discussing a scholarly article(short essay) 6 hours only

© 2011 by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences

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Hip-Hop & the Global Imprint of a Black Cultural Form

Marcyliena Morgan & Dionne Bennett

MARCYLIENAMORGAN is Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard Uni- versity. Her publications include Language, Discourse and Power in African American Culture (2002), The Real Hiphop: Battling for Knowl- edge, Power, and Respect in the LA Underground (2009), and “Hip- hop and Race: Blackness, Lan- guage, and Creativity” (with Dawn-Elissa Fischer), in Doing Race: 21 Essays for the 21st Century (ed. Hazel Rose Markus and Paula M.L. Moya, 2010).

DIONNEBENNETT is an Assis- tant Professor of African Ameri- can Studies at Loyola Marymount University. She is the author of Sepia Dreams: A Celebration of Black Achievement Through Words and Images (with photographer Mat- thew Jordan Smith, 2001) and “Looking for the ’Hood and Find- ing Community: South Central, Race, and Media” in Black Los Angeles: American Dreams and Racial Realities (2010).

To me, hip-hop says, “Come as you are.” We are a family. . . . Hip-hop is the voice of this generation. It has become a powerful force. Hip-hop binds all of these people, all of these nationalities, all over the world together. Hip-hop is a family so everybody has got to pitch in. East, west, north or south–we come from one coast and that coast was Africa.

–dj Kool Herc

Through hip-hop, we are trying to ½nd out who we are, what we are. That’s what black people in Amer- ica did.

–mc Yan1

It is nearly impossible to travel the world without encountering instances of hip-hop music and cul- ture. Hip-hop is the distinctive graf½ti lettering styles that have materialized on walls worldwide. It is the latest dance moves that young people per- form on streets and dirt roads. It is the bass beats and styles of dress at dance clubs. It is local mcs on microphones with hands raised and moving to the beat as they “shout out to their crews.” Hip- hop is everywhere!

The International Federation of the Phono- graphic Industry (ifpi) reported that hip-hop music represented half of the top-ten global dig- ital songs in 2009.2 Hip-hop refers to the music, arts, media, and cultural movement and commu- nity developed by black and Latino youth in the mid-1970s on the East Coast of the United States.

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It is distinguished from the term rap in that it does not focus solely on spoken lyrics. Hip-hop initially comprised the artistic elements of (1) deejaying and turntabalism, (2) the delivery and lyri- cism of rapping and emceeing, (3) break dancing and other forms of hip-hop dance, (4) graf½ti art and writing, and (5) a system of knowledge that unites them all.3 Hip-hop knowledge refers to the aesthetic, social, intellectual, and political identities, beliefs, behaviors, and values produced and embraced by its members, who generally think of hip-hop as an identity, a worldview, and a way of life. Thus, across the world, hip- hop “heads” (or “headz”)–as mem- bers of hip-hop culture describe them- selves–frequently proclaim, “I am hip-hop.”4

As hip-hop has grown in global popu- larity, its de½ant and self-de½ning voices have been both multiplied and ampli½ed as they challenge conventional concepts of identity and nationhood. Global hip- hop has emerged as a culture that en- courages and integrates innovative prac- tices of artistic expression, knowledge production, social identi½cation, and political mobilization. In these respects, it transcends and contests conventional constructions of identity, race, nation, community, aesthetics, and knowledge. Although the term is not of½cial, the use of “hip-hop nation” to describe the citi- zens of the global hip-hop cultural com- munity is increasingly common. More- over, it is one of the most useful frame- works for understanding the passionate and enduring investment hip-hop heads have in hip-hop culture. The hip-hop nation is an international, transnational, multiracial, multiethnic, multilingual community made up of individuals with diverse class, gender, and sexual identi- ties. While hip-hop heads come from all age groups, hip-hop culture is primarily

youth driven. Citizenship in the hip-hop nation is de½ned not by conventional national or racial boundaries, but by a commitment to hip-hop’s multimedia arts culture, a culture that represents the social and political lives of its members.5 In this way, the hip-hop nation shares the contours of what international stud- ies scholar Benedict Anderson calls an “imagined community,” a term he uses to explain the concept of nationhood itself.6 Though not a conventional polit- ical community, it sometimes functions in that manner.

The hip-hop nation serves as an imag- ined cultural community and, just as im- portant, it functions as a community of imagination–or an imagination com- munity. Its artistic practices are not merely part of its culture; rather, they are the central, driving force that de½nes and sustains it. Moreover, hip-hop cul- ture is based on a democratizing creative and aesthetic ethos, which historically has permitted any individual who com- bines authentic self-presentation with highly developed artistic skills in his or her hip-hop medium to become a legitimate hip-hop artist. Because most hip-hop artists are self-taught or taught by peers in the hip-hop community, hip- hop has empowered young people of all socioeconomic backgrounds all over the world to become artists in their own right. That is, it has supported artists whose worth is validated not by com- mercial success or elitist cultural criti- cism, but by the respect of their peers in local hip-hop communities as well as by their own sense of artistic achieve- ment and integrity.

Intellectual debate by hip-hop heads about hip-hop art and culture is also a central feature; thus, regardless of their artistic ability, young people worldwide are developing into what political theorist Antonio Gramsci describes as “organic

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178 Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences

intellectuals”: those who use hip-hop to develop critical thinking and analytical skills that they can apply to every aspect of their lives.7 The result is the emer- gence of local hip-hop “scenes,” where young people practice the elements of hip-hop and debate, represent, and cri- tique the cultural form and their social lives.

The signi½cance of these scenes became apparent in the early months of 2011, a time that proved to be among the most politically signi½cant in the re- cent history of hip-hop culture. When revolution swept through North Africa and the Middle East, it did so to the sound of hip-hop music. In North Africa, where young people played a central role in the national protest movements, hip-hop emerged as the music of free speech and political resistance.

It began in Tunisia. A week before the self-immolation of fruit vendor Mohamed Bouazizi became a catalyst for national protest, a twenty-one-year- old Tunisian mc released a hip-hop song that has been described by TIME maga- zine as “the rap anthem of the Mideast revolution.” Hamada Ben Amor, who is known by his mc name, El Général, told TIME that he has been inspired by Afri- can American hip-hop artist Tupac Sha- kur, whose lyrics he describes as “revo- lutionary.”8 For years, the government had banned El Général’s music from the radio and forbid him from performing or making albums. In December 2010, the artist posted the protest rap “Rais Lebled” (which translates as “President of the Republic” or “Head of State”) on YouTube. The video went viral on You- Tube and Facebook and was broadcast on Al Jazeera. Tunisian youth found the song so compelling–and the government found it so threatening–that after El Général released another hip-hop song supporting the protest movement,

thirty police of½cers arrested him. Over- whelming public protest following his arrest prompted a phone call from then- President Ben Ali; days later, he was released.9 Within weeks, the nation- al protest movement led to Ben Ali’s removal, and in late January 2011, El Général performed the song live, for the ½rst time, before an audience of pro- testers in the nation’s capital city.10

El Général’s songs became popular with young Egyptians, who had their own hip- hop soundtrack for Egypt’s national rev- olution. Despite government warnings, Egyptian hip-hop crew Arabian Knightz released its song “Rebel” in support of the protest. Soon, hip-hop artists all over the world began to express solidarity with the Egyptian revolutionary movement by recording songs and posting them online. Master Mimz, a Moroccan-born, Unit- ed Kingdom-based woman mc, released “Back Down Mubarak” in support of the movement. The song includes a feminist class critique as she rhymes, “First give me a job / Then let’s talk about my hijab.”

After President Mubarak resigned as a result of the protest, Al-Masry Al-Youm, one of Egypt’s largest independent news- papers, noted on its English-language website, “Although singers af½liated with various musical styles have shown sup- port for the Egyptian people, the style that prevailed–or at least that had the biggest impact–in this ½ght for freedom and liberty is rap music. East and west, north and south, rappers have emerged as the voice of the revolution.”11

In February 2011, inspired by the pro- test activities throughout North Africa and the Middle East, a group of Libyan hip-hop artists in exile compiled Khalas Mixtape Vol. 1: North African Hip Hop Artists Unite. (Khalas means “enough” in Arabic.) The album features songs by artists from Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Algeria.

