I decided to organize my quote collection around the idea of what Hip Hop feminism means to me, and what I have come to learn about it as a result of this class. There were a few overarching themes that became apparent to me as I proceeded with the project. Mainly the idea of… Continue reading →

I decided to do my part of the presentation on Noname. Noname is an MC and poet from Chicago who makes an interesting type of music that is a cross between hip-hop and spoken word poetry. The thing about her that made her a good choice for our presentation is that she has always had… Continue reading →

These last few episodes of The Get Down have been exciting, and some of the best of the show. I really liked the ideas explored in Episode 8 in particular. The exploration of how Zeke begins to navigate the elite academic world of Yale works well to examine some of the larger structures at play… Continue reading →

Episodes four and five of The Get Down intersect with the reading in a few interesting ways. The first thing I noticed was the focus on working together rather than trying to be ruggedly individualistic. This theme arises in episode five, when Zeke, Shao, and the two brothers practice for their DJ battle against The… Continue reading →

The article that spoke to me the most from this section was the Kalamka & West piece. Their effort to upend the common narrative that queerness in Hip-Hop is illuminating to me. I had, embarrassingly, never heard of the “homo-hop” movement and had assumed that open queerness in Hip-Hop, specifically rap music, was relatively new.… Continue reading →

The unit on the History of Hip-Hop sparked a few thoughts within me. The first, comes as a response to the Dimitriadis piece. In it, Dimitriadis points to a common “text” to which Urban youth can draw from to establish some sort of sense of themselves in relation to the world. These texts, be they… Continue reading →

I have found this section to be illuminating on a number of topics. The first topic that made me think about, and question, my stance on the matter was the idea of owning one’s sexuality vs. performing sexuality for a male audience. Now, my previous stance on the issue was that it is pretty much… Continue reading →