Back to Blog
Dead emcee scrolls5/25/2023 The ensuing outlined tripartite theoretical framework is to serve as a model through which other rappers/academics may think about, discuss, and analyze their own musical output, their own identities, their own selves. I therefore went about the task of creating my own album – my own Hip Hop cultural and musical product – in order to place myself in the unique position to examine it critically as cultural artifact, as well as to undertake (self-)analyses concerning various aspects of (my) identity formation. The study's specific concern is with how (independent) Hip Hop recording artists work to construct their own selves and identity (as formed primarily through lyrical content) the aim here was to explore Hip Hop music and the construction of artistic self-presentation. Indeed, academic and critical considerations of one's own Hip Hop-based musical production is a novel venture this project, as a fusion of theory with practice, was therefore undertaken so as to occupy that gap. While Hip Hop culture has increasingly found itself positioned as object for study within academia, this was a unique Hip Hop-focused creative project based in self-ethnography. This process of commodification has created a bastardized version of hip hop culture, devoid of real ties to “authentic” hip hop culture, but a product of the creators of popular culture." In addition to calling out pop or mainstream rappers, hip hop artists in Tanzania have directed their anger at the media houses and their “commodification” of hip hop culture and transforming it into Bongo Flava, a pop music genre. In so doing, hip hop artists have called to the carpet Bongo Flava artists over questions of authenticity. By distancing themselves from Bongo Flava and calling out those that promote or represent Bongo Flava, many hip hop artists have attempted to draw a line in the proverbial sand, in an attempt to draw clear distinctions between hip hop and Bongo Flava. As Bongo Flava eclipsed hip hop in popularity, air play, and income generation, hip hop artists fought back. Tanzania is also the home of Bongo Flava, a genre of pop fusion that includes rap and R&B sung primarily in Swahili. Recognized by academics and hip hop aficionados alike, Tanzanian emcees have gained the respect of the international hip hop community for their skills, talent, and use of Swahili, a language known for its beautiful and complex poetry. This research focuses on that struggle in Tanzania, home to one of Africa’s most important hip hop communities. This struggle is for the survival of “authentic” hip hop, which is being threatened by the popularity of pop culture versions of hip hop and fusions between hip hop and other genres. "Tanzania has become one of the latest of hip hop’s communities to struggle to maintain authenticity within hip hop culture against the trends toward commercialization. Eminem’s commercial success is examined in terms of these three stages as a method for understanding his representative strategy and his continued commercial success in a popular music as a transracial medium. de Certeau outlines three stages through which this process occurs: (1) appropriation, in which the speaker acquires the language of a given culture to bear the burden of his/her own experience (2) a “spatial acting-out of the place,” through which the speaker airs his/her position with relation to the language and (3) allocution, through which the speaker posits the Other as the reference point for the speaker’s own subjectivity and negotiates the relationship between the two positions (97-98). This manuscript examines Marshall Bruce Mathers III, known both as Eminem and Slim Shady, as he employs pedestrian speech acts to walk the edge between “here and there.” Walking is the discursive process through which a subject is constituted by the relationship it creates with the Other.
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |