Prep

• Tricia Rose, ‘Never Trust a Big Butt and a Smile’, in Forman and Neal (2004)
• Audio: ‘Saweetie, City Girls, and the Female Rapper Renaissance’ (29 November 2020)!
• Review:
  • Charles Holmes, ‘“He Shook the World”: George Floyd’s Legendary Houston Legacy’, Rolling Stone (2 June 2020). This is behind a paywall, but you should be able to access this from the campus library’s website. Please let me know if you encounter any problems!
  • Audio: ‘Big Floyd and the Rise of Houston Chopped N Screwed Music’, Switched on Pop (9 June 2020)
  • Audio: NTS Radio DJ Screw Special (2015)

ZOOM SESSION

1. Review of the Final Project: The goal is not to create a Wikipedia entry with a few extra maps and multimedia add-ons…
   • REMINDER: The Pablo Principle
   • REMINDER: A Few Recurring Keywords/Themes: aesthetics; authenticity; black nationalism; capitalism; commercialism; conspicuous consumption; cultural appropriation; feminism; intersectionality; gender; materialism; objectification; patriarchy; race ethnicity; sexuality; politics; signifying; technology
   • Some Questions to Ask Yourselves:
     1. Is this question interesting?
     2. Is it answerable? That is, is it specific enough to be dealt with adequately, given the space and time I have at my disposal?
     3. Does it make any kind of serious reference to recurring keywords/themes in the hip-hop studies we’ve looked at?
     4. Is it sociological?
2. A Very Brief Review of ASA Style
3. Discussion: DJ Screw and the Sound of Houston’s South Side
   • What is the chopped ‘n’ screwed aesthetic?
     • screwed
     • chopped
   • DJ Screw’s Influence and the Sound of Contemporary Popular Music
   • Big Floyd and the Screwed Up Click
   • Is there an essential connection between the chopped ‘n’ screwed aesthetic and Houston’s urban culture and geography?
4. Q&A:: ‘Never Trust a Big Butt and a Smile’: Hip-Hop’s Gender Politics, Past and Present
   • Is there a female rapper renaissance?
   • If so, why is it happening?
   • Have the possibilities for female MCs (artistically and career-wise) really improved relative to the era Rose writes about? (And what about non-binary/LGBTQ+ MCs?…)

For Next Time

• Story Maps Final Project due 12/13