Real Recognize Real: Local Hip-Hop Cultures and Global Imbalances in the African Diaspora

Hip-hop is revered as a global countercultural movement that disrupts dominant configurations of power and gives voice to traditionally marginalized peoples. Its origins illustrate how marginalized Black and Latina/o youth in the United States use technology and culture in contradictory fashions to illustrate the lived experiences of race and the structures of racism in the postindustrial city. This movement galvanized both minoritarian and arts communities in New York City. It is a poignant reminder of the impetus behind cultural studies: to illustrate how culture is inextricably linked to economic, political, and ideological power that impacts one’s material conditions, life chances, lived experiences, and interactions with the State. Hip-hop’s four core expressions of rapping, DJ’ing (disk jockeying), breakdancing, and graffiti have become rich sites of critical pedagogy where racialized groups are also producers of meaning, knowledge, and critique in contrast to dominant modes of...