"Dead Prezence": Money and Mortal Themes in Hip Hop Culture

This essay is based on research that investigates the vernacular phrase Dead Presidents as an underground sociolinguistic phenomenon emerging in a particularly multifaceted way through Hip Hop culture. In the simplest semantic sense, Dead Presidents refers to presidents who have passed. In the sociolinguistic context of the United States (who reveres her past presidents with mythological devotion) and in the pragmatic discourses of Hip Hop culture, dead presidents has come to mean money. In this sense, it is functioning as a synecdoche. The image/simulacra of the president on U.S. currency means or refers to all money. The phrase, as far as we can discern etymologically and sociolinguistically, (re)emerges into the public sphere(s) through Hip Hop Culture in the 1980s. There are, moreover, amazing linguistic, lyrical, and cultural manifestations as well as (morphological) metamorphoses of this phrase in Hip Hop Culture that reflect a complex discursive engagement with mortality and the sociopolitical conditions that create the staggering mortality rates for young black men. "[T]he most progressive elements of hip hop culture, represented by artists such as Dead Prez [. . .] articulate a language of protest. Yet their creative talents rarely yielded new modes of collective intervention that could forcefully challenge the existing structures of political power and corporate capitalism" (Marable 59). Dead Prezence is a patterned discourse that refers to one such collective intervention attempting to "forcefully challenge the existing structures of political power and corporate capitalism." ¹ The intervention in question here is discursive, but its potential impact on the public spheres, especially black public spheres, warrants the critical analyses initiated in the following discussion. "[T]hrough discourse [. . .] the world of experience acquires meaning and it is likewise in and through patterned discourses that social subjects are located or positioned, suggesting important implications for human agency and identity formation [my italics]" (Forman 10). This essay seeks to chart some of these patterned discourses that I am framing as Dead Prezence, but it is by no means a total account of the Dead Prezence in Hip Hop Culture, nor is it an exhaustive catalogue of all mortal or monetary themes circulating within the culture. It is, however, an introduction to how the phrase dead presidents enters into Hip Hop Cultural discourses and the various semantic and morphological trajectories that this phrase conceptually covers.

"Thinkin' of a master plan / this ain't nothin' but sweat inside my hand. / So I dig into my pocket all my money is spent / So I dig deeper. I'm still comin' up with lint / So I start my mission leave my residence / Thinking how I can get some dead presidents" (Eric B and Rakim). ² Rakim's narrator in the now-classic title track from Eric B and Rakim's debut album, Paid in Full, is the prototypical rap figure at the crossroads of lack and desire. ³ As he contemplates ways to "get some dead presidents," he remembers when he was a "stick-up kid" and reaffirms a more righteous present for himself as a 9-to-5 job seeker. Of course, for Rakim and for his narrator, postindustrial urban unemployment rates suggest his penchant for rapping over beats might be the only logical employment option. The narrator's decision to transition away from robbery and sticking people up is telling: "I need money / I used to be a stick-up kid / So I think of all the devious things I did." Through simple lyrical verse, Rakim's narrator performs the thinking behind his decision to pursue dead presidents via his verbal skills and abilities. In fact, the album Paid in Full gestures to what was, at the time, the amazing possibility for inner-city African American men to make a decent living by recording their stories (over rudimentary musical production) on vinyl and selling them to the world. "These rappers are party to a long collective memory of forefathers [. . .] who did not get paid, who received neither the financial success nor the critical acclaim they deserved" (Swedenburg 583). Accordingly, the album cover art features Eric B and Rakim standing side by side in front of...