Schedule/Readings

DJs often think quite hard about what they’re going to play beforehand—but like Kool Herc, a good one will switch it up according to how the crowd is reacting in real time on the dancefloor. Think of this schedule of readings in the same light. Note also that I regularly make announcements in class, typically at the beginning of the period, about what’s coming next.

Week 1 – Introduction: Hip-Hop & the Academy

W 8/28

What do we gain from the academic study of hip-hop? And what do academics typically get wrong about hip-hop? (Note: These are all short texts or audiovisual clips; please make sure you check them out before our first meeting!)

Week 2 – Taste, Culture, & Capital

M 9/2 NO CLASS (Labor Day)

W 9/4

How subjective can taste be for social animals like ourselves?

Week 3 – Hip-Hop History: Hip-Hop History: DJing and MCing

M 9/9

What’s the difference between rap and hip-hop music?

W 9/11

Is hip-hop inherently political?

  • Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton, ‘Hip-Hop: Planet Rock’, in Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disc Jockey (Grove Press, 2006)
  • Audio: Afrika Bambaataa, ‘Death Mix’ (1983), Parts 1 & 2
  • Video: DJ Jazzy Jay | Crate Diggers | Fuse (10 October 2012). Jazzy Jay was one of Zulu Nation’s main DJs, was the co-founder of Def Jam Records, and is one of hip-hop’s great storytellers. keywords: crate digging; sacred crates.

Week 4 – Hip-Hop History: Dance & Visual Arts

M 9/16

How have various kinds of mass media influenced the evolution of hip-hop dance?

  • Jorge ‘Popmaster Fabel’ Pabon, ‘Physical Graffiti: The History of Hip-Hop Dance’, in Jeff Chang, ed., Total Chaos: The Art and Aesthetics of Hip-Hop (BasicBooks, 2006). Also reprinted in Forman and Neal (2012).
  • Audio: ‘Breaking’s Olympic Debut’, The Daily (9 August 2024)
  • Video: Wild Style (Charlie Ahearn, 1982). We’ll watch this movie in class, but I encourage you to look at it a few times. You can view this movie for free using the hyperlink in the title.

W 9/18 

Did street art survive its move to the galleries?

  • Jeff Chang, ‘Zulus on a Time Bomb: Hip-Hop Meets the Rockers Downtown’, in Forman and Neal (2012). This time, we’ll focus on the sections having to do with graffiti.
  • Norman Mailer, ‘The Faith of Graffiti’, Esquire (May 1974)
  • Audio: TBD
  • Video: Wild Style (Charlie Ahearn, 1982)

Week 5 –  Hip-Hop Historiography

M 9/23

How do we separate history from mythology?

W 9/25

Did hip-hop really begin in the Bronx? (And if it did, was it a necessary consequence of social conditions and social forces? How much ‘nothing’ did this something come from?)

  • Nelson George, ‘Hip-Hop’s Founding Fathers Speak the Truth’, in Forman and Neal (2012); also available in Forman and Neal (2004), pp. 45-56
  • Video: Founding Fathers: The Untold Story of Hip-Hop (Ron Lawrence and Hassan Pore, 2009). Watch this before class; we’ll review a few scenes during class as they become relevant to our discussion. 

Week 6 – Hip-Hop Historiography, cont’d

M 9/30

What defines a hip-hop classic?

W 10/2 NO CLASS

Week 7 – Writing and the Rhetoric of Rap: MCing

M 10/7

What can the study of linguistics teach us about the language of hip-hop?

W 10/9

What can the study of poetics teach us about rap lyricism?

Week 8 – Writing and the Rhetoric of Authenticity

M 10/14 NO CLASS

T 10/15 CLASSES FOLLOW A MONDAY SCHEDULE

How can we come up with a thesis, and what is the mark of a good one?

W 10/16

What do we mean when we talk about ‘authenticity’ in hip-hop?

Week 9 – Hip-Hop Politics: Conscious Rap

M 10/21

If hip-hop is ‘protest music’, why did so many conscious rappers support the patriarchy?

W 10/23

What do feminists hear when they listen to hip-hop?

Week 10 – Hip-Hop Politics: Conscious Rap, cont’d;

M 10/28

If hip-hop is protest music, why is there so much gaybashing?

