From bounce to the mainstream: Hip hop representations of post-Katrina New Orleans in music, film and television

Kanye West’s biting off-script comments about George W. Bush during the televised NBC benefit, A Concert for Hurricane Relief, are probably the most remembered contribution by a hip hop artist to post-Katrina critiques of racism. Beyond Kanye’s pointed remarks, other well-established rappers (including Mos Def, Jay-Z, Public Enemy, Lil Wayne and Juvenile) quickly employed hip hop music to speak out in sociopolitical protests against the overt neglect of New Orleans’s poor black residents. In recent popular television and film representations, hip hop continues to play a significant role in how we remember the effects of Katrina. In the 2008 documentary film, Trouble the Water, Kimberly Rivers Roberts’s hip hop lyrics affirm a sense of survivorship, shared and created through music. Similarly, in its second season (2011), David Simon’s HBO television series Treme explores the role of hip hop in post-Katrina recovery processes through a storyline centred on local bounce music. Some scholars argue that post-Katrina hip hop responses can be viewed as ‘disaster tourism’, or as upholding stereotypes about New Orleans as a space of either violent criminal activity or utopian racial exceptionalism. However, this article suggests that through rap music, Trouble the Water, and Treme, listeners and viewers are exposed to the complexity, diversity and lasting impact of a city (New Orleans) and a musical genre (rap), both of which are often accused of ‘selling out’, ‘watering down’ or profiting from what were once deemed authentic black music communities.