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Global Hip Hop Studies - Current Issue

Volume 6, Issue 1

Volume 6, Issue 1, 2025

  • Editorial

      • Fight the power: Hip hop in a time of monsters

        https://doi.org/10.1386/ghhs_00105_2

        This editorial contextualizes the political and cultural environment in which this open call issue emerges, noting the rise of global fascisms and dangers to free speech. To situate this point in hip hop history, the introduction nods to Chuck D of Public Enemy, who rapped on the classic track, ‘Fight the Power’: ‘Our freedom of speech is freedom or death/ We got to fight the powers that be’. From this background, the short essay introduces the contents of the issue, concluding that we need to build solidarity to protect our freedom of speech and protect each other from being disappeared – as has started happening to outspoken critics of fascist regimes with worrying regularity. Using the concept of hegemony, we argue that subordinate groups have agency to challenge the rising tide of fascism.

  • Show and Prove

      • : Graffiti, and the clash between art worlds

        https://doi.org/10.1386/ghhs_00108_7

        The article explores the intersection of graffiti and in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, through the controversy surrounding the murals by Comum and , created as part of the CURA arts festival. While graffiti and share visual elements and a quest for visibility, they are culturally distinct: graffiti has gained artistic recognition, whereas remains marginalized and often criminalized. The conflict escalated when the pixador Ralado tagged both murals, as an act of defiance against CURA’s selection process and its appropriation of street art. These acts reignited debates about legitimacy, ownership and the institutionalization of street art. Social media amplified the tension, and a near altercation between the artists underscored the deep divides between graffiti, and mainstream art. In 2023, Comum repainted and, in a symbolic reconciliation, invited Ralado to reapply his pixação, integrating it into the mural. This act transformed a moment of conflict into a statement about the coexistence of different urban art expressions. The article highlights the ongoing tensions between artistic recognition, underground culture and institutional forces, framing the events through the lens of Howard Becker’s ‘Art Worlds’.

  • Articles

      • ‘Being a woman is the only thing considered questionable. But not the whiteness’: Gender and race in normatively white hip hop scenes

        https://doi.org/10.1386/ghhs_00101_1

        White rappers have been the ‘other’ in US hip hop culture, and through this minority position, in need of strategies for building authenticity and credibility. In predominantly white hip hop scenes, however, whiteness has often gone unmarked and undertheorized. Meanwhile, women of all backgrounds have frequently been marginalized in the global rap music industry and hip hop research. To address questions of power and identity related to gender, race and whiteness, this article focuses on feminist women and non-binary rappers in the mostly white and male Finnish hip hop scene. How do Finnish women and non-binary artists talk about race, whiteness and gender in relation to their identity and artistry? What kind of comparisons do they make between Finnish and US/global hip hop scenes? In addition to affording attention to non-male rappers who are often neglected in hip hop scholarship (apart from the pioneering work of hip hop feminists), the article’s wider objective is to offer intersectional analysis of whiteness in white-dominated hip hop scenes through critical whiteness studies. The main data for this article are semi-structured interviews with eight rappers. Analysing feminist women and non-binary rappers’ views on gender, race and whiteness in Finnish rap offers an interesting case for an intersectional examination of racial and gender norms in contemporary rap music. Further, the article addresses a research gap in whiteness studies: how is whiteness negotiated locally and what reflections and responses come up when whiteness is addressed directly?