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The global influence of hip-hop directly relates to its popularity as a major music source among youth in the United States. In 1996, there were 19 million young peo- ple aged ten to fourteen years old and 18.4 million aged ½fteen to nineteen liv- ing in the United States.12 According to a national Gallup poll of adolescents between the ages of thirteen and seven- teen in 1992, hip-hop music had become the preferred music of youth (26 percent), followed closely by rock (25 percent).13 Moreover, the Recording Industry Asso- ciation of America (riaa) reports that from 1999 to 2008, hip-hop music was the second-most-purchased music after rock for all age groups.

There is a growing body of scholarship on hip-hop as well. Academic analyses of hip-hop culture began to appear in the 1990s and include the 1994 publication of Tricia Rose’s Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America and Russell Potter’s Spectacular Vernacu- lars: Hip-Hop and the Politics of Postmod- ernism, which, in 1995, was the ½rst criti- cal work to examine hip-hop as an artis- tic, social, and cultural phenomenon.14 Also in the 1990s, the First Amendment free-speech issues associated with the group 2 Live Crew drew public com- ments from Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Houston Baker, Jr., who were then new academic stars and rising public intel- lectuals.15 Angela Davis and bell hooks, both authors and activists, published separate conversations about politics and feminism with Ice Cube, a former member of the hip-hop group N.W.A. (Niggaz with Attitude).16 The signi½- cance of hip-hop in African American culture was also addressed by the phi- losopher Cornel West, historian Robin D.G. Kelley, political scientist Michael Dawson, and sociologist Paul Gilroy, all of whom celebrated and critiqued the impact of the relentless and often prob-

lematic images, philosophies, and per- sonas underlying hip-hop culture.17

Today, this scholarship extends across most disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, from political scientist Cathy Cohen’s Democracy Remixed: Black Youth and the Future of American Politics to The Anthology of Rap, a collection edited by literary scholars Adam Bradley and Andrew DuBois.18 Volumes have also been published in the emerging ½eld of global hip-hop studies, including Global Noise: Rap and Hip-Hop Outside the USA; The Vinyl Ain’t Final: Hip Hop and the Globalization of Black Popular Culture; Tha Global Cipha: Hip Hop Culture and Consciousness; Global Linguistic Flows: Hip Hop Cultures, Youth Identities, and the Politics of Language; and The Languages of Global Hip Hop.19

We consider hip-hop to be the lingua franca for popular and political youth culture around the world. In this essay, we analyze hip-hop’s role as a global imprint that symbolizes unity, justice, and equality through its interpretation of black cultural and political practices and values. Our purpose is to examine the perspectives of many followers of hip-hop. These perspectives include, for example, a Japanese young person who stated: “I mean a culture like Hiphop . . . that’s bringing us together like this– that’s amazing! That’s the power of music, I think. And not only that, the power of Hiphop. I’ll say this: it is black power.”20

Though hip-hop is now ubiquitous, its adoption and adaptation into cultures outside of the United States have at times been problematic. Researchers have re- coiled at the explicit racist parody and comic-like copies of the gangster persona that appeared in the early stages of hip- hop’s global presence. For instance, early attempts by Japanese youth to “repre-

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sent” hip-hop’s African American her- itage reportedly involved intensive tan- ning, the use of hair chemicals to grow Afros and dreadlocks, and caricatures of hyper-stereotyped urban black mas- culinity as a rationale to abuse young women.21 As hip-hop’s cultural beliefs became more widely understood, global hip-hop began to take on a character of its own, reflecting the culture, creativ- ity, and local styles of the youth who embraced and produced it. Hip-hop is now a multibillion-dollar global indus- try that continues to grow and diversify, but its impact remains underreported; often overlooked is the fact that hip- hop influences not only conventional “rap music,” but also all forms of pop- ular music as well as radio, music, tele- vision, ½lm, advertising, and digital media throughout the world.22

Though commercial hip-hop represents a signi½cant part of the music industry, it is only a fraction of the artistic produc- tion and performance of hip-hop culture, most of which is local. Every populated continent (and most countries) have thousands of local hip-hop scenes shaped by artistic and cultural practices that are produced, de½ned, and sustained primar- ily by youth in their own neighborhoods and communities. In the United States, these scenes are generally described as underground hip-hop, both to characterize their critical challenge to conventional norms and to distinguish them from commercial hip-hop.23 And as it turns out, the underground is more densely populated and deeply substantive than the commercial cultural space on hip- hop’s surface. The Internet has added a new and transformative dimension to local and global hip-hop cultures and communities, empowering young people to document and distribute their person- al and local art, ideas, and experiences. These local scenes are rarely ½nanced by

multinational media corporations yet are more essential to hip-hop culture and the hip-hop nation than commercial production. Commercial production could end, but hip-hop culture would continue, and even thrive, through local scenes.

Some observers have conceived of the movement of hip-hop culture around the globe as a hip-hop diaspora that shares characteristics of ethnic constructions of diaspora.24 Global hip-hop scenes are sometimes (quite accurately) described as translocal because they so often repre- sent complex cultural, artistic, and polit- ical dialogues between local innovations of diverse hip-hop art forms; transcultural interactions between local hip-hop scenes in cities and nations outside of the Unit- ed States; and exchanges between local scenes and U.S.-based hip-hop media.25

While the translocal dynamics of the hip-hop diaspora foster countless routes of cultural interaction and exchange, at least two major routes of cultural global- ization are at the crossroads of these nu- merous pathways. African American cul- ture and African diasporic cultural forms are integral to the formation of both these major routes. Here, we focus primarily on hip-hop music, but the routes charac- terize other hip-hop art forms as well.

The ½rst route of diaspora relates to the origins of hip-hop culture. While hip-hop may have emerged in New York in the 1970s, many of its diverse global and multicultural beginnings can be tied to African diasporic cultural forms and communities.26 Especially in the case of rapping/rhyming, it is almost impossi- ble to isolate a single cultural trajectory because the aesthetic and linguistic fea- tures of lyrical rhyming can be found throughout Africa and the Caribbean as well as the United States. Many of the young black and Latino artists who col- laborated in the development of hip-hop

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culture in New York were recent immi- grants from the Caribbean and, there- fore, were shaped by a range of African diasporic cultures. Jamaican musical forms, for example, have been particu- larly signi½cant in the development of hip-hop aesthetic practices.27 Yet reflec- tions on African American musical tra- ditions reveal that many aesthetic fea- tures of early hip-hop were already a part of the complex cultural roots, and routes, of African American history.

Musician and sound curator David Toop traced these many trajectories in his discussion of the origins of hip-hop culture:

Whatever the disagreements over lineage in the rap hall of fame or the history of hip hop, there is one thing on which all are agreed. “Rap is nothing new,” says Paul Winley. Rap’s forbears stretch back through disco, street funk, radio djs, Bo Diddley, the bebop singers, Cab Calloway, Pigmeat Markham, the tap dancers and comics, the Last Poets, Gil Scott-Heron, Muhammad Ali, a cappella and doo-wop groups, ring games, skip rope rhymes, prison and army songs, toasts, signifying and the dozens, all the way to the griots of Nigeria and the Gambia. No matter how far it penetrates into the twilight maze of Japanese video games and cool European electronics, its roots are still the deepest in all contemporary Afro-American Music.28

The second major route of hip-hop culture is its movement into local youth cultures around the world. Soon after it was developed in the United States, hip- hop culture traveled as part of the larger processes of America’s global media dis- tribution. While multiethnic collabora- tion produced early hip-hop forms, Afri- can Americans played a vital cultural and political role in its development. As Afri- can American studies scholar Imani Perry argues, “[P]romiscuous composition

does not destroy cultural identity. . . . The African aesthetic origins of hip hop, as with all black American music, allows for it to have a shared resonance among a wide range of diasporic and continen- tal Africans.”29 Moreover, in addition to representing a shared cultural terrain for members of international African dias- poric cultures, these African aesthetics have also shaped the aesthetic conscious- ness and tastes of non-African Ameri- cans for centuries. The world’s youth have responded with a stunning prolif- eration of hip-hop-based artistic and cultural production.

