Beefs often target Drake’s race, constructing him as a Canadian who is not Black enough to claim an authentic connection to African-American hip hop culture.
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Articles on Rap music
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The diss tracks released by rappers Drake and Kendrick Lamar raise interesting questions about defamation in music lyrics.
Since rap’s emergence, artists have boasted about themselves in ways that were funny and sometimes violent, vulgar and sexist. The popularity of the music and its exploitation can be dangerous.
A reconsideration of Nas’s literary clout, 30 years after the release of Illmatic.
Wales has a rich musical heritage, and the next generation is ready to take centre stage.
Looking back at the history of the diss track, it is the strength of female emcees that stands out.
Vladimir Putin and his KGB men have steadily extinguished the artistic freedom the genre enjoyed in the 1990s, with Ukraine’s invasion adding yet another nail in the coffin.
Asian martial arts and films functioned as mythic models which inspired Black and brown youth in the making of ‘urban warriors,’ and later the Wu-Tang Clan.
Costume, hair and dance allow her to modernise Tsonga culture – and help shape youth identity.
Created as an art of resistance by Black artists in the U.S., hip-hop culture has inspired global struggles and youth culture across the world, including in Canada.
A critical race theory scholar explains why it’s problematic to use rap lyrics as evidence of a crime, and what some lawmakers are doing to protect artistic expression.
Modern music education is giving students more and more opportunities to create their own tracks.
The lyrics illustrate what it means to grow up young, black and deprived on the fortress like council estates of London.
In many parts of the world, hip-hop has become a way for Muslim artists to assert their belonging and identity.
It’s 50 years since the legendary party that birthed hip hop.
On Aug. 11, 1973, a block party in the Bronx spawned a genre that would go on to influence nearly all aspects of US culture – and the music, fashion and art of countries around the world.
Afrofuturism, a mix of science fiction, magic realism and liberation politics, has shaped some hip-hop artists’ work for decades.
A scholar explains how a concept that appeared in Nation of Islam literature nearly a century ago essentially defines hip-hop’s consciousness today.
Dip hop artists move across the stage, hands flying through the air, as audiences pulse to the rhythm of a blasting bass beat.
As hip-hop turns 50, an unfortunate reality is that so many of its pioneering artists never live to see much more than 50 years themselves, a professor of hip-hop writes.
Top contributors
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Associate Professor of Hip-Hop, University of Virginia
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Research Lead at Rhythm Obscura / Lecturer in the School of Art, Design and Architecture, University of Plymouth
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Assistant Professor of Practice, Mills College
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Professor of Music, Wesleyan University
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Associate Professor of American Culture, University of Michigan
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Teaching Assistant Professor of Musicology, West Virginia University
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Piano Performance Fellow, The University of Queensland
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Assistant Professor of European Studies, University of Florida
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Associate Professor of Africana Philosophies of Religions and American Religious Diversity, San Diego State University
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Associate Professor in Clinical Psychology, The University of Queensland
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Honorary Research Fellow, University of Technology Sydney
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Assistant Professor, Hong Kong Baptist University
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Professor of History and Founding Director, Center for the Study of Popular Music, University of Connecticut
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Professor of Social Work, Texas State University
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Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology and Musicology, University of Oregon
