The Hip Hop & Obama Reader explores the political, social, and cultural significance of hip hop in the age of Obama. By exploring the contentious and complex interactions between popular culture and contemporary politics, it raises questions about hip hop's changing identity formations, its shifting claims to authenticity, and the extent to which it can serve as a vehicle for social and political change in the age of Obama and beyond.
CONTENTS
Preface
About the Contributors
Foreword Tricia Rose, Brown University
Introduction: The State of Hip Hop in the Age of Obama
Erik Nielson, University of Richmond
Travis L. Gosa, Cornell University
PART I: MOVE THE CROWD: HIP HOP POLITICS IN THE U.S. AND ABROAD
1. Message from the Grassroots: Hip Hop Activism, Millennials, and the Race for the White House
Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, University of Connecticut
2. It's Bigger Than Barack: Hip Hop Political Organizing, 2004-2013
Elizabeth Mendez Berry, New York University
Bakari Kitwana, Author and CEO, Rap Sessions
3. There Are No Saviors: Hip Hop and Community Activism in the Obama Era
Kevin Powell, Author and Activist
4. Obama Nation: Hip Hop and Global Protest
Sujatha Fernandes, Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City
University of New York
5. Record! I am Arab: Paranoid Arab Boys, Global Cyphers, and Hip Hop Nationalism
Torie Rose DeGhett, Columbia University
PART II: CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN? THE CONTESTED DISCOURSE OF OBAMA & HIP HOP
6. Obama, Hip Hop, African American History, and Historical Revivalism
Pero G. Dagbovie, Michigan State University
7. Change That Wouldn't Fill a Homeless Man's Cup Up: Filipino-American Political Hip Hop and Community Organizing in the Age of Obama
Anthony Kwame Harrison, Virginia Tech
8. Obama/Time: The President in the Hip-Hop Nation
Murray Forman, Northeastern University
9. One Day It Will All Make Sense: Obama, Politics and Common Sense
Charlie Braxton, Author and Activist
10. New Slaves: The Soul of Hip-Hop Sold to Da Massah in the Age of Obama
Raphael Heaggans, Niagara University
PART III: REPRESENT: GENDER AND LANGUAGE IN THE OBAMA ERA
11. YouTube and Bad Bitches: Hip Hop's Seduction Of Girls and The Distortion Of Participatory Culture
Kyra D. Gaunt, City University of New York
12. A Performative Account of Black Girlhood
Ruth Nicole Brown, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
13. The King's English: Obama, Jay Z, and the Science of Code Switching
Michael P. Jeffries, Wellesley College
14. My President is Black: Speech Act Theory and Presidential Allusions in the Lyrics of Rap Music
James Peterson and Cynthia Estremera, Lehigh University
Afterword: When Will Black Lives Matter? Neoliberalism, Democracy, and the Queering of American Activism in the Post-Obama Era
Cathy J. Cohen, University of Chicago
Subject Index