Aside from being translocal, the move- ment of hip-hop between local and glob- al contexts can also be explained by the concept of glocalization: that is, simulta- neously engaging the intersections of global and local dynamics.30 In their analysis of European hip-hop, sociolin- guists Jannis Androutsopoulos and Arno Scholz suggest that glocalization involves a recontextualization of cultural forms through “local” appropriations of a glob- ally acceptable cultural model “that are then integrated into a new social con- text.”31 Transculturation, which describes the cultural features of glocalization, re- fers to a process of continuous cultural exchange; historically, it has been used to critique the unidirectional model of cultural transmission implied by the con- cepts of acculturation, appropriation, or cultural imperialism. Complex transcul- turation processes shape global hip-hop; they have been observed within and across international, national, local, and digital environments, and they some- times result in entirely new cultural or artistic products and forms. Conse- quently, global hip-hop cultures retain many qualitative features of African diasporic and U.S.-based hip-hop cul- tures while simultaneously engaging in dynamic and proli½c processes of aes-

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thetic innovation, production, and diversi½cation.32

Along with hip-hop’s cultural norm of inclusion, global hip-hop remains sym- bolically associated with African Amer- icans. It has incorporated many aspects of African American language ideology, even when the English language itself is not part of a particular expression of hip-hop culture. In other words,

it is not mere words and expressions that create a bond among hiphop followers throughout the world. Rather, it is based on African American language ideology where the words signify multiple mean- ings and critiques of power. Hiphop pre- sents African American English (aae) as a symbolic and politicized dialect where speakers are aware of complex and con- tradictory processes of stigmatization, valorization and social control. The hip- hop speech community is not necessarily linguistically and physically located but rather bound by this shared language ideology as part of politics, culture, so- cial conditions, and norms, values, and attitude.33

Hip-hop language ideology remains central to the construction and contin- uation of all hip-hop cultures, local and global. The use of dialects and nation- al languages, including complex code- switching practices, serves as a decla- ration that hip-hop culture enables all citizens of the hip-hop nation to reclaim and create a range of contested languages, identities, and powers.34

In her introduction to The Languages of Global Hip Hop, sociolinguist Marina Terkoura½ recalls her ½rst encounter with hip-hop in the mid-1980s in Herak- lion, Greece. A new student at her high school, whose family had emigrated, re- turned from Germany with a new dress code “consisting mainly of hooded

sweatshirts–a new style of ‘calligraphy’ (graf½ti)–which we quickly adopted for the headlines of the class newspa- per–and, last but not least, a new style of dance: breakdancing.”35 She remem- bers that in the same summer, she and some friends watched Beat Street, the 1984 classic hip-hop movie, at the local open-air cinema. Terkoura½’s story was repeated many times over around the world as the 1980s generation was intro- duced to hip-hop culture through Beat Street and Wild Style.36 These ½lms played a central role in making international youth aware of hip-hop culture, music, graf½ti, and dance. In Japan, Germany, and other nations, youth initially re- sponded less to the English language- based rapping and more to the graf½ti and dance representations.37

The particulars of hip-hop’s more recent emergence reveal an old story of how African American culture has cir- culated throughout the world. In fact, the global influence of African Ameri- can culture has been inextricably linked with the rise of the American Empire since at least the late nineteenth centu- ry: for example, in 1873, the Fisk Jubilee singers performed “Negro” spirituals for England’s Queen Victoria. African American music and culture historically have traveled when and where African American bodies could not. During the twentieth century, while Jim Crow seg- regation restricted African Americans’ movement in their own country, African American music, including blues, jazz, and, later, rock and roll and soul, trav- eled the world, shaping world music in ways that have yet to be fully acknowl- edged.38 Beginning in the late twentieth century, hip-hop music, the ½rst African American musical form to be created in the post–civil rights era, continued this global journey, a journey whose impact has been expanded and problematized in

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the late twentieth and early twenty-½rst centuries by processes of corporate glob- alization and new–especially computer- based–technologies for musical produc- tion and distribution.

Understanding the global presence of hip-hop culture is like putting together puzzle pieces from around the world. Over the last several decades, interna- tional newspapers and magazines have collectively printed thousands of articles (many of which we reviewed for this essay) about the presence of hip-hop culture worldwide. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of websites devoted to hip-hop in different areas. Every nation, region, and even neighborhood that rep- resents hip-hop culture does so with a unique history. Yet much of this culture remains undocumented or under-docu- mented, particularly because only hip- hop media that engage conventional commercial markets achieve wide rec- ognition. Given that much of hip-hop culture is local, including in the United States, and that it is produced by young people who do not have access to main- stream media outlets, it is often ignored by conventional modes of recognition and assessment.

Despite the fact that much of local hip-hop culture does not receive com- mercial or global attention, a number of emergent themes and trajectories indi- cate hip-hop’s signi½cance as a global arts and media movement. These factors include the use of hip-hop culture to ex- pose injustice or ½ght for justice and, in an ironic parallel, to conventionalize the nationalization of hip-hop cultures as the political, commercial, and even spiritual arbiters of national and inter- national culture.

One of the most influential groups to uncover injustice and encourage activism, Public Enemy (pe) shaped the early overt politicization of hip-hop music and cul-

ture in the United States and elsewhere. In 1992, when pe toured Europe with the rock group U2, their charge to hip-hop’s nation of millions was “Fight the Power!” This slogan began to appear on walls in England, Poland, and Italy, among other nations. According to pe’s highly polit- icized mc Chuck D, the group visited more than forty countries within the ½rst ten years of its formation.39 In 2010, pe launched its seventieth tour, which included numerous world destinations. mc Ferman of the Basque group Negu Gorriak describes the impact pe had on him as an artist: “[W]e had been listen- ing to a whole lot of music, especially linked to the rap explosion. We were shocked by Public Enemy, by the force that the rap movement had, its power to criticize.”40 Chuck Dhimself was partic- ularly affected by a conversation he had in 1994 with a fan in Croatia. The fan applied pe’s African American political analysis to the religious and ethnic con- flict that had long affected the region, explaining:

Public Enemy showed us that Rap music is not afraid of subjects connected with national and race issues. We started to see how powerful rap could be if it were used in expressing our attitudes. The kind of lyrics and consciousness that reveals the whole process of civilization, which is the story of dominance, the dominance of white people over Black people, the dom- inance of male over females, the domi- nance of man over nature, and the domi- nance of majorities over minorities.41

Another signi½cant influence in the international spread of hip-hop as grounded in the African American and black experience is the Universal Zulu Nation.42 American dj Afrika Bam- baataa founded the community-based organization in the 1970s to promote peace, unity, and harmony among bat-

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tling gangs and peoples.43 The Zulu Nation utilized black liberation ideol- ogies to bring to its many global follow- ers a mantra of interplanetary human- ism. Bambaataa explains:

[M]y thing is to always try to bring peo- ple together in uni½cation and to see our- selves as humans on this planet so-called Earth, and what can we do to change the betterment of life for all people on the planet Earth and to respect what so-called black, brown, yellow, red and white people have done to better civilization for people to live on this planet so-called Earth, and recognize that we are not alone.44

Bambaataa and other hip-hop pioneers adhered to belief systems that upheld basic human equality and that explicitly denounced constructions of race and rac- ist activities to separate and hierarchi- cally situate human beings. Inspired by singer James Brown’s “I’m Black and I’m Proud,” Negu Gorriak produced what anthropologist Jacqueline Urla calls the group’s “anthem”: “Esan Ozenki,” whose main rhyme–“Esan ozenki. Euskaduna naiz eta harro nago”–translates as, “Say it Loud: I’m Basque, and I’m proud.”45

In the 1980s, nations with English- speaking populations easily engaged with hip-hop music and rapping, while nations where English was not the pri- mary language often forged their initial relationship with hip-hop through graf- ½ti and break dancing. As a result, places such as England and Anglophone former colonies, including South Africa, Aus- tralia, and Nigeria, have been creating hip-hop music since it emerged in the United States. Certainly, Jamaican mu- sical forms have been in a cultural dia- logue with African American music since before hip-hop was formally con- structed. Both African American and Jamaican verbal genres, such as toasting

(a style of chanting over a beat in dance hall music), were actively engaged in that construction.

