Rap Music and Street Consciousness (Music in American Life)

About this book

In this first musicological history of rap Cheryl L. Keyes traces the genre from its roots in West African bardic traditions the Jamaican dance-hall tradition and African American vernacular expressions to its permeation of the cultural mainstream as a major tenet of hip-hop lifestyle and culture. Rap music according to Keyes is a forum that addresses the political and economic disfranchisement of black youths and other groups fosters ethnic pride and displays culture values and aesthetics. Blending popular culture with folklore and ethnomusicology Keyes offers a nuanced portrait of the artists themes and varying styles reflective of urban life and street consciousness. Drawing on the music lives politics and interests of figures including Afrika Bambaataa the "godfather of hip-hop " and his Zulu Nation Grandmaster Flash Kool "DJ" Herc MC Lyte LL Cool J De La Soul Public Enemy and The Last Poets the book challenges outsider views of the genre. It also draws on ethnographic research done in New York Los Angeles Detroit and London as well as interviews with performers producers directors fans and managers. Keyess vivid and wide-ranging analysis covers the emergence and personas of female rappers and white rappers the advent of rap music videos and the existence of gangsta rap Southern rap acid rap and dance-centered rap subgenres. Also considered are rapper-turned-mogul phenomenons such as Queen Latifah; the multimedia empire of Sean "P. Diddy" Combs; the cataclysmic rise of Death Row Records; East Coast versus West Coast tensions; the deaths of Tupac Shakur and Christopher "The Notorious B.I.G." Wallace; and the unification efforts of the Nationof Islam and the Hip-Hop Nation.