Thinking more about this whiteness and rap project--it's changed shape a few times. First it was going to be something along the lines of rap pedagogy as anti-racist pedagogy: if white folks are going to teach and write about rap, we need to be explicitly antiracist when we do it. I still think that's a thing to be sure, but I had kinda a loose collection of essays that didn't quite hang together in the way I wanted to, which I guess is fine, but I wanted some kind of frame to surround them. So I started thinking about the idea of antiracist hip hop pedagogy in the context of "postracial" America. I liked the frame, but the more I worked through it, the more the pedagogy stuff got pushed to the margins, which again is fine. Again, interesting and important project and shows up on my blog and probably other places too (presented a bit of it to the HHRIG at SMT this year). So--rap and post-racial America. Then Trump gets elected and we're, uh, not postracial anymore... Hence my "Trumpification of hip hop" essay (a response of sorts to Erik Nielson's "Obamafication of hip hop"). But then I got to thinking about what was going on in rap during this "post-racial" era (i.e., the Obama presidency through the Trump presidency, COVID, and George Floyd). and got to thinking about the blog/mixtape era and how it was in some ways a response to the rapid commercialization of rap that took place in the 1990s and early 2000s--the rise of rap record labels and megastars. Correlation doesn't equal causation to be sure, but there's definitely potential in looking at the blog era in terms of post-racial America--maybe something along the lines of Robin James's WOXY book--a framework/thesis like that could be something. Have to look at her book again...
Thanks for reading my ramblings. Stay tuned--might do some blogging in the next few days. (Seems only right to blog about the blog era...)