France’s long-standing engagement with African American culture through artists such as dancer and singer Jose- phine Baker, writer James Baldwin, and countless jazz musicians enabled that country to build a bridge to American hip-hop culture with relative ease. In 1982, for example, the French radio net- work Europe 1 sponsored the New York City Rap Tour that brought to France important American hip-hop artists, some of whom were themselves immi- grants or the children of immigrants. Artists included Fab 5 Freddy, the Rock Steady Crew, and Afrika Bambaataa, whose Zulu Nation took root in Paris at the same time.46

As American hip-hop artists began to achieve tremendous economic success and cultural influence in other countries and music markets, global youth quick- ly began not only to consume but also to produce their own hip-hop cultural forms.47 Not surprisingly, thousands of local scenes and national hip-hop artists emerged in different areas of the world. Though influenced by American hip- hop forms, these artists typically devel- oped their own styles, drawing from lo- cal and national cultural art forms and addressing the social and political issues that affected their communities and na- tions. These scenes generated a wide- spread interest in hip-hop culture and the growth of commercial hip-hop music in national contexts; thus, hip-hop music was no longer accessible only as an Amer- ican import. Both international and Amer- ican hip-hop artists have topped music charts and sales throughout Europe and Africa as well as in parts of Asia and Latin America and, more recently, Australia.

France is the world’s second-largest hip-hop market, and it is one of the larg-

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est producers and consumers of hip-hop culture.48 In 2003, four hip-hop singles were nominated for the Victoires de la Musique, the French version of the Grammy Awards. France’s mc Solaar, who was born in Senegal and whose par- ents are from Chad, has topped French charts with his singles and albums for nearly two decades; he has had best-sell- ing albums in dozens of other countries, too. In 1995, he was named Best Male Singer in the Victoires de la Musique awards. He has launched successful world tours of Europe, Asia, Africa, and the United States; received recognition from American hip-hop artists; performed with American hip-hop group De La Soul; appeared on albums with rappers Guru and Missy Elliott; released a song through American hip-hop, R&B, and pop label Tommy Boy Records; and appeared in Bollywood movies.

American multinational record corpo- rations have hip-hop divisions all over the world. Def Jam Records, for example, is one of hip-hop’s most iconic record la- bels. Founded by Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin in 1984, it is famous for acts such as Public Enemy, Run dmc, and the Beastie Boys. Currently owned by Univer- sal, Def Jam now operates in Germany, the United Kingdom, and Japan. It has an international hip-hop music game, Def Jam Rapstar, which features interna- tional artists. In November 2010, the com- pany created a Web portal to enable un- signed artists around the world to access Def Jam online distribution resources.

National record companies in other countries have also developed hip-hop divisions or labels, or they showcase a roster of hip-hop acts. In 1981, Germany’s Bombastic Records released one of the ½rst German hip-hop albums, featuring songs in German and English by Ger- man mcs. (The album title, Krauts with Attitude: German HipHop Vol. 1, referred to

the American group N.W.A.) Cantonese hip-hop’s mc Yan, a member of Hong Kong’s ½rst major hip-hop act, has cre- ated an independent hip-hop label (Fu©kin Music) that successfully pro- motes the new group Yellow Peril. Nige- ria’s Kennis Music distributes hip-hop along with R&B and pop and promotes itself as “Africa’s Number One Record Label.” Nigerian mc Ruggedman, who holds a political science degree, famous- ly called out Kennis Music in his song “Big Bros” for excluding gifted hip-hop artists and promoting mediocre ones; he has created his own label, Rugged Records, to promote acts according to his vision.

In response to hip-hop’s continued popularity, national and international music awards ceremonies have incor- porated hip-hop into their productions, and artists have won awards both within the hip-hop music genre and in broader categories. Hip-hop music videos, which were initially excluded from America’s mtv along with all other African Ameri- can musical forms, have been broadcast worldwide on television since the 1980s and, more recently, on the Internet. Hip- hop artists, both in the United States and elsewhere, use music videos to promote their brands and their music. Although music videos have always served primar- ily to boost record sales, they have long aided another signi½cant process: the transcultural exchange of hip-hop. Young people who watch videos from other cul- tures or nations can acquire a great deal of knowledge not only about the music, but also about the dance, fashion, style, and overall aesthetics of hip-hop in diverse cultures.

Moreover, arbiters of national culture have increasingly come to recognize hip- hop as a legitimate art form. This valida- tion may have reached an unusual zenith in 2004, when a Polish break dancing

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crew performed for Pope John Paul II at the Vatican. The video–widely viewed on the Internet–shows the Pope smil- ing, nodding, and clapping during the performance and blessing the dancers afterward. As just one example of hip- hop’s growing cultural validity, the epi- sode hints at hip-hop’s potential reach.

Cultural acceptance of hip-hop, how- ever, is often accorded to dance rather than music. Although hip-hop dance historically has been less explicitly con- troversial than hip-hop music, it none- theless implicitly challenges a range of institutional and cultural norms about dance, movement, and the body. Inter- national break dancing competitions and hip-hop dance festivals have existed for decades, but in the twenty-½rst cen- tury they are acquiring more institution- al and commercial support and funding. The year 2010 offers three striking exam- ples: In July, Salzburg, Austria (birth- place of Mozart and stomping ground of Hitler) witnessed its ½rst Urban Culture Festival, featuring hip-hop dancers from around the world. Australia sent Kulture Break, its multiethnic break dancing crew, to the Shanghai Expo to represent its na- tional culture in a performance for thou- sands of international participants. In South Korea, where the b-boys are con- sidered among the best hip-hop dancers in the world, the government spent mil- lions on the second annual global invita- tional hip-hop dance competition, only to make millions more–an estimated $35 million–in advertising revenues.

Hip-hop culture is also used to edu- cate and socialize young people. In 2004, the United Nations Human Settlements Programme, un-habitat, sponsored a Global Hip-Hop Summit to organize and educate world youth about a range of issues. Fidel Castro sponsors an annual hip-hop conference in Cuba; he has de-

scribed hip-hop as “the existing revolu- tionary voice of Cuba’s future.”49 Indeed, hip-hop is the main source for discussion of racial injustice in Cuba today: at least two documentaries have been made about Cuban hip-hop culture; African American mc Common has demonstrat- ed a long-term commitment to collabo- rating with Cuban hip-hop artists; and former Black Panther and American ex- ile in Cuba, Assata Shakur, has been ac- tively engaged in helping Cuban youth become empowered through hip-hop.

Music Mayday, an organization that promotes youth empowerment and edu- cation through the arts in Africa, puts particular emphasis on hip-hop and sponsors a range of hip-hop-related edu- cational and cultural activities. One of their biggest events is B-Connected, an annual music and arts festival that links youth through concurrent festivals in ½ve different countries, including The Netherlands, Tanzania, South Africa, Ethiopia, and Hungary. These festivals feature an international roster of mcs that includes, but is not limited to, art- ists from the host countries.

