Queering Hip Hop

In her seminal essay “Deviance as Resistance,” political scientist Cathy Cohen writes, “I continue to be interested in the possibility of constructing a field of investigation based in African American Studies and borrowing from queer theory and Black feminist analysis that is centered around the experiences of those who stand on the ~outside of state sanctioned, normalized White, middle- and upperclass, male heterosexuality.” Substituting Cohen’s “African-American Studies” with “Hip-Hop,” the goal of “Queering Hip-Hop” is to examine Hip-Hop Culture and Rap Music through the lens of black queer and black feminist analysis with a particular focus on iterations of Hip-Hop that challenge mainstream perceptions of “who and what” hip-hop is. As such “Queering Hip-Hop” is an attempt to do just that—render the “official” history of hip-hop as “strange” and “oppositional.”