Hip-Hop Macbeths, “Digitized Blackness,” and the Millennial Minstrel: Illegal Culture Sharing in the Virtual Classroom

Abstract

A surprising number of hip-hop Macbeths currently circulate in our globally networked, multimedia environment, and this constellation of performances constantly grows and changes. This coincidence of Macbeth and hip-hop culture has been structured by motion pictures like Gerald Barclay’s Bloody Streetz (2003) and Greg Salman’s Mad Dawg (2004), as well as stage performances such as Ayodele Nzinga’s Mac, A Gangsta’s Tale (2006), or Victoria Evans Erville’s NEA-sponsored MacB: The MacBeth Project (2002, 2008). Even “mainstream” theatrical performances have begun incorporating hip-hop aesthetics: for example, Rupert Goold’s recent Macbeth (2008), staring Patrick Stewart and Kate Fleetwood, featured rapping witches (Brantley 2008). Perhaps the most productive site for the intersection of hip hop and Macbeth, though, has been within pedagogical programs like Flocabulary’s Stephen Greenblatt-endorsed CD Shakespeare is Hip Hop (2007), Tonia Lee’s Macbeth in Urban Slang (2008), or Aaron Jafferis and Gihieh Lee’s commissioned book/rap/play Shakespeare: The Remix (2004). In this essay, I examine the strange effects of local, culturally specific pedagogical practices fusing Shakespeare and hip hop which—like the music itself—have been cut, copied, pasted, and practiced outside of what was once their “proper” domain.