop recording artists work to construct their own selves and identity (as formed primarily through lyrical content); the aim here is to explore Hip Hop music and the construction of artistic self· presentation. I therefore went about the task of creating my own album - my own Hip Hop themed musical product - in order to place myself in the unique position to examine it critically as cultural artifact, as well as to write commentary and (self-)analyses concerning various aspects of (my) identity formation. The ensuing outlined tripartite theoretical framework is to serve as a model through which other rappers/academics may think about, discuss, and analyze their own musical output, their own identities, their own selves.