Ice Cube: 1969-
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Rakim, Ice Cube Then Watch the Throne: Engaged Visibility through Identity Orchestration and the Language of Hip‐Hop Narratives by David Wall Rice This piece highlights how Ice Cube, Rakim, Jay-Z and Kanye describe being a black man and navigating Black America.
Biggie Smalls: 1972-1997 (Rap)
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Long-Lost Brothers: How Nihilism Provides Bigger Thomas and Biggie Smalls With a Soul This article builds on scholarship that already links Native Son's protagonist Bigger Thomas to real-life gangsta rappers such as Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur. James Baxter Peterson calls Biggie Smalls a "Bigger figure." In other words, the persona/character created by the popular, deceased rapper was a kind of literary descendant of Bigger Thomas in the sense that he's an echo of the "bad nigger" character type presented so memorably in Native Son. In his own work, Nick De Genova invokes both gangsta rap and Wright to complicate the definition of nihilism, which he describes as a state of mind resulting from two competing forces: the drive to self-preservation and the drive to self-destruction. His definition of nihilism suggests an intellectual and emotional life for the gangsta and gangsta rapper, arguably a dangerous claim in a contemporary American mainstream culture that has largely sought to deny his humanity. In this article, a close reading of Native Son and Biggie Small's seminal rap album Ready to Die shows the striking similarities between Bigger Thomas and Biggie Smalls. In their respective texts, both characters experience existential struggles as they negotiate a society that induces a fractured psychology, causing them to fluctuate between the death impulse and the self-preservation impulse. Seen from this perspective, Bigger Thomas and Biggie Smalls exemplify a kind of nihilism that embodies existential struggle instead of mere hopelessness and meaninglessness. This perspective also aims to revitalize discussion of the artistic and intellectual merit of gangsta rap as well as inspire a reconsideration of the humanity of those "gangstas" whon many in society view in only two dimensions.
Lauryn Hill: 1975- (R'n'B)
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"The People Inside My Head, Too": Madness, Black Womanhood, and the Radical Performance of Lauryn Hill This essay explores how various publics and pundits impute madness to Lauryn Hill and--most centrally--how Hill herself produces, mobilizes, and brandishes madness for radical art-making and self-making. Toward these aims, I closely examine her 2002 Unplugged 2.0 live album, as well as other performances, interviews, and media accounts. Her voice tuned to a mad pitch, Hill speaks truth to power and issues a sound that sometimes booms, sometimes sputters. Ultimately, this meditation upon Hill's life and work yields rich insights on black womanhood, performance, protest, and madness in American popular culture and beyond.
Aaliyah: 1981-2001
N. W. A.: 1987-1991 (Rap)
NWA was a group created during the early 1990’s. The movie “Straight Outta Compton” explores how that group came to be, and how they essentially fell apart. This gets placed on the list because of not only their popularity, but their legacy. For example, their song “[redacted] Tha Police” is still being used during protests, and it stemmed from the heightened tensions between the police and public after over a situation that happened with the LAPD. (Link below describes the movie and analyzes the movie and the real events)
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"NWA" from The Anthology of Rap "NWA." In The Anthology of Rap, edited by BRADLEY ADAM and DUBOIS ANDREW, by Gates Henry Louis, D CHUCK, and Common, 232-47. Yale University Press, 2010