I wound up taking this class because I need more credits to graduate. That being said, I was excited for GSHH. I hardly knew anything about hip-hop but learning and analyzing it through the lens of gender and sexuality was appealing. Starting class with Missy Elliot’s Throw It Back had the class thinking about rappers, gender performance and expectation, the origins of rap, and more.
The first reading by Dimitriadis introduced the history of hip-hop as black and brown youth culture, South Bronx being the epicenter. In the introduction, the author uses Tupac as an example defining “text” on page 2. He claimed it to be impossible for the children to separate two of Tupac’s works from the idea of Tupac himself. I thought this would be an interesting blog point about separating art from the artist. That section made me think about R. Kelly and people’s reactions regarding listening to his music. (( https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/22/arts/music/r-kelly-charged-indicted.html Here’s the Time’s post about him.)) Let me know what you thought of in the comments!
After reading “All Aboard the Night Train” I had a strong understanding of the history, and like I don’t know very much about the 19180’s from history class/rich lawyers control how and by whom textbooks get made in the education industry. Anyway…
Over the weekend I binged the first season of The Get Down on Netflix. Holy crap. I was hooked from the get go. About six minutes thirty minutes in to episode one, Dizzee says, “C’mon Pop. This ain’t little house on the Prairie.” The other boys chime in agreeing. Winston replies, “’Cause that there is my little house. And this here is my little salon. And that patch of sidewalk that’s my little prairie.” This quick character introduction perfectly summed up the space and place discussion we had in class on Friday. Continuing through the first season The Get Down demonstrated what the Dimitriadis, Chang, and Rose readings explained. It seemed as if overnight hip-hop groups exploded on to the scene. Recorded hip-hop (rap) was everywhere. When I first read this, I felt sad. The experience of a live hip-hop event changed, the intimacy was gone. I can see how some people may have felt as though their unique thing was over and had become ubiquitous. Recorded rap made hip-hop a commodity though. I thought it changed the event, which it did, but really… it changed the game!
Peep this inspiration right here.
