ABSTRACTNothing in the music industry has been more controversial than so‐called gangsta rap. This article examines the behavior of the major recording labels involved with rap music, and how they have responded to calls from the minority community and various politicians to clean up the offensive lyrics associated with the genre. In large part, the companies have basically ignored their critics and continued to market gangsta rap because for years it had been so highly profitable. Their basic tactic (...) has been to diffuse responsibility and distance themselves from rap by allowing subsidiaries to handle that part of the business. The industry's behavior is certainly troubling. I argue that, at the very least, the companies should have met the “moral minimum” to avoid harm and correct social injuries by censoring certain lyrics. Unfortunately this never occurred, and, in the end, only declining sales appear to have had any mitigating effects on gangsta rap. (shrink)

This book is the first major study of the theme of misanthropy, its history, arguments both for and against it, and its significance for us today. Misanthropy is not strictly a philosophy. It is an inconsistent thought, and so has often been mocked. But from Timon of Athens to Motörhead it has had a very long life, vast historical purchase and is seemingly indomitable and unignorable. Human beings have always nursed a profound distrust of who and what they are. This (...) book does not seek to rationalize that distrust, but asks how far misanthropy might have a reason on its side, if a confused reason. There are obvious arguments against misanthropy. It is often born of a hatred of physical being. It can be historically explained. It particularly appears in undemocratic cultures. But what of the misanthropy of terminally defeated and disempowered peoples? Or born of progressivisms? Or the misanthropy that quarrels with specious or easy positivities (from Pelagius to Leibniz to the corporate cheer of contemporary `total capital`)? From the Greek Cynics to Roman satire, St Augustine to Jacobean drama, the misanthropy of the French Ancien Regime to Swift, Smollett and Johnson, Hobbes, Schopenhauer and Rousseau, from the Irish and American misanthropic traditions to modern women`s misanthropy, the book explores such questions. It ends with a debate about contemporary culture that ranges from the `dark radicalisms`, queer misanthropy, posthumanism and eco-misanthropy to Houellebecq, punk rock and gangsta rap. (shrink)

This is a cultural sociology of some controversial aspects of contemporary popular culture. The book rereads disparaged and vilified cultural objects ranging from gangsta rap and death metal to violent video games, using cultural theories on transgression, the sacred, and the tragic as the interpretive lens.

This is a cultural sociology of some controversial aspects of contemporary popular culture. The book rereads disparaged and vilified cultural objects ranging from gangsta rap and death metal to violent video games, using cultural theories on transgression, the sacred, and the tragic as the interpretive lens.

Introduction Dorothea Frede and Brad Inwood 1. The Stoics on the origin of language and the foundations of etymology James Allen 2. Stoic linguistics, Plato's Cratylus, and Augustine's De dialectica A. A. Long 3. Epicurus and his predecessors on the origin of language Alexander Verlinsky 4. Lucretius on what language is not Catherine Atherton 5. Communicating cynicism: Diogenes' gangsta rap Ineke Sluiter 6. Common sense: concepts, definition and meaning in and out of the Stoa Charles Brittain 7. Varro's anti-analogist (...) David Blank 8. The Stoics on fallacies of equivocation Susanne Bobzien 9. What is a disjunction? Jonathan Barnes 10. Theories of language in the Hellenistic age and in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Sten Ebbesen. (shrink)

Does the blasphemous nature of writing Koranic verses on naked women make for good art? Is not the very obscenity of ‘gangsta’ rap part of its appeal as music? In the face of an artist's claims to aesthetic autonomy from ethical evaluation, or even the expression of a kind of duty to transgress normal moral boundaries, Berys Gaut has dedicated 252 pages of crisp but rather dry academic review to a defence of a positive relationship between art and ethics.

This book was compiled in order to connect the dots between past and present expressions of significant phenomena in media and culture. It attempts to provide a “big picture” perspective on how contemporary relevant manifestations of the entertainment industry, artistic expression, mediated civic engagement, technological infrastructure, or automated information control evolved from subversive surroundings, niche markets, and underestimated potentials to shaping forces in today's society. This book can be seen as both, a celebration of past and present achievements of creative (...) expression, artistic articulation, cultural contributions, and mediated movements for the sake of liberalization and democracy, and a warning against a “cultural revolution” defined by censorship, suppression of pluralist opinions, unnatural conformity in science and journalism, and the distinction between “fake news” and “fact” handled by artificial intelligence or part-time fact checkers. (shrink)

