Academic Texts/Books:
Gilroy, P. (1991). 'There ain't no black in the Union Jack': The cultural politics of race and nation. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
"the social movements which have sprung up in different parts of the world as evidence of African dispersal, imperialism and colonialism have done more than appeal to blacks everywhere in a language which could invite their universal identificated (Sheppard et al 1975)"
-essentially social movements have become something that has created a universal interest for black people and things like hip-hop music and rap music has allowed black people to come together to address the issues that they face
"The back-to-Africa movements in America, the Caribbean and now Europe, Negritude and the birth of the New Negro in the Harlem Renaissance (Perry, 1976, Berghan, 1977) during the 1920s all provide further illustrations of a multi-faceted desire to overcome the sclerotic confines of the nation state as a precondition of the liberation of blacks everywhere (Padmore, 1956)"
-These are the movements that enabled blacks to be liberated and therefore overcome their constraints as anything less than human. This is how the liberation of black people started, essentially from these movements
"Analysis must for example be able to suggest why Afrika Bambaataa and Jah Shaka, leading representatives of hip-hop and reggae culture respectively, find it appropriate to take the names of African chiefs distinguished in anti-colonial struggle"
-what is interesting within the hip-hop and rap genre especially is how black rappers address people as a 'nigga' and therefore brings about a negative word however showing they are not afraid of the word anymore and changing it into a positive thing. However, the constant referral back to slavery and African tribes is almost hypocritical as black artists should feel liberated from their past ancestors and therefore be able to move past it. The counter argument to this is of course the fact that people should not forget their past and where they came from, therefore black rap artists may feel as though they need to educate the ignorant.
"Hip-hop culture had its origins in the adaptation of Jamaican sound system techniques and styles to the dance sub-culture of South Bronx"
"soul and reggae still reveal the primary ethical and semantic influence of the Bible on new world black cultures"
-a large amount of black artists always come back to God and the Bible within their music, Lamar is an artist who particularly mentions God and within his songs there are sometimes even biblical references. It's interesting because grime artists also refer to God, Krept and Konan are great examples of artists who always come back to God and looking up to him as a higher power.
Kaplan
Hall, S., Evans, J., & Nixon, S. (2013). Representation. London: Sage.
"Stuart Hall (1982) has underlined this splitting in the 'imperial eye' by suggesting that for every threatening image of the black subject as a marauding narrative, menacing savage or rebellious slave, there is a comforting image of the black as a doule servant, amusing down and happy entertainer"
-two sides of a black person are seen in the media, especially within journalism. A black athlete is seen as a positive and praised elitist and the black criminal is seen as the stereotype that most conform too.
Gray, J., Sandvoss, C., & Harrington, C. L. (2007). Fandom: Identities and communities in a mediated world. New York: New York University Press.
"One could love [music], but its embededness in social functions made more likely that one loved that which the music enabled. But commodification encouraged an attachment to music's own singular effects"
-Commodification was the thing that made music worth something, this could be argued as something that has made music less valuable - example Immortal Technique and underground rap - institutionalisation - Kendrick Lamar's TPAB song, Institutionalised explains the effects of institutions on the rap industry.
Bloom, L. (2014). Suspicion nation: The inside story of the Trayvon Martin injustice and why we continue to repeat it. Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint.
“And yet Trayvon, somehow, on that wet, black, low-visibility night, saw through the bulk of Zimmerman’s body, through Zimmerman’s shirt, through his jacket to a matte black gun concealed in a matte black holster clipped inside his waistband. Can anyone possibly believe this story?”
-this ironic statement commented by Bloom exaggerates the situation and creates this hyperbole of the truth
-the exaggeration almost adds more depth to the story and reveals the harsh reality of the Trayvon Martin case
Rome, D. (2004). Black demons: The media's depiction of the African American male criminal stereotype. Westport, CT: Praeger.
“we do not come to the experience of mass media and popular culture as blank slates waiting to be written upon or voids waiting to be filled”
-the media cannot be to blame for their influence as it is always down to the individual in terms of what they want to be influenced by
“The public perception of African Americans as inferior provides the basis of acceptability for the most outrageous lies”
-we conform to the idea that African Americans are at the heart of all criminal activities due to the stereotype, therefore Rome suggests that this has become the basis and is what society is built to believe now; this links to the Marxist theory of Hegemony, Gramsci believes that individuals of a higher status are able to create an influence of social conformity and therefore the mass media and the representation of black people has been stereotyped and commodified to be socially accepted – it paces back to the 1619 and the history of slavery
Rose, T. (1994). Black noise: Rap music and black culture in contemporary America. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England.
