The Hip Hop and Obama Reader ed. by Travis L. Gosa, Erik Nielson (review)

The Hip-Hop and Obama Reader is an ambitious edited volume tackling the interrelationship of hip-hop and politics in the Obama era. The overarching message expressed by both academic and non-academic authors is that hiphop is a powerful movement that has the capacity to bring about real political change. However, as the wide-ranging contributions articulate, there are tensions that put into question the compatibility of electoral politics, mainstream hip-hop, and political activism.

One of the central themes of the book is Barack Obama’s failure to challenge the status quo of American politics and to address key democratic issues, despite his electoral campaign being based on hope, progress, and change. Although he leaned on the hip-hop generation’s support to elect him, this racially diverse demographic is now disappointed and increasingly despondent, after being so hopeful of what the country’s first Black president might achieve. This raises important and interesting questions about how much power the President of the United States actually has, and what issues (e.g. race relations, health care, the environment, etc.) should be tackled and which approaches (grassroots communities, hip-hop organizing, mainstream media) need to be harnessed to bring about meaningful change in contemporary times.

The authors who have contributed to the volume include prominent scholars in hip-hop studies, journalists, activists, and industry leaders, as well as emerging voices. The foreword and afterword, written by Tricia Rose and Cathy J. Cohen respectively, both call for social justice, a pertinent opening and conclusion to the book. Each chapter takes a different form and a variety of methods is employed, ranging from traditional scholarly analysis, to interviews, thought pieces, analyses of lyrics, ethnography, and a performative account.

The editors, Travis L. Gosa and Erik Nielson, have divided the fourteen chapters into three parts: ‘Move the Crowd: Hip Hop Politics in the United States and Abroad’; ‘Change We Can Believe In? The Contested Discourse of Obama and Hip-Hop’; and ‘Represent: Gender and Language in the Obama Era’. These divisions seem quite arbitrary and are not particularly helpful, as several of the chapters could fall under all three categories.

The strength of the volume lies in the diversity of perspectives represented, the different format and approaches of the chapters, and the variety of topics engaged with, spanning politics, democracy, race, gender, activism, age, language, capitalism, media, and more. It is not possible to discuss every contribution but a number of chapters stand out. These include a conversation between hip-hop activists Bakari Kitwana and Elizabeth Méndez Berry (ch. 2) and an interview with Kevin Powell (ch. 3). Both these chapters ask provocative questions about whether the mobilization of local grassroots communities and civic engagement produces greater change than Obama and electoral politics.

In chapter 7, Anthony Kwame Harrison uses the case study of the Filipino-American rap group ‘Power Struggle’ to discuss the ‘resurgence of political consciousness and embrace of community organizing in underground hip hop during the age of Obama’ (p. 135). By focusing on Filipino-Americans, he provides an insightful account of multiracial hip-hop participants who do not fall within the black–white binary. The chapter helpfully distils the ways in which hip-hop culture outside of the corporate mainstream can be a multimedia tool and generative force for developing young people’s involvement in community work.

It is a credit to the editors that they have included Ruth Nicole Brown’s experimental and pioneering reflections on methodological practice in her chapter: ‘Performative Account of Black Girlhood’ (ch. 12). Brown provides a first-person narrative of a performance she delivered at a conference—which encompassed a poem, singing, Power Point, and acting—about the murder of 15-year-old African-American Sakia Gunn in 2003. Although there is always something lost in the transition from performance to printed word, the rawness and honesty of Brown...