W 10/30

Was gangsta rap the real conscious rap?

Week 11 – ‘Race’, Space, & Place

M 11/4

Where does keepin’ it real go wrong?

W 11/6

What exactly is ‘dirty’ about the ‘Dirty South’?

  • Matt Miller, ‘Rap’s Dirty South: From Subculture to Pop Culture’, (password-protected PDF) in Forman and Neal (2012)
  • Audio: Tommy Wright III feat. La Chat and Playa Fly, ‘Gangsta Forever’ (1996). Justin Hunte mentions this track in ‘How the triplet flow took over rap’ as one of the first examples of the sustained use of double-time triplet flow. It also features an opening verse from the underappreciated La Chat, one of at least two great female MCs from that era of Memphis rap (the other is Gangsta Boo of Three Six Mafia). Note: The Boss DR-660, a very budget drum machine, was a staple of early Memphis rap production, particularly in the years 1993-1995; I’ll bring in the unit that I’ve been borrowing the last few weeks. The main sample for ‘Gangsta Forever’ is apparently taken from the Psycho II soundtrack, however, so that suggests that Wright had upgraded his equipment by then (the only samples available on the DR-660 were factory presets). Check out ‘Meet Yo Maker’ from his 1994 album Ashes 2 Ashes, Dust 2 Dust to hear him produce an entire beat on the DR-660. Since this drum machine did not feature a sampler, Memphis producers would take the stock 808 cowbell sound and pitch it at different frequencies to create melodies.
  • Audio:
  • Video: ‘How the triplet flow took over rap’, Vox (15 September 2017)

Week 12 – Sampling, Chopping, & Screwing

M 11/11

Is DJ Screw really to blame for Drake?

W 11/13

What’s creative about using other people’s records?

Week 13 –

M 11/18

How much can we read into an artist’s sampling choices?

W 11/20

Does the new wave of female MCs break any new ground when it comes to the gender politics that Tricia Rose wrote about back in the ’90s?

Week 14 – ‘Race’, Culture, & Appropriation

M 11/25

Is cultural appropriation always a bad thing?

W 11/27

Are rappers simply modern-day griots?

Week 15 – Sing About Me I: The Art of Storytelling

M 12/2

Has hip hop revolutionised the art of storytelling in any way? Is there a kind of storytelling that only a rap song can do? (And where have all the storytellers gone?)

  • Adam Bradley, ‘Storytelling’, in Book of Rhymes (Basic Books, 2009)
  • Henry Louis Gates, Jr., The Signifying Monkey (1988)
  • Audio: TBD
  • Video: TBD

W 12/4

Is storytelling overrated?

Week 16 – Sing About Me II: Politics of Storytelling

M 12/9

Even if hip hop gives ‘voice to the voiceless’, does that necessarily mean that anyone will listen to their stories?

  • Francesca Polletta, Pang Ching Bobby Chen, Beth Gharrity Gardner, and Alice Motes, ‘The Sociology of Storytelling’, Annual Review of Sociology 37 (2011), pp. 109-130
  • Audio: TBD
  • Video: TBD

W 12/11 Last Day of Class

Can hip-hop storytelling help us to think?

  • Isak Dinesen, ‘The Immortal Story’
  • Hannah Arendt, ‘Isak Dinesen’ (in Men in Dark Times)
  • Francesca Polletta, ‘Storytelling in Politics’, Contexts (2006)
  • Audio: Kendrick Lamar, good kid, m.A.A.d. city (2012)
  • Video: TBD

Final Exam Period — Oral Presentations for Extra Credit

TBA (note: 3:30pm-5:30pm)

  • TBD
  • Audio: TBD
  • Video: TBD

*Final grades are due on the 27th of December. Please don’t ask me when I’ll have your grade, as I’ll almost certainly be working on Christmas Day and up until the last minute to make sure that everyone receives the grade they deserve.

REFERENCES

Forman, Murray, and Mark Anthony Neal. 2012. That’s the Joint! The Hip-Hop Studies Reader, 2nd Ed. New York: Routledge

Forman, Murray, and Mark Anthony Neal. 2004. That’s the Joint! The Hip-Hop Studies Reader, 1st Ed. New York: Routledge.