For this week, I thought it would be important to define what conscious and political rap was and how to distinguish that from “gangsta” rap. From that, it led me to understand the East vs. West Coast rivalry in the 90s and understanding the stylistic differences. As a result, these two led me to look into the misconceptions, stereotypes, and myths that derive from rap and hip-hop culture. Although I had to look at multiple websites, blog posts, and op-eds written by rap connoisseurs or music analysts, I found out that the main difference between political and conscious rap is stylistic delivery (political rap being more “militant” versus conscious rap being more “laid back”). To some, conscious rap is considered a sub-genre of political rap; for others, it’s the other way around. Regardless, the two are used interchangeably so it’s made me consider using both terms but keeping in mind the stylistic differences of my analysis, if possible.<\/p>\n
When it comes to the misconceptions, stereotypes, and myths of hip-hop culture and rap, I read both scholarly articles and blog posts. While some blog posts addressed more of the surface level misconceptions and myths, such as “All rap music has swears\/profanity” or “Rap glorifies drugs, sex, and violence”, others delved into treatment and perception of female artists, LGBTQ+ artists, and artists of other ethnicities in the industry\/songs (Blog posts: “5 Myths About Hip-hop From a Rap Nerd<\/a>” and “Tackling Generic Rap Attitudes”<\/a>). In addition to those articles, one of them compared it to Rock-n-Roll \u00a0The scholarly articles I read also focused on these misconceptions, but addresses the white demand for black labor in entertainment vs. low demand for formal labor (Matthew Birkhold, “If You Don’t Move Your Feet Then I Don’t Eat: Hip Hop and the Demand for Black Labor,” 2011); and also,\u00a0white\u00a0<\/strong>America’s distaste and rejection of rap because of its violence but the lack of recognition towards systemic racism and classism that plays a role in the creation of rap (Richardson & Scott, “Rap Music and Its Violent Progeny: America’s Culture of Violence in Context,” (2002). These data that I collected this week helped me better understand the racialization of hip-hop and hypocrisy behind the ways white Americans perceive it.<\/p>\n This week, I was also able to look at Childish Gambino’s “This Is America” and read one scholarly review on it. I have been able to review the music video, but I would need to refresh and take notes on significant lyrics and moments in the music video. I was also able to read a few scholarly reviews on\u00a0To Pimp a Butterfly<\/em> and listen closely to the album in order to select which songs will be in my analysis and was able to narrow it down.<\/p>\n My nexts steps will be to look at media theories, such as Marshall McLuhan’s “The Medium is the Message” to incoporate the idea of the sociological imagination into hip-hop media. Another major goal is to look into other media such as YouTube videos and TikToks that analyze\/address hip-hop or the songs I’m planning to analylze.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For this week, I thought it would be important to define what conscious and political rap was and how to distinguish that from “gangsta” rap. From that, it led me to understand the East vs. West Coast rivalry in the 90s and understanding the stylistic differences. As a result, these two led me to look … Continue reading “Progress Notes: Week 12”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":15,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-36","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010-spring-2022-djuntura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/36","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010-spring-2022-djuntura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010-spring-2022-djuntura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010-spring-2022-djuntura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010-spring-2022-djuntura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010-spring-2022-djuntura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/36\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010-spring-2022-djuntura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/15"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010-spring-2022-djuntura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}