The volume provides an updated perspective on international aspects of various developments in media and culture. It includes discussions on how the digital environment contributes to the transformation and re-interpretation of existing phenomena, such as violence-on-demand in online movies, the internet appeal of virtual gangsta rappers, or the revived battle rap tradition, which operates outside the commercial limitations of the music industry and generates more views on social media than most recording artists. -/- The book offers a new consideration (...) of long-term trends and developments, and demonstrates in various examples how formerly marginal practices like gaming or the previously shunned Turkish movie industry have turned into influential tools of social change. In addition, the reciprocity of media content and political settings is underlined in a focus on the Arab world and the reconstruction of impulses from transnational media outlets to recent forms of citizen journalism, as well as in the case of governments’ approaches to media policy in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The book places the spotlight on pressing issues, such as the ongoing enforcement of information control in the name of public health or the local politics and practices that hinder the process of democratization in authoritarian systems. -/- . (shrink)

Ice Cube "What's a brother gotta do to get a message through to the Red, White, and Blue?" Ice-T Rap music has emerged as one of the most distinctive and controversial music genres of the past decade. A significant part of hip hop culture, [1] rap articulates the experiences and conditions of African-Americans living in a spectrum of marginalized situations ranging from racial stereotyping and stigmatizing to struggle for survival in violent ghetto conditions. In this cultural context, rap provides a (...) voice to the voiceless, a form of protest to the oppressed, and a mode of alternative cultural style and identity to the marginalized. Rap is thus not only music to dance and party to, but a potent form of cultural identity. It has become a powerful vehicle for cultural political expression, serving as the "CNN of black people", or upping the high-tech ante, as their "satellite communication system". It is an informational medium to tune into, one that describes the rage of African-Americans facing growing oppression, declining opportunities for advancement, changing moods on the streets, and everyday life as a matter of sheer survival. In turn, it has become a cultural virus, circulating its images, sounds, and attitude throughout the culture and body politic. (shrink)

Do these lyrics ring true to you? When truth rings, when it oscillates, it reverberates in one’s soul and imagination. These lyrics confer a feeling of sincerity that does not translate without a certain context: the rhythm, rawness, and rhyme open the ear of the listener to retrieve this depiction of an almost unimaginable world expressed from an equally difficult-to-imagine perspective. For some, while the veracity of this description is beyond the pale of their reality, the significance, the proverbial weight (...) of these lyrics, resonates in a different register of truth that follows from a sense of their honesty.Yet, for other listeners these lyrics cannot be heard in this register. They instead must be a literal... (shrink)

Dissertação: SANTOS, George Harrison Sena. Religiosidade e Educação: Rap mineiro em perspectiva de libertação. 2014. Dissertação , Programa de Pós-graduação em Ciências da Religião, Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte.

By breaking with the bases of national imaginary representation that gave MPB a symbolic and ideological sense, rap makes the dissolution of the symbolic cultural horizon which guided part of Brazilian society it’s starting point. What to MPB represented a deep crisis –to the point where composer Chico Buarque affirmed that the song template that his generation had consolidated probably had come come to an end – that´s the starting point of national rap. In this way, rap´s get to change (...) into an artistic form that what Brazil effectively had assumed as a political project: a real extermination in the open field, that has the production and management of violence as it’s decisive aspect. This article is an attempt to follow the developments of this peripheral survival model from its consolidation to its most recent developments. (shrink)

This book is discussing patterns of radical religious thought in popular forms of Black music. The consistent influence of the Five Percent Nation on Rap music as one of the most esoteric groups among the manifold Black Muslim movements has already gained scholarly attention. However, it shares more than a strong pattern of reversed racism with the Bobo Shanti Order, the most rigid branch of the Rastafarian faith, globally popularized by Dancehall-Reggae artists like Sizzla or Capleton. Authentic devotion or calculated (...) marketing?Apart from providing a possible answer to this question, the historical shift of Bobo adherents from shunned extremists to firmly anchored personifications of authenticity in mainstream Rastafarian culture is being emphasized. A multi-layered comparative case study attempts to shed light on the re-contextualization of language as well as expressed dogmatic perceptions and symbolism, attitude towards other religious groups and aspects of ethnic discrimination. Further analysis includes the visibility of artists and their references to practical and moral issues directly derived from two obscure ideologies that managed to conquer airwaves and concert halls. (shrink)

