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Contemporary Sorrow Songs: Traces of Mourning, Lament, and Vulnerability in Hip Hop
- African American Review
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 46, Number 1, Spring 2013
- pp. 9-20
- 10.1353/afa.2013.0012
- Article
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In this article, I use Du Bois’s reading of the sorrow songs and adopt the trope of sorrow to trace themes of loss, suffering, and hope within hip-hop music and culture. I argue that we can find two prominent forms of mourning within hip hop—one in response to race-inflected violence and injustice and another in response to the so called death of authentic hip hop. In the concluding part of this essay, I suggest ways to transform nostalgia for the golden age into a relationship to the past that is creative and generative.