In South America, Brazilian hip-hop culture has in many ways mirrored themes in African American hip-hop. On the one hand, the Brazilian media have stereotyped hip-hop as the music of drugs and violence, and on the other, Brazilian artists use hip-hop to address racism, poverty, and police brutality– issues that Brazil’s myth of racial har- mony attempts to conceal. Brazil’s tra- ditional martial art, capoeira, is widely recognized for its remarkable similarity to break dancing, and both forms emerge from African diasporic roots. However, more recently, hip-hop in Brazil has dis- tinguished itself, through its aesthetic complexity, engaging diverse musical forms and becoming increasingly ac- cepted as a social and political tool to

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educate and empower Brazilian youth.50 The 2005 documentary Favela Rising, which has won dozens of international awards, examines the music group and social project Grupo Cultural AfroReg- gae. AfroReggae is Rio’s most success- ful hip-hop band, merging hip-hop with other musical forms and touring the world. (The group opened for the Roll- ing Stones in Brazil in 2006.) It is also an ngo, a dynamic hip-hop organiza- tion that empowers Rio’s poorest young people through dozens of arts and social justice projects. Led by former small- time drug-dealer-turned-mc Anderson Sa, Grupo Cultural AfroReggae has be- come so powerful that it serves as one of the most effective mediators between different institutions, groups, and fac- tions within Rio de Janeiro’s complex social and political structure.51 In 2007, Brazil nationalized its investment in hip- hop culture when its Ministry of Culture began to apply AfroReggae’s mission to the entire nation through its Culture Points program. By providing grants to fund local organizations, such as the project Hip Hop Nation Brazil, the pro- gram empowers local hip-hop commu- nities to educate and serve Brazilian youth. The organizations are often run by local hip-hop artists, including one run by mc Guiné Silva in São Paolo. As he explained to The New York Times: “This program has really democratized culture. . . . We’ve become a multimedia laboratory. Getting that seed money and that studio equipment has enabled us to become a kind of hip-hop factory.”52

During the 2010 World Cup in South Africa (the ½rst to be held in Africa), hip- hop played a meaningful role in the inter- national soccer championship. Nomadic Wax, a Fair Trade international media company that focuses on hip-hop and the diaspora, brought together ½fteen international hip-hop artists from Africa,

the Caribbean, Latin America, the Unit- ed States, and Europe to create “World Cup,” a twelve-minute mix track that is described as a “transnational hip-hop collaboration.” Nomadic Wax released the track for free online. Coca-Cola chose “Wavin’ Flag”–whose lyrics were changed for the promotion by K’Naan, the world- famous Somali-born Canadian mc–as one of the anthems for its World Cup campaign and World Cup Trophy Tour, which traveled internationally and fea- tured K’Naan as a headlining act. K’Naan also performed the song at the World Cup concert with Alicia Keys, Shakira, and the transnational, multiracial, and multicultural American hip-hop group the Black Eyed Peas. The performance was broadcast to millions.

In another example of national and institutional endorsement of hip-hop and of the role of technology in the development of hip-hop culture, the National Museum of Australia com- missioned mc Wire and Morganics, a white mc and hip-hop theater artist, to undertake a hip-hop-based oral history project. They toured Australia to collect more than 1,500 autobiographical rap songs by youth from across the conti- nent. Both men then used the songs to conduct youth workshops and trainings throughout Australia.

Women hip-hop mcs are appearing in greater numbers, though there are far more male artists. Their limited num- bers reflect larger issues of global sexism and the international marginalization of women’s voices as well as the gender politics of hip-hop culture. Many women mcs perform lyrics about gender and are often actively involved in using hip- hop to educate and empower youth.

In the global Muslim hip-hop move- ment, women mcs are playing an in- creasingly vital role, a phenomenon that contests stereotypes of Muslim cultures

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and people as universally misogynistic. Lebanese mc Malikah was proclaimed “Best mc in Libya” with another ½nalist on mtv Arabia’s program Hip HopNa.53 Palestinian-British mc Shadia Mansour, known as “the ½rst lady of Arab hip-hop,” explains, “Hip-hop holds no boundaries. It’s a naked testimony of real life issues. You just break down your message and get your point across in the music.”54

The 2008 ½lm Slingshot Hip Hop docu- mented how Palestinian rappers form alternative voices of resistance within the Israeli-Palestinian struggle. It fea- tured female artist Abeer Al Zinati (also known as Sabreena da Witch). The 2006 ½lm I Love Hip Hop in Morocco featured the female mc Fati, who is now a solo artist.55

Fijian-Australian mc Trey is one of the most prominent hip-hop artists in Australia and one of the world’s pre- eminent female hip-hop artists. She has collaborated with Maya Jupiter, an Aus- tralian mc of Mexican and Turkish descent, in the hip-hop group Foreign Heights. In addition to her work as an mc, Trey is an activist and aerosol artist whose artwork has been displayed on the streets of three continents. She has collaborated with a collective of U.K. and Australian hip-hop artists on a the- ater project called “East London West Sydney.” Vodafone, one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies, provided a grant to mc Trey and other Australian hip-hop artists to work with Australia’s Information Cultural Ex- change program (ice) to develop hip- hop arts and digital education work- shops for at-risk youth in Australia. mc Trey’s work with ice is a practical example of the theoretical model that indigenous Australian mc Wire–who claims that, for him, mc means “my cousin”–elucidates in describing his album and identity, AboDigital. The

“original abodigital” explains that his identity “has an ambiguous meaning because of the word digital. I’m abo- digital because I’m a twenty-½rst cen- tury Aboriginal, I’m down with laptops and mobile phones and home entertain- ment. But digital also means your hands and your ½ngers, so I’m still putting my ½ngers in the dirt; I’m still using my hands to create things. So that’s the ambiguity.”56

Israeli hip-hop music reflects Israel’s complex political dynamics and includes Zionist, pro-Palestinian, and Jewish Ethi- opian-Israeli artists. Sagol 59 is a promi- nent Jewish Israeli mc who uses hip-hop to build bridges between Jewish and Muslim communities. In 2001, he orga- nized and produced “Summit Meeting,” which is believed to be the ½rst record- ing featuring a collaboration between Jewish and Arab artists in Israel. He also hosts Corner Prophets/Old Jeruz Ci- pher Hip Hop series, a cultural project focused on uniting diverse groups in Israel through hip-hop culture.57

In one of the lighter examples of hip- hop’s reach, Finland-based multination- al communications corporation Nokia has incorporated hip-hop into a Chinese commercial in which elderly rural Chi- nese farmers claim to have created hip- hop music using local farming tools and labor. The hilarious commercial reveals not only Nokia’s assessment of hip-hop’s selling power, but also the advertisers’ complex knowledge of the debates re- garding origins, cultural authority, and individual authorship that play a sig- ni½cant role in hip-hop culture around the world.

The above examples of record labels, artists, events, campaigns, and social programs are just a handful of the thou- sands of ways in which hip-hop exerts a cultural and economic force worldwide. Most of these examples reflect hip-hop’s

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inclusion in commercial media and priv- ileged cultural spaces, but these institu- tional representations and events are possible only because they are fueled by the originality, imagination, commit- ment, and endurance of local hip-hop cultures.

While the influence of pe and the Zulu Nation is widespread, global hip-hop culture has a complex relationship with other aspects of African American cul- tural representation. First, though the originators and innovators of hip-hop included a diverse group of talented, determined, and creative youth, media outlets created a hyper-stereotypical account of hip-hop as the product of poor, young black men who were liter- ally “wild” and menacing.58 While this depiction has stuck in the United States, it is not as effective globally, where Afri- can American youth are credited for social justice struggles like the civil rights and Black Power movements. American forms of racism are so widely known and studied as an example of injustice that individuals all over the world know both the explicit signs and the smoldering, everyday existence of repression. Yet there is extensive com- mentary and critique of the representa- tion of U.S.-style violence in hip-hop. Among African hip-hop artists in par- ticular, there is a sustained critique of hardcore hip-hop. Commercial gangsta rap lyrics have been central to hardcore hip-hop culture, and have historically represented, (in some cases) analyzed, and (in too many others) glamorized the intersection of masculinity, dominance, and violence. As a result, hardcore hip- hop culture has been the historical target of global and American communities; and it has produced a contested relation- ship with local hip-hop cultures in the United States and elsewhere.

