South Africa (Mzansi) | Intellect Skip to content
1981
1-2: Hip Hop Atlas
  • ISSN: 2632-6825
  • E-ISSN: 2632-6833

Abstract

This article offers a snapshot of South African hip hop by focusing largely on the uptake of ‘conscious’ hip hop in the 1980s and 1990s. It argues that especially Cape Town activists made meaningful contributions to advancing Black multilingual expression and, thereby, validating negated Black identities as the country was beginning to make the transition from apartheid to a democratic, post-apartheid South Africa. Ultimately, it questions whether the binary opposition between ‘conscious’ and commercial hip hop or Cape Town vs. Joburg hip hop is helpful in understanding the nuances of South African hip hop by pointing to examples that complicate such binaries.

This article is Open Access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-ND), which allows users to copy, distribute and transmit the article as long as the author is attributed, the article is not used for commercial purposes, and the work is not modified or adapted in any way. To view a copy of the licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1386/ghhs_00055_1
2023-12-20
2024-05-02
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

/deliver/fulltext/ghhs/3/1-2/ghhs.3.1-2.107_Haupt.html?itemId=/content/journals/10.1386/ghhs_00055_1&mimeType=html&fmt=ahah

References

  1. Alim, H. Samy and Haupt, Adam (2017), ‘Hip hop as culturally sustaining pedagogy’, in D. Paris and H. S. Alim (eds), Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies: Teaching and Learning for Educational Justice, New York: Teachers College Press, pp. 15774.
    [Google Scholar]
  2. Battersby, Jane (2003), ‘“Sometimes It Feels Like I’m Not Black Enough”: CastIing coloured through South African hip-hop as a postcolonial text’, in H. Wasserman and S. Jacobs (eds), Shifting Selves: Post-Apartheid Essays on Media, Culture and Identity, Cape Town: Kwela, pp. 10929.
    [Google Scholar]
  3. Biko, Steve (1978), I Write What I Like, Gabarone and Ibadan: Heinemann.
    [Google Scholar]
  4. Erasmus, Zimitri (2001), ‘Introduction’, in Z. Erasmus (ed.), Coloured by History, Shaped by Place, Cape Town: Kwela Books and SA History Online, pp. 1228.
    [Google Scholar]
  5. Erasmus, Zimitri (2010), ‘Creolisation as critical praxis’, Commentary in Current Anthropology, 51:6, pp. 73159.
    [Google Scholar]
  6. Erasmus, Zimitri (2011), ‘Creolisation, colonial citizenship(s) and degeneracy: A critique of selected histories of Freetown, Sierra Leone and of the Cape, South Africa’, Current Sociology, 59:5, pp. 63554.
    [Google Scholar]
  7. Erasmus, Zimitri and Harry, Garuba (eds) (2012), ‘Revisiting apartheid race categories: A special issue’, Transformation, 79, pp. 111.
    [Google Scholar]
  8. Erasmus, Zimitri (2013), ‘Throwing the genes: A renewed biological imaginary of “Race”, place and identification’, Theora: A Journal of Social and Political Theory, 136, pp. 3853.
    [Google Scholar]
  9. Haupt, Adam (2001), ‘Black thing: Hip-hop nationalism, ‘Race’ and gender in Prophets of Da City and Brasse vannie Kaap’, in Z. Erasmus (ed.), Coloured by History, Shaped by Place, Cape Town: Kwela Books and SA History Online, pp. 17391.
    [Google Scholar]
  10. Haupt, Adam (2004), ‘Identity and the politics of representation in hip-hop’, Under Construction: ‘Race’ and Identity in South Africa Today, Johannesburg: Heinemann, pp. 199209.
    [Google Scholar]
  11. Haupt, Adam (2008), Stealing Empire: P2P, Intellectual Property and Hip-Hop Subversion, Cape Town: HSRC Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  12. Haupt, Adam (2012), Static: Race and Representation in Post-Apartheid Music, Media and Film, Cape Town: HSRC Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  13. Haupt, Adam (2015), ‘Framing gender, race and hip-hop in Boyz n the Hood, Do the Right Thing and Slam’, in J. Williams (ed.), Cambridge Companion to Hip-Hop, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 23242.
    [Google Scholar]
  14. Haupt, Adam (2019), ‘Queering hip-Hop, queering the city: Dope Saint Jude’s transformative politics’, in A. Haupt, Q. Williams, E. Jansen and H. S. Alim (eds), Neva Again: Hip Hop Art, Activism and Education in Post-Apartheid South Africa, Cape Town: HSRC Press, pp. 43343.
    [Google Scholar]
  15. Haupt, Adam (2021), ‘The first-ever dictionary of South Africa’s Kaaps language has launched: Why it matters’, The Conversation, 29 August, https://theconversation.com/the-first-ever-dictionary-of-south-africas-kaaps-language-has-launched-why-it-matters-165485. Accessed 15 February 2023.
  16. Haupt, Adam (2022), ‘What is cultural appropriation and why is it so harmful?’, The Conversation, 9 October, https://theconversation.com/what-is-cultural-appropriation-and-why-is-it-so-harmful-185976. Accessed 15 February 2023.
  17. Haupt, Adam, Williams, Quentin, Jansen, Emile and Alim, H. Samy (eds) (2019), Neva Again: Hip Hop Art, Activism and Education in Post-Apartheid South Africa, Cape Town: HSRC Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  18. Livermon, Xavier (2020), Kwaito Bodies: Remastering Space and Subjectivity in Post-Apartheid South Africa, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  19. Mkosi, Andy (2016), ‘Zizo’, YouTube, 16 February, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KApAx85V1q8. Accessed 1 September 2016.
    [Google Scholar]
  20. Ndabeni, Esinako and Mthembu, Sihle (2018), Born To Kwaito: Reflections on the Kwaito Generation, Auckland: Blackbird Books.
    [Google Scholar]
  21. Peterson, Bhekizizwe (2003), ‘Kwaito, “dawgs” and the antimonies of hustling’, African Identities, 1:2, pp. 197213.
    [Google Scholar]
  22. POC (Prophets of da City) (1993), Age of Truth, Johannesburg: Ghetto Ruff.
    [Google Scholar]
  23. Singleton, John (dir.) (1992), Boyz N the Hood, USA: Columbia Pictures.
    [Google Scholar]
  24. Steingo, Gavin (2016), Kwaito’s Promise: Music and the Aesthetics of Freedom in South Africa, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  25. Vögele, Pius Jonas (2020), ‘The cosmic submarine: Yugen Blakrok’s sonar echoes’, Critical Studies in Media Communication, 37:4, pp. 35063.
    [Google Scholar]
  26. Williams, Quentin E. (2016), ‘Youth multilingualism in South Africa’s hip-hop culture: A metapragmatic analysis’, Sociolinguistic Studies, 10:1&2, pp. 10933.
    [Google Scholar]
http://instance.metastore.ingenta.com/content/journals/10.1386/ghhs_00055_1
Loading
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a success
Invalid data
An error occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error