This project is a collection of essays that share a common theme; namely, how white people use rap music. You don’t have to read it from start to finish, nor do you have to read all of it. The essays follow a loose progression and, in some cases, build on ideas presented in other chapters, but each can stand on its own. Over the course of the essays, we see how rap music can be used for anti-racist aims at one end of the spectrum, and we see how it can be used to uphold white supremacy at the other. In the first essay, I pose the question “what does it mean to be a responsible white scholar of hip hop?” I consider the ways in which rap music has historically been studied by white music scholars. I limit myself to this subset of rap scholarship for several reasons. First, it’s still a rather small body of literature at this point. Second, as a white music scholar, these are the approaches that I have had the most contact with. The field of musicology (here, taken broadly to include not only “music history,” but ethnomusicology and music theory as well) is largely white and largely male, which undoubtedly shapes the kinds of scholarship we produce. This scholarship also reflects institutional pressures and definitions of what “counts” as scholarship; it highlights the boundaries of our disciplines; and it contributes to the formation of a canon—certain artists are more “worthy” of study than others. The chapter also serves as a literature review that might be useful in classes that analyze predominantly musical aspects of rap.
The second essay is still taking shape, but it considers the importance of engaging with local music in anti-racist pedagogy.
The third essay got its start on this very blog! It juxtaposes the stories of Kendrick Lamar and Macklemore over the period of 2014-2020 in an effort to explore how white institutions use blackness as a form of capital. Macklemore owes some of his success as a rapper to the ways in which he openly acknowledges and tries to come to terms with “his place in a music that’s been taken by my race/Culturally appropriated by the white face.”[1] His “white tears” stand out sharply against contemporary notions of blackness as presented in Kendrick Lamar’s music, which emerged against the backdrop of the Black Lives Matter movement. The power of Lamar’s music made it attractive to white audiences who were looking for ways to lift up the black community. There is a clear resonance between this essay and the first essay in the book in terms of who among rappers is “canonized” in these ways.
The fourth essay expands on the article I wrote a few years ago, “The Trumpification of Hip Hop,” which updated a 2009 essay by Erik Nielson that looked at the “Obamification” of rap.
[1] ”White Privilege,” The Language of My World, 2010.