When hip-hop came to Africa from the United States, it had among its ½rst fans (and imitators) elite and upper- middle-class African youth. Hip-hop developed as several former colonial powers, including France, served as con- duits bringing hip-hop to Francophone Africa. Countries that embraced the new cultural form included Senegal, the ½rst African country to adopt and develop rap music; Tanzania, one of the ½rst countries to develop a strong “mother tongue” rap presence; Ghana; and Ni- geria. However, given that hip-hop has its roots in an African diasporic art form, its presence in Africa has raised a com- plex discourse about origins and home- comings.59 Senegalese trio Daara J, whose music combines hip-hop with a range of global styles, describes hip-hop’s return to Africa in the title track of their album Boomerang: “Born in Africa, brought up in America, hip-hop has come full cir- cle!” As a result of their sense of cultural authority, African hip-hop artists have actively engaged in the process of re- de½ning hip-hop culture in ways that challenge colonial norms and values; indeed, they do not hesitate to critique the practice of those norms and values by African Americans.

One common theme throughout Africa has been the question of how to adapt hip-hop so that it represents local and national issues without incurring vio- lence. African artists focus on both cul- ture and the realities of violence. For example, politically motivated hip-hop was pioneered in the Western Cape by the groups Prophets of the City (poc), Black Noise, and, later, Brasse Vannie Kaap (bvk, or Brothers of the Cape). These groups continue to promote the ideals of socioeconomic and racial par- ity through community development programs. In contrast to this overtly “conscious” message, a contemporary

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genre known as kwaito has emerged in the vicinity of Johannesburg, South Africa. This style is dance-oriented, incorporating elements of house music, indigenous black languages, and vernac- ular dialects. Arthur Mafokate, the self- proclaimed King of Kwaito is widely regarded as the progenitor of this style. The late Brenda Fassie and crossover artists such as tkzee have contributed to the mainstream success of kwaito in South African culture.

Hip-hop mcs often rhyme in their own language and in local dialects that have been historically marginalized. African mcs, who are often multilingual, and who have a long intellectual and literary history of rejecting colonial languages in favor of their own, frequently code- switch into two or more languages with- in a single song, just as some bilingual U.S. and Caribbean-Latino mcs code- switch between English and Spanish.60 The musical and linguistic possibilities of hip-hop culture are particularly dy- namic in Africa’s most populated nation, Nigeria. One of the most linguistically diverse countries in the world, Nigeria has more than ½ve hundred languages spoken within its borders. English is the of½cial language, used in schools and government of½ces, but Nigeria also recognizes three dominant languages: Hausa (spoken primarily in the North), Yoruba (spoken mostly in the South- west), and Igbo (spoken in the South- east). The country’s unof½cial lingua franca is Nigerian Pidgin English. About half of Nigerians are Muslims; 40 percent are Christians; and about 10 percent practice indigenous religions. (Indigenous practices are often infused into both Islam and Christianity as well.)

Popular music in Nigeria has a rep- utation for melding local melodies, lan- guages, and polyrhythms with influ- ences from all over the world, includ-

ing Brazil, Cuba, Niger and the Sahara, Congo, Jamaica, and the United States. It is often used to express religious mes- sages, and even hip-hop contains a sub- genre of gospel rap. Popular music also carries political and social messages. The most famous example is Fela Kuti, the king of Afrobeat, whose inflamma- tory lyrics (in Nigerian Pidgin) and non- traditional lifestyle endeared him to mil- lions inside and outside Nigeria. Local music, especially in the Hausa north, might address a particular political can- didate or of½ceholder, or it might exhort the populace to take a particular action. For the past several years, the most wide- ly listened-to music has been American- inspired rap and dance hip-hop based on local beats and enhanced with music production technology. As young Nige- rian rappers–who as children idolized American stars like Tupac, krs-One, Jay-Z, and Nas–are coming of age and have greater access to production equip- ment, Nigerian rap is becoming increas- ingly popular. Artist jjc talks about avoiding guns because “we got too much drama already.” For other Nigerian art- ists, avoiding gangster posturing is about “keeping it real.” Says GrandSUN, “We ½ght with our hands.” Certainly, on a continent where oral literatures and lit- eracies have been culturally and politi- cally central for longer than written his- tory is capable of documenting, African hip-hop heads also ½ght with their words.

As global hip-hop maintains the tradi- tion of American hip-hop, it must also account for equally powerful local tradi- tions of art, culture, and protest. It must represent life on a local level. The critique and constant examination of the genre is at the heart of hip-hop culture. It focuses on growth and analysis–even when it also takes American hip-hop to task for its gangster posturing, as K’naan does in “What’s Hardcore?”:

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I’m a spit these verses cause I feel annoyed,

And I’m not gonna quit till I ½ll the void, If I rhyme about home and got descriptive, I’d make Fifty Cent look like Limp Biskit, It’s true, and don’t make me rhyme about

you, I’m from where the kids is addicted to

glue, Get ready, he got a good grip on the

machete, Make rappers say they do it for love like

R-Kelly, It’s HARD, Harder than Harlem and Compton

intertwined, Harder than harboring Bin Laden and

rewind, To that earlier part when I was kinda like “We begin our day by the way of the gun, Rocket propelled grenades blow you away

if you front, We got no police ambulances or ½re

½ghters, We start riots by burning car tires, They looting, and everybody starting

shooting.” [. . .] So what’s hardcore? Really? Are you hardcore? Hmm. So what’s hardcore? Really? Are you hardcore? Hmm.61

K’naan criticizes the senseless pos- turing in U.S. hip-hop as a way to cri- tique the senseless destruction and oppression in Somalia and to indict a world that does not have the stomach or heart to make a difference.

As the lingua franca of global youth, hip-hop uni½es young people across racial and national boundaries while honoring their diversity, complexity, intellect, and artistry. As mentioned above, the role of hip-hop in the pro- tests in North Africa and the Middle East demonstrates how hip-hop con-

tinues to function as a dynamic culture of resistance. It also reveals how hip-hop artists have used online technology to reach audiences who would not other- wise have access to their work. This is particularly true in the case of artists who have been banned by their govern- ments from performing or releasing albums. Many of the hip-hop songs in the North African protest movements include musical or aesthetic references to African American hip-hop, and the artists acknowledge African American influences on their music. They have transformed those influences to achieve local and national, aesthetic and politi- cal goals. The hip-hop songs of the North African and Middle Eastern revolution- ary movements collectively represent a meaningful moment in the history, not only of hip-hop culture, but also of pop- ular and youth culture. African Ameri- can hip-hop artist Nas famously rhymed, “All I need is one mic to spread my voice to the whole world.” North African and Middle Eastern hip-hop artists have em- braced that ethos, using their voices and hip-hop culture as powerful instruments of revolutionary change.

While mainstream American dis- courses have marginalized, maligned, and trivialized hip-hop music and cul- ture, multicultural youth in America and around the world have come together to turn hip-hop into one of the most dynam- ic arts and culture movements in recent history. It is disturbingly ironic that the nation that produced hip-hop culture has the least respect for it; meanwhile, the United Nations and individual countries are crossing the bridge that the global hip-hop nation has been building for de- cades. Nations are using hip-hop to see, hear, understand, serve, and, ultimately, be transformed for the better by their brilliant and powerful young people.

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Hip-hop’s aesthetic culture–which began with the four core elements of rapping, deejaying, breaking, and graf- ½ti art–now encompasses all those ele- ments along with an ever-growing and diversifying range of artistic, cultural, intellectual, political, and social prac- tices, products, and performances. These developments include, but are not lim- ited to, studio, live, and digital music production; writing and rhythmic per- formance of spoken words alone and to beats; street, club, and studio dance in- novations; fashion and style expressions; visual arts, including graf½ti innovations; theater and performance arts; interna- tional club cultures’ engagement with diverse music, dance, and style expres- sions; and digital, public, and academic knowledge-production and distribution practices. The artistic achievements of hip-hop represent, by themselves, a remarkable contribution to world cul- ture. However, the hip-hop nation has not just made art; it has made art with the vision and message of changing worlds–locally, nationally, and globally.

