Hip Hop Hittin' the Books

Day and time: Saturday (March 21) · 10:00–11:45
Location: Job Lounge
Format: Talk

Make Rappers Rap Again: Interrogating the Mumble Rap "Crisis" (2025)

Presented by: Heidi R. Lewis

Many critics lament mumble rappers’ supposed ignorance about Hip Hop history and disrespect toward old heads. In Make Rappers Rap Again: Interrogating the Mumble Rap “Crisis” (Oxford UP, 2025), I situate these critiques as implications of ossified continuity and authentication theories and politics, as well as romantic adulation and dishonest nostalgia. Because Hip Hop is often understood as a direct descendant of Black traditions like Funk, mumble rappers’ supposed ignorance and disrespect along those lines is more easily interpreted as an affront to an even longer lineage of Black creativity. This perception of insult is magnified by the centrality of the elements, especially knowledge. Because rappers must “appropriately” know and care about Hip Hop history to be authenticated, Mumble Rap cannot be real Hip Hop if mumble rappers fail to know and appropriately acknowledge the influence of revered rappers like Biggie and Tupac. However, I argue these critiques are smokescreens for concerns about mumble rappers being aesthetically deviant. To do so, I examine myriad forms of aesthetic strangeness in Hip Hop that existed long before Mumble Rap. I also demonstrate the ways most mumble rappers practice citational and collaborative politics congruent with real Hip Hop norms for engaging old heads.

Cambridge Companion to Global Rap (2025)

Presented by: Alex de Lacey

Rap has remapped the way we think about music. For more than fifty years its poetics, performance and political power has resonated across the globe. This Companion offers an array of perspectives on the form, from the fields of sociology, linguistics, musicology, psychology, literary studies, education and law, unpacking how this versatile form of oral communication has permeated nearly every aspect of daily life. Taking a decidedly global perspective, these accounts draw from practice in Australia, China, France, Germany, Jamaica, India and Tanzania; exploring how the form has taken hold in particular contexts, and what this can tell us about the medium itself and the environments in which it was repurposed. An indispensable resource for students and researchers, the collection provides an introduction to global rap studies as well as insights into some of the most important and exciting new developments in this field.

Global Hiphopography (2023)

Presented by: Jaspal Singh

Global Hiphopography brings together a range of Hip Hop scholars, artists and activists working on Hip Hop in the Global North and South with the goal of advancing Hiphopographic research as a critical methodology with critical fieldwork methods that can provide a critical perspective of our world. The authors’ focus in this volume is to present an anthology of essays that expand the remit of Hiphopography as an approach to the study of Hip Hop that is not only sensitive to the social, economic, political and cultural lives of Hip Hop Culture participants as interpreters and theorists, but one that continues to humanize the “whole person” behind the decks, on the mic, rocking on the linoleum floor, painting in front of a wall, and seeking that Knowledge of Self. This book will be relevant to Hip Hop scholars in fields such as cultural studies and history, sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology and ethnography, and race studies, while Hip Hop heads themselves will find parts of this book that represent their culture in ethical and informative ways.