Jeffrey G. Ogbar

On his book Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap

Cover Interview of September 29, 2009

In a nutshell

Hip-Hop Revolution explores the current cultural and political landscape of hip-hop by providing a broad based historical context for the art. Beginning with the emergence of popular culture in the United States and the minstrel show in the antebellum era, I work through the emergence of jazz, rock and roll, blaxploitation movies in the 1970s, to the development of hip-hop in the mid-1970s New York City. The point is to explore the durability of race as a touchtone for popular entertainment—particularly music. By doing this, I establish an essential framework for understanding certain deeply racialized tropes in hip-hop.

Though this book gives some cursory overview of the history of popular culture and race, it is, at its core, an examination of hip-hop with a special emphasis on its last 15 years. I explore the meaning and implications of rap music in particular. From Congressional hearings, controversial artists, to a cultural juggernaut, with incisive, bold, and daring social and political commentary, rap music is full of diverse expressions and experiences. I look at the ways in which hip-hop’s demands for authenticity are centered on particularly salient tropes of race, class and gender.

So, rappers like Jay-Z, Lil Wayne and 50 Cent, embody the core tropes well: African American males with roots in poor, urban landscapes. The more one lacks one of these essential tropes, the more he is scrutinized for being “real.” For example, Eminem’s impoverished, inner-city upbringing gave him a degree of credibility—beyond his lyrical skill—that being an upper-class kid from Iowa would have not.

media studies / america / race / everyday existence / musicology / pop culture / african american heritage / prisons /

[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.

Carolyn J. Dean,
Interview of February 01, 2011

The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.

Jerome Kagan,
Interview of September 17, 2009