The hip-hop nation has done more than heed Public Enemy’s famous call to “Fight the Power.” It has created and become the power. U.S. and global hip- hop heads have put into practice and expanded on psychiatrist Frantz Fanon’s theory: namely, that an individual or group that “has a language consequently possesses the world expressed and im- plied by that language. . . . Mastery of language affords remarkable power.”62 Citizens of the global hip-hop nation have not merely mastered a language, they have formed a new one. They have used that new language to rede½ne, name, and create their many worlds and worldviews. Through their unprece- dented global movement of art and cul- ture, the citizens of the hip-hop nation have used their unique and collective aesthetic voices both to “possess” and transform the world, a process that has not merely afforded them power, but has also enabled them to produce new forms of power, beauty, and knowledge.

endnotes

1 dj Kool Herc, Introduction to Jeff Chang, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2005), xi–xii. dj Kool Herc (Clive Campbell) is considered one of the originators of hip-hop music and culture. He is credited with developing the art of combining deejaying and rhyming. This skill became the foundation not only for hip-hop music, but also for a range of other musical forms. He was born in Jamaica and immigrated to the Bronx as a child in the 1960s. mc Yan, quoted in Tony Mitchell, ed., Global Noise: Rap and Hip-Hop Outside the USA (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 2001), 7.

2 Though these ½gures indicate the popularity of hip-hop music, its audience may be larger than suggested. Many youth purchase digital singles rather than physical formats. The ifpi reports that digital music revenues increased by roughly 12 percent in 2009. Yet the estimated $4.2 billion in revenue did not offset the decline of physical purchases; John Kennedy, IFPI Digital Music Report 2010: Music How, When, Where You Want It (ifpi Digital Music, 2010), 30.

3 Afrika Bambaataa of the Zulu Nation introduced knowledge as the ½fth element of hip-hop, though some argue that it is beat boxing (vocal percussion). For further discussion, see Emmett G. Price, Hip Hop Culture (Santa Barbara, Calif.: abc-clio, 2006); and Chang, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop.

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4 See Marcyliena Morgan, The Real Hiphop: Battling for Knowledge, Power, and Respect in the LA Underground (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2009); and H. Samy Alim, Awad Ibrahim, and Alastair Pennycook, eds., Global Linguistic Flows: Hip Hop Cultures, Youth Identities, and the Politics of Language (New York: Routledge, 2009).

5 Morgan, The Real Hiphop; Murray Forman and Mark Anthony Neal, eds., That’s the Joint!: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader (New York: Routledge, 2004); Cheryl Lynette Keyes, Rap Music and Street Consciousness (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004).

6 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (New York: Schocken Press, 1983).

7 Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, Volume 2 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 205.

8 Vivienne Walt, “El Général and the Rap Anthem of the Mideast Revolution,” TIME, February 15, 2011, http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2049456,00 .html#ixzz1Ei26RZZC.

9 Ibid.; Steve Coll, “Democratic Movements,” The New Yorker, January 31, 2011, http://www .newyorker.com/talk/comment/2011/01/31/110131taco_talk_coll#ixzz1EgVecZMy.

10 Dario Thuburn and Najeh Mouelhi, “Tears and Joy as Tunisia’s Revolution Rap Debuts,” AFP, January 29, 2011, http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110129/wl_mideast _afp/tunisiapoliticsunrestmusic_20110129162358.

11 Louise Sarant, “Revolutionary Music: Rap Up,” Al-Masry Al-Youm, February 15, 2011, http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/news/revolutionary-music-rap.

12 Bruce A. Chadwick and Tim B. Heaton, Statistical Handbook on Adolescents in America (Phoenix, Ariz.: Oryx Press, 1996).

13 Robert Bezilla, ed., America’s Youth in the 1990s (Princeton, N.J.: The George H. Gallup International Institute, 1993).

14 Tricia Rose, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (Hanover, N.H.: Wesleyan/University Press of New England, 1994); Russell A. Potter, Spectacular Vernaculars: Hip-Hop and the Politics of Postmodernism (New York: State University of New York Press, 1995).

15 In 1990, the American Family Association lobbied to have 2 Live Crew’s 1989 album As Nasty As They Wanna Be classi½ed as obscene in Florida’s Broward County. Store owners who sold the record after the ruling and members of 2 Live Crew who performed it were arrested. In 1992, a court of appeals overturned the ruling. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., served as an expert witness in the case and defended his testimony in a New York Times op-ed; Henry Louis Gates, Jr., “2 Live Crew, Decoded: Rap Music Group’s Use of Street Language in Context of Afro-American Cultural Heritage Analyzed,” The New York Times, June 19, 1990. Houston Baker, Jr., also reviews the case, placing it in the context of cultural and political arguments; Houston A. Baker, Jr., Black Studies, Rap, and the Academy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993).

16 bell hooks, “Ice Cube Culture: A Shared Passion for Speaking Truth,” Spin, April 1993; bell hooks, Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations (New York: Routledge, 1994); “Nappy Happy: A Conversation with Ice Cube and Angela Y. Davis,” Transition 58 (1992): 174–192.

17 Cornel West, Race Matters (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993); Robin D.G. Kelley, “Kickin’ Reality, Kickin’ Ballistics: Gangsta Rap and Postindustrial Los Angeles,” in Droppin’ Sci- ence: Critical Essays on Rap Music and Hip Hop Culture, ed. William E. Perkins (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995), 117–158; Robin D.G. Kelley, Yo’ Mama’s Dysfunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America (Boston: Beacon Press, 1997); Michael Dawson, “Structure and Ideology: The Shaping of Black Public Opinion” (Department of Political Science, University of Chicago, 1997); Paul Gilroy, “‘After the Love Has Gone’: Bio-Politics and Etho-Poetics in the Black Public Sphere,” Public Culture 7 (1994): 49–76. There are

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now a number of works on hip-hop that explore these topics. They include: Imani Perry, Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2004); Carla Stokes, “Representin’ in Cyberspace: Sexual-Scripts, Self-De½nition, and Hip Hop Culture in Black American Adolescent Girls’ Home Pages,” Culture, Health, and Sexuality 9 (2) (2007); Gwendolyn Pough, Check It While I Wreck It: Black Womanhood, Hip- Hop Culture, and the Public Sphere (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2004); Elaine Richardson, Hiphop Literacies (New York and London: Routledge, 2006); Ethne Quinn, Nuthin’ but a “G” Thang: The Culture and Commerce of Gangsta Rap (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004); Halifu Osumare, The Africanist Aesthetic in Global Hip-Hop: Power Moves (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); Derrick Darby and Tommie Shelby, Hip Hop & Philosophy: Rhyme 2 Reason (Peru, Ill.: Open Court Publishing, 2005); Felicia Miyakawa, Five Percenter Rap: God Hop’s Music, Message, and Black Muslim Mission (Bloom- ington: Indiana University Press, 2005); Adam Krims, Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Murray Forman, The ’Hood Comes First: Race, Space, and Place in Rap and Hip-Hop (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 2002); Forman and Neal, That’s the Joint!; Dawn-Elissa Fischer, “Kobushi Agero (=Pump Ya Fist!): Blackness, ‘Race’ and Politics in Japanese Hiphop,” Ph.D. dissertation, Univer- sity of Florida, 2007; H. Samy Alim, Roc the Mic Right: The Language of Hip Hop Culture (New York: Routledge, 2006); Todd Boyd, The New H.N.I.C. (Head Niggas in Charge): The Death of Civil Rights and the Reign of Hip Hop (New York: New York University Press, 2002); Ian Condry, Hip-Hop Japan: Rap and the Paths of Cultural Globalization (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2006); and Greg Dimitriadis, Performing Identity/Performing Culture: Hip Hop as Text, Pedagogy, and Lived Practice (New York: Peter Lang, 2001).

18 Cathy J. Cohen, Democracy Remixed: Black Youth and the Future of American Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010); Adam Bradley and Andrew DuBois, The Anthology of Rap (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2010).

19 Mitchell, Global Noise; Dipannita Basu and Sidney J. Lemelle, The Vinyl Ain’t Final: Hip Hop and the Globalization of Black Popular Culture (London: Pluto Press, 2006); James Spady, H. Samy Alim, and Samir Meghelli, Tha Global Cipha: Hip Hop Culture and Consciousness (Black History Museum Press, 2006); Alim, Ibrahim, and Pennycook, Global Linguistic Flows; Marina Terkoura½, ed., The Languages of Global Hip Hop (New York: Continuum, 2010).

