Hip Hop in Urban America (AAS 181)

The thirty year old youth-oriented culture of hip-hop, which started as Bronx neighborhood jams, has become a multi-billion dollar business as well as a global "underground" network of (un)related youth subcultures. The course explores, through scholarly essays, chapters, videos, websites, and music recordings, the four artistic elements of hip-hop---rap, deejaying, b-boying and b-girling (breakdance), and aerosol art (graffiti)---and their social and cultural contexts. These contexts include history, urban sociology, economics, and gender issues of hip-hop in the United States. Also, the subculture's African diasporic connections, issues of "race" and authenticity, capitalism and commercialization, and the culture's globalization are investigated.

The "power moves" of the emcee's rapped text and the b-boy's dynamic athleticism reflect social actions toward empowerment in marginalized black, Latino, and poor communities. Since hip-hop's commercialization, these creative social actions have become a signifier for many American youth as well as youth throughout the world. Hip-hop's expressive individual creativity and collective group action work in tandem in ways that are both complicit with and subversive to structures of power, such as record companies, the media, the fashion industry, Hollywood, and ultimately society and capitalism itself. The multi-dimensions of hip-hop's creative cultural "text" and its sociological context are therefore investigated through methodologies of Cultural Studies, American Studies, African Diaspora Studies, and sociology. The student can expect to
gain a better understanding of hip-hop's unique juncture at the beginning of the 21st century as a part of the continuum of black popular culture in American society.