A lot of what I learned throughout the course revolved around hip hop and feminism and then their baby: hip hop feminism. But when going through the readings, it was almost as if the history of hip hop and hip hop feminism was like an endless timeline. Many of the quotes I picked out involved identity and how people have been able to find themselves and/or others within hip hop. Since hip hop is relatively young as a music genre, I believe the quotes that were picked show the growth hip hop has gone through, not only as a music genre but also as a culture, a community, and more importantly, as an identity.
I purposefully labeled and designed my quotes in a specific way in order to tell a story. While the general theme is light tans, greens, browns and white, There are also many images of plants (succulents to be more specific). And while I wanted them to visually look nice and put together, the actual reason why it is so light and almost calming is because hip hop and discussions surrounding hip hop tend to include aggression, toxic masculinity and an overall abrasiveness that the male rapper give off. Everyone else who is not a cis, straight man tend to give off that masculinity to make up for not being a cis, straight man. So, to combat that and to literally show growth, I chose plant imagery and that color scheme to play around that identity of aggression.
The collection begins with a quote from The Crunk Feminist Collective that outlines how we grow up with hip hop without realizing it. Although it is not completely true for me, there are definitely people who have seen hip hop from its beginnings all the way to what it has become now. There is constant growth and improvement in the industry, just like there would be any person. The quotes continue by what hip hop provided for the community that upheld it as a culture and not simply just a genre of music in Raquel Z. Rivera’s text. We continue to move through this identity with the feelings that hip hop and graffiti gives to folks when they immerse themselves. There are opportunities given to folks to really understand themselves and how they fit into the hip hop/graffiti world in the quotes from Jeff Chang, Jessica Nydia Pabon-Colon, Tricia Rose, and Paul J. Kuttner and Mariana White-Hammond. There are different mechanisms that help make hip hop, hip hop.
To flip the identity narrative, I picked a quote from Graffiti Grrlz that explains feminist masculinity. By placing this quote in the middle we see that hip hop feminism is not a myth or something intangible, but rather it is real. It is a real identity people take on because of how feminism and hip hop influence their lives. There is also that play on whether or not hip hop feminists will be just as critical as non hip hop feminists with the misogyny, sexism and homophobia that hip hop often runs into. We often have remind ourselves while hip hop is something most people cherish and keep close, there are conflicts with just that. The issue of sexism, misogyny, homophobia, etc. all exist in the realm of hip hop, and it up to us to acknowledge what is happening and express rejection of those notions and any other notion that might harm folks. Which is why, at the end of each and everyday we emerge with the identity found thanks to hip hop, and some people can say they emerged the strong Black woman that they are due to hip hop.