    • Giving Grandmaster Flowers his flowers

      https://doi.org/10.1386/ghhs_00100_1

      The Bronx – with good reason – figures heavily in scholarly discussion of the early years of hip hop and its influences. At the same time, this focus has marginalized the surrounding boroughs of New York City and their contributions to the genre. While placing Bronx as a focal point is justified, the approach to scholarship tends to overemphasize the Bronx at the expense of other crucial locations. Scholars such as Jeff Chang and Nelson George have examined in great detail hip hop’s beginnings, but only recently have scholars such as E. Moncell Durden focused on decentering the Bronx and refocus hip hop as a progression of cultural practices. Scholarship has provided evidence of proto-hip hop elements being utilized such as the toasting traditions in Jamaican Dancehall music that influenced MC traditions and multiple bands used to provide continuous music akin to deejaying. Yet, when addressing the technical elements of deejaying, the Bronx remains the focal point with little pre-hip hop history discussed other than Jamaican influences. This article argues that while early hip hop studies should certainly continue to acknowledge the importance of the Bronx, the field must also incorporate technological advancements and innovations of pre-hip hop deejays. The significance of this approach is to remove the ‘direct line’ narrative that connects Jamaica to Kool Herc to hip hop and address the complex web of more immediate influences on hip hop. In this article, I complicate the influences of pre-hip hop by navigating the musical practices of Brooklyn DJ Grandmaster Flowers, a deejay who has been cited as one of the first to beatmatch (playing two or more songs at the same speed and time so that the beats seamlessly sync) and use multiple turntables to create new music. This article provides a summary of what is generally known of Grandmaster Flowers, what is contested with his practices and why his name is consistently removed from literature about early hip hop studies.

    • Troubling the distinction between art and everyday life: An ethnographic case study on the socio-material complexities of musical hip hop practice

      https://doi.org/10.1386/ghhs_00099_1

      As a practice hip hop problematizes the distinction between art and everyday life. This article details a specific studio session in Amsterdam with a key interlocutor, which is part of my ethnographic research in the Netherlands on the societal impact of musical hip hop practices. Building on the work of Stuart Hall, Kyra D. Gaunt and Christopher Small, I show how the material, social and musical elements of this studio session are interconnected. I foreground the dynamic process of how meaning is produced intersubjectively through hip hop practice. The focus on practice helps to bring into view two dynamics: (1) how these practices structure activity over time and how that is relevant within musical interaction, and (2) how agency can be contextualized within a given (socio-)material structure, and how practitioners use hip hop to deal with, make sense of, and affect their daily lives. To highlight the material aspects of the studio session, I reflect on the influence of the vinyl record that was sampled, and the MPC5000 that was used in the production, to discuss: (1) their limitations and affordances, (2) their affective dimension in relation to the practitioners and (3) how it brings into view the history of the subject’s interconnected musical practices. Reflecting on the social dimension of our songwriting, I argue that our interaction needs to be studied beyond the discursive realm alone, by highlighting the intersubjective and corporeal nature of this creative process.

    • Benchwarmers never ride foreign: John Henryism as the underpinning for hustle culture in hip hop

      https://doi.org/10.1386/ghhs_00102_1

      This article argues that high-effort coping with environmental stressors, i.e. John Henryism, lies at the heart of hip hop’s hustle culture. Adapted from social epidemiology literature, John Henryism is defined as high-effort coping related to overcoming environmental psychosocial stressors. I argue that the link between John Henryism and hip hop can be traced to the musical genre’s inception and is embedded in the lyrics and the names of rappers. This article traces the history of John Henryism and hip hop, connects John Henryism to hip hop’s hustle culture, maps Big K.R.I.T.’s lyrics from ‘Boobie Miles’ to the John Henryism Active Coping Scale (JHAC12) and suggests future directions. Implications suggest that by recognizing the connection between John Henryism and hip hop, music historians, epidemiologists, artists and creators and appreciators and fans can develop a wider, more nuanced understanding of the genre.

  • Dive in the Archive

      • Rap beyond the Afterfuture

        https://doi.org/10.1386/ghhs_00107_7

        A comparison of two visions of the future from the year 2000: by the trio of the same name and by Mike Ladd. Many aspects of these albums are considered, including production and even the cover art, although the focus is on the lyrics. Del the Funky Homosapien draws on and and is broadly concerned with the plight of humanity and the downtrodden, while Ladd riffs on and and foregrounds racial concerns. The sound and range of references on take the idea of a syncretic future to the extreme. The trajectory of Del’s rap leads to the blaring ‘Memory Loss’ and the seeming eradication of hope, while Ladd memorializes Amadou Diallo and ‘all those killed by cops’ in a surprisingly gentle and expansive finale. The close consideration allows us to wonder what the imagination of rappers (and others in hip hop) can uniquely offer as we envision the future – and why there has been so little future-oriented rap.

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