-she speaks from a “pro-black, biracial, ex-working-class, New York based feminist, left cultural critic” point of view
“Rap’s contradictory articulations are not signs of absent intellectual clarity; they are a common feature of community and popular culture dialogues that always offer more than one cultural, social or political viewpoint”
-this idea of rap holding polyvocal conversations is an extremely valid point made by Rose, however her basis of saying that rap as a whole is an embodiment of empowerment is an over emphasised statement that almost commodifies all rap being able to hold positive social expression.
“Rap music is a genre that was born out of slave spirituals, blues, jazz, and ‘‘soul’’ as a musical expression of African American tradition”
Russell, K. (1999). The Color of Crime: Racial Hoaxes, White Fear, Black Protectionism, Police Harassment and Other Macroagressions. NYU Press.
“black success stories do not counterbalance images of black deviance [...] In many instances Black superstars are not perceived in terms of their blackness”
“become colourless, while those blacks who conform to the criminal stereotype remain ‘black’”
-this highlights the problems within society and how status controls most. It relates to the Marxist term of the bourgeoisie and how the higher classes and the ruling status’ hold dominant power and change conventions
Chang, J. (2005). Can't stop, won't stop: A history of the hip-hop generation. New York: St. Martin's Press.
“’Keeping it real’ has become just another fad word. It sounds cute. But it has been pimped and perverted. It ain’t about keeping it real. It’s about keeping it right”
-Chang focuses on the fact that the hip-hop genre is glamorised by the negative music and the fact that this music gets the most recognition shows that the media is not the problem but audiences themselves as negative music is what they essentially want to hear
-Artists that socially comment on their music and have a positive influence essentially target a more niche market
“When America desegregated, the music business itself remained one of the most segregated industries in the country.”
-Reveals the influence of music and how it has an impact on audiences therefore remained apart from the rest of society
Rose, T. (2008). The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop--and Why It Matters. Basic Civitas Books.
“if the late Tupac Shakur were a newly signed artist today, I believe he’d likely be considered a socially conscious rapper and thus relegated to the margins of the commercial hip-hop field”
-Rose believes that artists today are producing music that meets societal expectations, however I disagree with her viewpoint as Lamar subverts this as he socially comments through his music just like Tupac did
“The gangsta life and all its attendant violence, criminality, sexual deviance, and misogyny have, over the last decade especially, stood at the heart of what appeared to be ever-increasing hip hop record sales”
“Between 1990 and 1998, the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA) reported that rap captured on average, 9-10 percent of music sales in the United States”
“Hip hop came of age at the beginning of a new technological revolution. After the late 1970s, when hip hop emerged onto the public scene, all forms of media technology exponentially expanded”
“Mass media consolidation was rendered even more profound for the record industry after the Telecommunications Act of 1966”
“we live in a popular culture world in which violent stories, images, lyrics, and performances occupy a wide cross-section of genres and mediums.
David Cameron, bbc.com, June 7th, 2006 - “I would say to Radio 1, do you realise that some of the stuff that you play on Saturday nights encourages people to carry guns and knives?”
-the belief that rappers and hip hop artists are advocates of violence
Terkourafi, M. (2010). The Languages of Global Hip-hop (Advances in Sociolinguistics). Continuum International Publishing Group.“globally hip-hop artists offer incisive critiques of dominant cultures, engage with local issues of ethnicity and power, and address in different ways the legitimacy of their appropriation of what is traditionally deemed to be a Black genre”
Osumare, H. (2007). The Africanist aesthetic in global hip-hop: Power moves. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
https://youthcultureandprotest.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/osumare_hip-hop-globe.pdf
“rap music and the entire expressive culture of hip hop resonate not only with the anxiety of youthful social rebellion, but extant global socio-political inequities as well.”
“Connective Marginalities: Hip Hop Around the World From global street culture to the World Wide Web, hip hop culture is not difficult to locate. The Internet provides copious sites across the map where one can travel to diverse international hip hop scenes at the click of a computer mouse in the comfort of one's own home”
-The effects of new and digital media makes it easier for audiences to be involved with political music and to locate and even be part of it
“Hip hop's global resonance reflects connective marginalities both in sites that one might anticipate as well as the less expected.”