20 Fischer, “Kobushi Agero (=Pump Ya Fist!),” 19. 21 Cf. Ian Condry, Hip-Hop Japan; Fischer, “Kobushi Agero (=Pump Ya Fist!).” 22 Mitchell, Global Noise; Forman and Neal, That’s the Joint!; Alim, Ibrahim, and Pennycook,

Global Linguistic Flows. 23 Morgan, The Real Hiphop. 24 Tope Omoniyi, “‘So I Choose to Do Am Naija Style’: Hip Hop, Language, and Postcolonial

Identities,” in Global Linguistic Flows, ed. Alim, Ibrahim, and Pennycook, 113–138; Carol M. Motley and Geraldine Rosa Henderson, “The Global Hip-Hop Diaspora: Understanding the Culture,” Journal of Business Research 61 (3) (2008): 243–253.

25 Andy Bennett and Richard A. Peterson, eds., Music Scenes: Local, Translocal, and Virtual (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2004); Alim, Ibrahim, and Pennycook, Global Linguistic Flows; Mitchell, Global Noise.

26 Osumare, The Africanist Aesthetic in Global Hip-Hop. 27 Forman and Neal, That’s the Joint!; Mark Anthony Neal, Soul Babies: Black Popular Culture

and the Post-Soul Aesthetic (New York: Routledge, 2002); Chang, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop. 28 David Toop, Rap Attack #2 (London and New York: Serpent’s Tail, 1992), 19. 29 Perry, Prophets of the Hood, 12–13. 30 Alim, Ibrahim, and Pennycook, Global Linguistic Flows; Jannis Androutsopoulos and Arno

Scholz, “On the Recontextualization of Hip-hop in European Speech Communities: A

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Contrastive Analysis of Rap Lyrics,” Philologie im Netz 19 (2002): 1 –42; Roland Robertson, “Glocalization: Time-Space and Homogeneity-Heterogeneity,” in Global Modernities, ed. Mike Featherstone, Scott Lash, and Roland Robertson (London: Sage Press, 1995), 25–44.

31 Androutsopoulos and Scholz, “On the Recontextualization of Hip-hop in European Speech Communities,” 1; Samira Hassa, “Kiff my zikmu: Symbolic Dimensions of Arabic, English and Verlan in French Rap Texts,” in The Languages of Global Hip Hop, ed. Terkoura½, 48.

32 Osumare, The Africanist Aesthetic in Global Hip-Hop. 33 Morgan, The Real Hiphop, 62. 34 Ibid.; Terkoura½, The Languages of Global Hip Hop; Alim, Ibrahim, and Pennycook,

Global Linguistic Flows. 35 Terkoura½, The Languages of Global Hip Hop, 1. 36 Beat Street, directed by Stan Lathan (mgm Studios, 1984); Wild Style, directed by Charlie

Ahearn (Rhino Home Video, 1983). 37 Condry, Hip-Hop Japan; Mark Pennay, “Rap in Germany: The Birth of a Genre,” in

Global Noise, ed. Mitchell, 111–133. 38 Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr., Race Music: Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip-Hop (Berkeley: Uni-

versity of California Press, 2003); George Lipsitz, Dangerous Crossroads: Popular Music, Postmodernism and the Poetics of Place (London and New York: Verso Press, 1994); Tony Mitchell, Popular Music and Local Identity: Rock, Pop and Rap in Europe and Oceania (London: Leicester University Press, 1996).

39 Chuck D with Yusuf Jah, Fight the Power: Rap, Race, and Reality (New York: Dell Publishing, 1998).

40 Jacqueline Urla, “‘We are all Malcolm X!’: Negu Gorriak, Hip Hop, and the Basque Political Imaginary,” in Global Noise, ed. Mitchell, 175.

41 Chuck D with Jah, Fight the Power, 58. 42 Marcyliena Morgan and Dawn-Elissa Fischer, “Hiphop and Race: Blackness, Language,

and Creativity,” in Doing Race: 21 Essays for the 21st Century, ed. Hazel Rose Markus and Paula M.L. Moya (New York: W.W. Norton, 2010), 522.

43 Chang, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop; Perkins, Droppin’ Science. 44 Afrika Bambaataa, quoted in Adhimu Stewart, “Afrika Bambaataa Can’t Stop the Planet

Rock,” Earwaks.com, 2007. 45 Urla, “‘We are all Malcolm X!’” 175. 46 André Prévos, “Postcolonial Popular Music in France: Rap Music and Hip-Hop Culture

in the 1980s and 1990s,” in Global Noise, ed. Mitchell, 39–56. 47 Terkoura½, The Languages of Global Hip Hop. 48 Christian Béthune, Le rap: Une esthétique hors la loi (Paris: Autrement, 1999); Krims,

Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity. 49 Raquel Cepeda, “Breath Free: In Search of a De½nition of Freedom,” The Source,

May 2000, 134–138. 50 Derek Pardue, “‘Writing in the Margins’: Brazilian Hip-Hop as an Educational Project,”

Anthropology & Education Quarterly 35 (4) (2004): 411–432. 51 Patrick Neate, “AfroReggae: Rio’s Top Hip-hop Band,” The Independent, February 24, 2006. 52 Larry Rohter, “Brazilian Government Invests in Culture of Hip-Hop,” The New York Times,

March 14, 2007.

Marcyliena Morgan & Dionne Bennett

196 Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences

53 Samir Wahab, “Breaking: Malikah, First Lady of Arab Hip-hop Claims Her Crown,” Rolling Stone, February 1, 2001, http://www.rollingstoneme.com/index.php?option =com_content&view=article&id=68.

54 Jay Feghali, “Shadia Mansour: A Revolutionary Voice in Arab Hip-hop,” Shuhra.com, September 6, 2010, http://shuhra.com/en/artistDetails.aspx?pageid=297.

55 Slingshot Hip Hop, directed by Jackie Salloum (Fresh Booza Productions, 2008); I Love Hip Hop in Morocco, directed by Joshua Asen and Jennifer Needleman (Rizz Productions, 2006).

56 Alastair Pennycook and Tony Mitchell, “Hip Hop as Dusty Foot Philosophy: Engaging Locality,” in Global Linguistic Flows, ed. Alim, Ibrahim, and Pennycook, 26.

57 “Artist Pro½le: Sagol 59,” JDub Records, 2009, http://jdubrecords.org/artists.php?id=21. 58 Mike A. Males, The Scapegoat Generation: America’s War on Adolescents (Monroe, Me.: Com-

mon Courage Press, 1996); Mike A. Males, Framing Youth: 10 Myths about the Next Genera- tion (Monroe, Me.: Common Courage Press, 1999); Valerie Smith, Not Just Race, Not Just Gender (New York: Routledge, 1998). The term wild is used in reference to the rape and beating of a female jogger in Central Park in 1989. Police originally attributed the attack to a gang of black youth who were described as acting like animals; the police used the term wilding to describe their actions. According to New York Times reporter David Pitt, “The youths who raped and savagely beat a young investment banker as she jogged in Central Park Wednesday night were part of a loosely organized gang of 32 schoolboys whose random, motiveless assaults terrorized at least eight other people over nearly two hours, senior police investigators said yesterday. Chief of Detectives Robert Colangelo, who said the attacks appeared unrelated to money, race, drugs or alcohol, said that some of the 20 youths brought in for questioning had told investigators that the crime spree was the product of a pastime called wilding”; David E. Pitt, “Jogger’s Attackers Terrorized at Least 9 in 2 Hours,” The New York Times, April 22, 1989. The young men were arrested and jailed. Later, the real rapist was discovered through dna evidence and a confession.

59 Omoniyi, “‘So I Choose to Do Am Naija Style.’” 60 Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature

(Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 1986); Alim, Ibrahim, and Pennycook, Global Linguistic Flows.

61 K’naan, “What’s Hardcore?” The Dusty Foot Philosopher (bmg Music, 2005). 62 Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Charles Lam Markmann (1952; New York:

Grove Press: 1967), 18.

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