The Original Renegade

This chapter provides a critical framework for understanding the symbiotic relationship between hip hop and Dubsmash. Influenced by scholarship in critical race theory, gender studies, and hip hop, this chapter explores how Renegades have forged an inclusive digital community through Dubsmash. This chapter argues that Dubsmash’s culture of giving credit is the nexus from which a shared sense of values grows, one that encourages Dubsmashers to recognize the work of other artists. To demonstrate this, this chapter uses Jalaiah Harmon, the “Original Renegade,” as a case study. Harmon’s origin story from anonymous viral dance creator to full-blown celebrity status demonstrates how hip hop values operate in the Dubsmash community.

Outro

The Outro explores how the Renegades throughout this book used their social media platforms and clout to further social justice messages during the height of the renewed Black Lives Matter movement following the murder of George Floyd in summer 2020. Renegade Zoomers played a significant role in celebrating Blackness and made many of these “moves” on social media. Whether it was through attending marches, creating viral dance challenges, or producing new music, Renegades positioned their creativity, joy, and labor as central to the movement for Black lives. Their work forced onlookers, moreover, to recognize the labor of Black girls in our social movements. Renegades reveal, ultimately, that the revolution will be digital.

Digital Communities

This chapter explores Dubsmash and TikTok, two related but divergent social media apps. While providing a critical overview of the apps that facilitates the analysis that follows, this chapter examines their racial divide, arguing that Dubsmash is a Black space and that TikTok is a White space. An understanding of the racial politics of the social media dance world is essential to painting a full picture of how Zoomers of color navigate digital spaces to create content that then becomes the mainstream and to push against systems of White Supremacy, misogyny, homophobia, and the like.

This Bridge Called Dubsmash

This chapter analyzes the varied ways that Renegades build digital communities using Dubsmash and Instagram. It argues that online communities hold the potential to democratize access and reject coastal biases typically seen in popular US culture. The traditional entertainment centers of Los Angeles and New York City, while still important, are relegated to second-tier status behind cities such as Dallas, Houston, and Atlanta, in addition to less populated areas across the American South. By taking up digital space on an inclusive platform, Renegades re-center traditional scripts of community building, effectively demonstrating the necessity for culturally responsive communities. These Dubsmashers search for what is familiar and lay the groundwork for equity and inclusion from there, promoting a shared sense of values that enables a plurality of voices to rise to the top. The chapter uses the official Dubsmash Instagram account as a case study, unpacking the nuanced ways that Dubsmash promotes the work of its most well-known influencers alongside a growing set of Renegades who show brand loyalty by regularly engaging with the app and who promote this subset of hip hop culture through their micro-performances on Dubsmash. Specifically, this chapter explores the different ways that Dubsmash has used dance challenge and games to bring people together and further a sense of connection during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020.

Gone Viral

This chapter explores how Dubsmash and other music-based apps can become fundamental digital spaces for hip hop artists not only to shape a distinct identity but also to establish their careers, even as the apps also threaten to render these artists invisible in moments of virality that divorce content from creator. By closely reading the digital presence of Renegades TisaKorean, Brooklyn Queen, and Kayla Nicole Jones, this chapter explore how musicians position themselves as both music and dance content creators on Dubsmash to gain a following. The case of TisaKorean—the rapper who introduced the world to the now-iconic dance move the Mop—speaks to the power of going viral in the digital age. Likewise, hip hop artist Brooklyn Queen and comedian and rapper Kayla Nicole Jones have been able to leverage their popularity on Dubsmash, TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube to cement their music careers.

When Karen Slides into Your DMs

This chapter uses my experiences as both a Dubsmasher and a teacher to unpack the role that language plays in identity formation. Specifically, it analyzes outsiders’ perceptions of Renegades in tandem with the linguistic and theatrical ways that Renegades push against the dominant narrative. The argument is that the relationship between language, race, and power influences how Dubsmashers such as my students construct their identities through music as well as how others criticize those same identity formations. I again use my classroom as a case study, here focusing on what I refer to as “a tale of four messages,” or a one-hour period in January 2020 in which I posted a Dub of my students and me dancing to “COOKIE SHOP” by ZaeHD & CEO and then immediately received four messages—one hypercritical message from a White follower and three supportive messages from Black followers. This case study offers a point of departure to unpack the ways that White outsiders attempt to police language and, by extension, the cultures of my students and other Renegades.

Moving as One

This chapter explores how dancing in unison helps Renegades create stronger relationships and a more formidable sense of community. I use my own classroom experiences with my students as a case study in community-focused pedagogy. Building off of research on Broadway chorus lines and military formations/drills, this chapter analyzes the role of unison movement and muscular bonding in making Dubsmash videos. The chapter argues that dancing in unison with students on Dubsmash creates an affective response that helps build stronger relationships between students and teachers. As such, this chapter is a testament as to how Dubsmash can be used as a tool of hip hop education and culturally responsive teaching. To further demonstrate how Renegades materialize in the high school classroom, this chapter also features interviews with other dancing teachers. Dubsmash pushes against the barriers typically seen between teachers and students in public education, effectively becoming a tool of anti-racist community building.

Introduction

The Introduction begins with an overview of the Renegade dance’s popularity and the major players who made the dance challenge go viral—namely, TikTok sensation Charli D’Amelio who is the app’s most-followed account, and Georgia teen Jalaiah Harmon who created the dance but wasn’t given any credit for it until the Dubsmash community mobilized around her. The story of the Renegade dance challenge, D’Amelio, and Harmon serves as an entry point into a conversation about the teen artists of color in this book, whom the book labels “Renegades.” Riffing off the viral “Renegade” dance to K-Camp’s “Lottery,” the book reappropriates the term to embody the nuanced ways that Dubsmash users, or self-professed Dubsmashers, use digital hip hop culture and platforms to push again the pervasive Whiteness in mainstream US pop culture, as evidenced on apps such as TikTok. Renegades take up visual and sonic space on social media apps to self-fashion identity, form supportive digital communities, and exert agency to take up space that is often denied to them in other facets of their lives. The Introduction continues with a review of extant literature in social media and youth identity formation, with a particular focus on how Black teens engage with digital spaces. From there, it lays the groundwork for a theory of “Renegades.”