ISBN : 9780199341801
Barack Obama flipped the script on more than three decades of conventional wisdom when he openly embraced hip hop-often regarded as politically radioactive-in his presidential campaigns. Just as important was the extent to which hip hop artists and activists embraced him in return. This new relationship fundamentally altered the dynamics between popular culture, race, youth, and national politics. But what does this relationship look like now, and what will it look like in the decades to come? The Hip Hop & Obama Reader attempts to answer these questions by offering the first systematic analysis of hip hop and politics in the Obama era and beyond. Over the course of 14 chapters, leading scholars and activists offer new perspectives on hip hop's role in political mobilization, grassroots organizing, campaign branding, and voter turnout, as well as the ever-changing linguistic, cultural, racial, and gendered dimensions of hip hop in the U.S. and abroad. Inviting readers to reassess how Obama's presidency continues to be shaped by the voice of hip hop and, conversely, how hip hop music and politics have been shaped by Obama, The Hip Hop & Obama Reader critically examines hip hop's potential to effect social change in the 21st century. This volume is essential reading for scholars and fans of hip hop, as well as those interested in the shifting relationship between democracy and popular culture. Foreword: Tricia Rose, Brown University Afterword: Cathy Cohen, University of Chicago
Preface
About the Contributors
Foreword Tricia Rose, Brown University
Introduction: The State of Hip Hop in the Age of Obama
Erik Nielson, University of Richmond
Travis L. Gosa, Cornell University
PART I: MOVE THE CROWD: HIP HOP POLITICS IN THE U.S. AND ABROAD
1. Message from the Grassroots: Hip Hop Activism, Millennials, and the Race for the White House
Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, University of Connecticut
2. It's Bigger Than Barack: Hip Hop Political Organizing, 2004-2013
Elizabeth Mendez Berry, New York University
Bakari Kitwana, Author and CEO, Rap Sessions
3. "There Are No Saviors": Hip Hop and Community Activism in the Obama Era
Kevin Powell, Author and Activist
4. "Obama Nation": Hip Hop and Global Protest
Sujatha Fernandes, Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City
University of New York
5. "Record! I am Arab": Paranoid Arab Boys, Global Cyphers, and Hip Hop Nationalism
Torie Rose DeGhett, Columbia University
PART II: CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN? THE CONTESTED DISCOURSE OF OBAMA & HIP HOP
6. Obama, Hip Hop, African American History, and "Historical Revivalism"
Pero G. Dagbovie, Michigan State University
7. "Change That Wouldn't Fill a Homeless Man's Cup Up": Filipino-American Political Hip Hop and Community Organizing in the Age of Obama
Anthony Kwame Harrison, Virginia Tech
8. Obama/Time: The President in the Hip-Hop Nation
Murray Forman, Northeastern University
9. One Day It Will All Make Sense: Obama, Politics and Common Sense
Charlie Braxton, Author and Activist
10. "New Slaves": The Soul of Hip-Hop Sold to Da Massah in the Age of Obama
Raphael Heaggans, Niagara University
PART III: REPRESENT: GENDER AND LANGUAGE IN THE OBAMA ERA
11. YouTube and Bad Bitches: Hip Hop's Seduction Of Girls and The Distortion Of Participatory Culture
Kyra D. Gaunt, City University of New York
12. A Performative Account of Black Girlhood
Ruth Nicole Brown, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
13. The King's English: Obama, Jay Z, and the Science of Code Switching
Michael P. Jeffries, Wellesley College
14. My President is Black: Speech Act Theory and Presidential Allusions in the Lyrics of Rap Music
James Peterson and Cynthia Estremera, Lehigh University
Afterword: When Will Black Lives Matter? Neoliberalism, Democracy, and the Queering of American Activism in the Post-Obama Era
Cathy J. Cohen, University of Chicago
Subject Index