Chuck, D., Jah, Y. (1998). Fight the Power: Rap, Race and Reality. Delta
“For too long I’ve felt that this art form is tossed aside as a Ghetto game for black youth and that limited opinion is ignorant”
“Many in the world of hip-hop have begun to believe that the only way to blow up and become megastars is by presenting themselves in a negative light”
“Tupac had a plan to bring everybody to the table with the ‘thug for life’ image, and then he was going to flip the tables at the last minute”
“Once I realised that I’m a voice that people listen to, I realised I had to fill my voice with something of substance”
“My goal is to be used as a viaduct, as a dispatcher of information. Television is the last plateau. We need programs representing our voice and interpretation, which come out and say the things that need to be said, and can be challenging and entertaining at the same time”
“It’s such a serious issue because the derogatory programming leads to a point where life imitates art, and a blur develops between fantasy and reality. I believe that television is one of the main reasons for the criminal mindedness of Black youth”
-this could be seen as an endless loop as the blame is circular from one blame to another
Dates, J., Barlow, W. (1993). Split Image: African Americans in the Mass Media. Howard University Press
Historian Joseph Boskins statement – “To make the black man into an object of laughter, and conversely, to force him to devise laughter, was to strip him from masculinity, dignity and self-respect”
“The dominant culture must constantly strive to expand its hegemony while fending off challenges and interventions from the very classes and groups it seeks to subjugate”
“Hall argues that the terrain of culture is polarized around popular forces versus the power bloc, rather than class against class. In his studies of representation and ideology, Hall and others have noted the importance of the rituals of social behaviour in which ideologies imprint or inscribe themselves”
“Hall also argues that there are a range of possible responses to mediated images that allow for negotiated as well as oppositional readings, hence a decoding of media messages that differs from what the sender encoded for transmission”
“Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of heteroglassia – unpredictable multiple voices that that interact with one another to form a new totality – focuses attention on the dialogic nature of cultural message”
“Historian Robert Toll ably summarised the social dynamics of antebellum minstrelsy: ‘Black face performers were like puppets operated by a white puppet master’”
Ghansah, R. (2013). When the Lights Shut Off: Kendrick Lamar and the Decline of the Black Blues Narrative. LARB
“In the summer of 1945, Ralph Ellison wrote a review of Richard Wright’s ‘Black Boy’, Wright’s semiautobiographical novel about his tough boyhood in Mississippi. In Ellison’s piece he suggested that ‘Black Boy’ is shaped more by the blues tradition”
“Ellison would explain that, ‘The blues is an impulse to keep the painful details and episodes of a brutal experience alive in one’s aching consciousness’”
“What makes him important is the way in which the autobiographical ‘good kid m.a.a.d city’ is so novelistic and so eloquently anchored in the literary blues tradition of which Ellison wrote”
“Lamar is equal parts oral historian and authorial presence”
Morrison, T. (1987). Beloved. United States. Alfred Knopf.
This novel revolves around the theme of slavery and reveals similarities between Kendrick’s speech and hers. This novel is fragmented and split into 3 parts at the beginning of each, the house 124 Bluestone Road is analysed.
“124 was spiteful”
“124 was loud”
“124 was quiet”
“This is not a story to pass on”
The symbolism of 124 could be representative of slavery; the effects of slavery were ‘spiteful,’ slaves would attempt to speak out and become ‘loud’ but would always get silenced and are ‘quiet.’ Or, the effects of slavery being ‘loud’ could represent how it is a moment in history that can never be forgotten and was happening as part of society, the idea of this being ‘quiet’ now could represent the emancipation of slaves.
Lee, H. (1960). To Kill A Mockingbird. United States. J. B. Lippincott & Co
This novel focuses on the discrimination of black people in America – from a white author this makes this novel interesting as a white man defends a black man, something that was seen as ‘wrong’
“Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird”
The most iconic and significant quote of the novel, represents the black male, Tom Robinson as a ‘mockingbird’ someone who is innocent and needs protection rather than a meaningless character. The moral is it’s a sin to lie so it’s a sin to wrongly accuse someone just because of the colour of the skin.
Dyson, M. E. (2004). The Michael Eric Dyson reader. New York: Basic Civitas Books.
“hip-hop culture, to the chagrin of a whole lot of black folk, has literally darkened the face – some would say given it a black eye – of popular music”
“as it became obvious that rap was here to stay, a permanent fixture in black ghetto youths’ musical landscape, the reaction changed from dismissal to denigration, and rap music came under attack from both black and white quarters”
“the most influential and important rap song to emerge in rap’s early history, ‘The Message,’ by Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five.”
“’The Message’ along with Flash’s ‘New York, New York,’ pioneered the social-awakening of rap into a form combining social protest, musical creation, and cultural expression”
“a shallow understanding of rap, which in many cases results from people’s unwillingness to listen to rap lyrics, many of which counsel antiviolent and antidrug behaviour among the youths who are their avid audience”
Angelou, M. (1969). I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. United States. Random House.
-metaphor, that of a bird struggling to escape its cage, is a central image throughout the work, which consists of a sequence of lessons about resisting racist oppression. Angelou's treatment of racism provides a thematic unity to the book. Literacy and the power of words help young Maya cope with her bewildering world; books become her refuge as she works through her trauma.
-links to J Cole Caged Bird.
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