Re-Imagining Slavery in the Hip-Hop Imagination

In the opening scene for WGN’s television series Underground (2016), a black enslaved man named Noah (played by Aldis Hodge) is seen running through the woods at night. Noah crashes through the landscape, jumping over bushes and running in erratic patterns. He is looking for something. The camera cuts away to a white man carrying a torch and egging on a pack of dogs. Noah finds an abandoned wagon with a bell but is cornered by the patroller’s dogs. The dog attacks and bites Noah’s leg as Noah fumbles on the ground to find something to defend himself. He hits the dog over the head and hides in the forest underbrush, ramming his nose into the nook of his elbow and shirt. The scene ends with Noah being hit upside the head by the patroller and cutting away to the title of the series. The opening scene to the series is dizzying and heart-pounding.

While visually stunning–—the scene does not hold back on the multiple types of physical and psychological violence endured by runaway slaves trying to escape north—Underground’s opening is most jarring because of its use of hip-hop as an accompaniment to understanding Noah’s desperation. Simultaneous to Noah’s first appearance on screen is the sound of crashing cymbals and percussion from Kanye West’s song “Black Skinhead” (2013). The cymbals and percussion used to open the track are also used to open the show. The viewer hears the cymbals and percussion in lieu of the actual sound made from Noah’s body hitting trees and forest underbrush. Perhaps most striking is the looping of West’s hollering and staggered breathing from “Black Skinhead” that symbolizes Noah’s own breathing. West’s succinctly placed hollers parallel Noah’s growing anxiety and frustration about finding a literal and figurative way out of the woods. As Noah hides, the background accompaniment completely fades out to only the breathing on the track as the audience watches Noah’s eyes frantically scan the landscape for the patroller or his dogs. The accompaniment breathes for Noah when he can’t breathe for himself. In another part of the scene, viewers listen to a pounding percussion and synthesizer accompaniment as Noah forces his nose into his shirt to hide his breathing. The percussion and synthesizers represent Noah’s pounding heartbeat. Further, while Noah attempts to silence himself, the viewer is reminded of the direness of Noah’s situation via the hip-hop track.

Additionally, the scene highlights particular verses from West’s track that doubly imagine both West’s known emphasis on hyper-materiality and Noah’s own race to freedom as a deemed piece of property: “I’m doing 500/I’m outta control/But there’s nowhere to go/And there’s nowhere to show/If I knew what I knew in the past/I would’ve been blacked out on your ass.” Immediately before being subdued by the patroller, Noah’s last ditch effort is ‘mocked’ by West: “Come on homie what happened?/You niggas ain’t breathing, you gasping/These niggas ain’t ready for action.” The intentional (dis)placement of West’s lyrics to narrate Noah’s failed attempt to escape slavery are significant in that they bridge two culturally recognizable representations of black life: hip-hop and slavery. Further, the slight and recognizable background noises of what a slave chase may sound like, i.e. baying dogs, breaking twigs, and the faint tinkle of the escape wagon’s bell, bleed into the loudness and abrasiveness of the hip-hop track. The sonic realism of the forest’s disruption by the slave patroller’s pursuit and Noah’s flight paired with West’s lyrics as a mocking narration of Noah’s attempt to escape signifies upon the anachronistic approach of how contemporary (black) viewers believe they may act in a similar situation.

The use of “Black Skinhead” and other hip-hop in the Underground series is unexpected and jarring to the ear because of the immediate recognition of a contemporary sound to sonically annotate an otherwise...