A cross-cultural approach to moral psychology starts from researchers withholding judgments about universal right and wrong and instead exploring what the members of a community subjectively perceive to be moral or immoral in their local context. This study seeks to identify the moral concerns that are most relevant to listeners of hip-hop music. We use validated psychological surveys including the Moral Foundations Questionnaire to assess which moral concerns are most central to hip-hop listeners. Results show that hip-hop listeners prioritize concerns (...) of justice and authenticity more than non-listeners and deprioritize concerns of respecting authority. These results suggest that the concept of the “good person” within hip-hop culture is fundamentally a person that is oriented towards social justice, rebellion against the status quo, and a deep devotion to keeping it real. Results are followed by a discussion of the role of youth subcultures in moral socialization. (shrink)

Black feminist theory has shown how respectability politics shape cultural discourses about African American women's sexuality. Responding to ‘silent’ depictions resulting from racial uplift strategies among turn-of-the-century middle-class black women, subsequent work theorises alternative discourses that portray a desiring and agentic black female sexual subject. Locating these alternative discourses in a ‘politics of irreverence’, I argue that respectability/irreverence oppositional logic narrowly frames theorising of black female sexuality. Although recent work emphasises dialectical – rather than oppositional – dynamics, this analytic approach (...) is unevenly applied. Binary frameworks continue to shape analyses of women's rap. Drawing upon lyrics of rappers Lil’ Kim and Foxy Brown, I highlight three discursive strategies whereby women rappers render the respectability/irreverence binary problematic: (1) using irreverence to claim respectability, (2) ‘claiming both’ or, embracing contradiction, and (3) beating to the punch. This analysis shows how dialectical approaches account for potential ‘third spaces’ where more complex representational politics are possible. (shrink)

Politics, and in particular the question of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, is currently dealt with rather through fiction and art, and much less through genuine political actions, is a strong sign of the failure of politics as a positive, voluntaristic political project. Rap /hip hop music, the most naturally political art, does not have the political agenda anymore. The particular history or Israeli rap illustrates this process in a striking way, embodying the recent evolution of the Israeli society. The country was (...) established on a political project and previously unknown social generosity. Yet, the economical and geopolitical context of Israel, as well as increasingly difficult relationship with Palestinians, made its citizens surprisingly uninterested in rethinking the political project of the country. Individual preoccupations, also economical, family and friends’ problems, started to occupy the central place in art and in daily life in Israel, and politics has been definitively associated to corruption and self-interest of an elite. Rap reflects this evolution, is its condensed version. (shrink)

La question de la relégation à travers la musique rap.

Revolution of a next kind : building black London from the bottom -- On the bus my oyster card goes ding de diing de ding ding : transforming the space of London's public transport -- I see the glow in you : summoning the aura in London's post hip-hop culture -- That there kind of sumthin' sounds strange to me : social representation and the recorded soundscape -- From a junior spesh to the keys to the Bentley : the routes (...) of grimey London -- Conclusion. Take back the scene. (shrink)

Ao romper com as bases de representação do imaginário nacional que conferiam sentido simbólico e ideológico à MPB, o rap torna a dissolução do horizonte cultural que orientava parte da sociedade brasileira seu ponto de partida. Aquilo que para MPB representou uma crise profunda - a ponto do compositor Chico Buarque afirmar que o modelo de canção que a sua geração havia consolidado provavelmente teria chegado ao fim –, é o ponto de partida do rap nacional. Dessa maneira, o rap (...) consegue transfigurar em matéria formal aquilo que o Brasil havia efetivamente assumido enquanto projeto político: um verdadeiro campo de extermínio a céu aberto, que tem como aspecto decisivo a produção e a gestão da violência. O presente artigo é uma tentativa de acompanhar os desdobramentos desse modelo de sobrevivência periférico desde sua consolidação até seus mais recentes desdobramentos. (shrink)

“The Subliminal K i d moved in and took over bars cafes and jukeboxes of the world cities and installed radio transmitters and microphones in each bar so that the music and talk of any bar could be heard in all his bars and he had tape recorders in each bar that played and recorded at arbitrary intervals and his agents moved back and forth with portable tape recorders and brought back street sound and talk and music and poured it (...) into his recorder array so he set waves and eddies and tornadoes of sound down all your streets and by the river of all language‐Word dust drifted streets of broken music car horn and air hammers—The Word broken pounded twisted exploded in smoke—.Nothing is true—Everything is permitted—1—William Burroughs, Nova Express. (shrink)

This chapter aims at pointing out the correspondences between the transformative Five Percenter process of self-cultivation outlined in the Supreme Mathematics and previous interpretations articulated and transmitted in the sapiential traditions of Islam, Christianity, or Taoism.