Hip Hop around the Globe (CES 209)

On Monday, January 16, 2006, Bill O'Reilly interviewed conservative author John McWhorter and Clarence Jones, a former speechwriter for Martin Luther King, Jr. Using the King Holiday as an opportunity to denounce "Black leaders," O'Reilly stated that the two most pressing issues facing the Black community, which in his estimation were being ignored by Black leaders, were out-of-wedlock births and rap (hip-hop) culture(O'Reilly, 2006). Beyond reflecting the nature of a contemporary racial discourse that erases racism, instead demonizing Black women and youth as source of problems, his comments, which were endorsed by both his guests, embody the very narrow vision of hip-hop and the ease with which American social ills are readily displaced onto Black bodies. His comments, while nothing new given his longstanding war on hip-hop as a threat to American children, seemed especially powerful in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the ongoing myopic assault on hip-hop bodies, aesthetics, and cultures.

While O'Reilly (along with Oprah Winfrey, Bill Cosby, Tipper Gore, among others) laments the negative influences of hip-hop (although they only talk about a segment of rap music) while Nas declares its death, the music and culture of hip-hop seem to be flourishing. The popularity of rap music is evident on the charts, on MTV (and BET), and with its presence throughout popular culture; moreover, the visibility of rap icons within celebrity culture, along with the aesthetic, linguistic, and cultural influences of hip-hop globally further reveals the significance place of this cultural form, movement, ethos, and generation within the contemporary. As one moves beyond U.S. borders, the place of hip-hop is further evident, functioning as a cross-cultural/global language of both decolonization struggles and global capitalism. Here lies a key feature of hip-hop and a key theme for this course: the contradictions that define hip-hop: oppositional and mainstream; American and un-American; capitalistic and anti-capitalistic; global and local; libratory and oppressive; artistic and commodifiable; black and anti-black; celebrated and demonized; challenging and reifying; a voice of the poor and a voice of the American/American materialism; dead and alive.

This course, thus, accepts the task of reflecting on the racial, cultural, social, political, economic, and global influences of hip-hop; of understanding and navigating these contradictions. It challenges the mythologies that reduce hip-hop to rap; that reduce rap to gangsta music; that reduce gangsta music to black artists and in doing so this course will examine, discuss, and learn about hip-hop as a movement, as a generation, as a style, as a voice, as a language, and as a pulse, moving beyond the music, beyond the mainstream, beyond the borders of the U.S., beyond the hegemonic discourse, and most importantly beyond the lies, distortions, and demonization. Without interrogation, reflection and examination we will have given up on hip-hop and therefore given up on ourselves and our/your future.