The Hip Hop Movement
From R&B and the Civil Rights Movement to Rap and the Hip Hop Generation
By Reiland Rabaka, associate professor of ethnic studies
Lexington Books
“The Hip Hop Movement” contains five “remixes” (as opposed to chapters) that offer a critical theory and alternative history of rap music and hip hop culture by examining their roots in the popular musics and popular cultures of the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power Movement.
Connecting classic rhythm & blues and rock & roll to the Civil Rights Movement, and classic soul and funk to the Black Power Movement, “The Hip Hop Movement” critically explores what each of these musics and movements contributed to rap, neo-soul, hip hop culture, and the broader Hip Hop Movement.
Ultimately, The Hip Hop Movement’s “remixes” reveal that black popular music and black popular culture have always been more than merely “popular music” and “popular culture” in the conventional sense and most often reflect a broader social, political and cultural movement.
With this in mind, “The Hip Hop Movement” critically reinterprets rap and neo-soul as popular expressions of the politics, social visions and cultural values of a contemporary multi-issue movement: the Hip Hop Movement.
It is hip hop’s supporters’ and detractors’ belief in its ability to inspire both self transformation and social transformation that speaks volumes about the ways in which what has been generally called the “Hip Hop Generation” or the “Hip Hop Nation” has evolved into a distinct movement that embodies the musical, spiritual, intellectual, cultural, social and political, among other, views and values of the post-Civil Rights Movement and post-Black Power Movement generation.
Throughout “The Hip Hop Movement,” sociologist and musicologist Reiland Rabaka argues that rap music, hip hop culture and the Hip Hop Movement are as deserving of critical scholarly inquiry as previous black popular musics, such as the spirituals, blues, ragtime, jazz, rhythm & blues, rock & roll, soul and funk, and previous black popular movements, such as the Black Women’s Club Movement, New Negro Movement, Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Movement, Black Power Movement, Black Arts Movement and Black Women’s Liberation Movement.
In equal parts an alternative history of hip hop and a critical theory of hip hop, this volume challenges those scholars, critics and fans of hip hop who lopsidedly over-focus on commercial rap, pop rap and gangsta rap while failing to acknowledge, as the “remixes” here reveal, that there are more than three dozen genres of rap music and many other socially and politically progressive forms of hip hop culture beyond DJing, MCing, rapping, beat-making, break-dancing and graffiti-writing.
“Persuasively argued, carefully researched, ‘The Hip Hop Movement’ places hip hop in the tradition of previous Black political movements. Reiland Rabaka presents a bold challenge to hip hop scholars, Black Studies practitioners, Civil Rights historians and youth politics pundits alike…. One of the most important analyses of hip hop and hip hop scholarship to date, Reiland Rabaka’s ‘The Hip Hop Movement’ is a major contribution to our understanding of post-civil rights era politics and movement-building.”
By Reiland Rabaka, associate professor of ethnic studies
Lexington Books
“The Hip Hop Movement” contains five “remixes” (as opposed to chapters) that offer a critical theory and alternative history of rap music and hip hop culture by examining their roots in the popular musics and popular cultures of the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power Movement.
Connecting classic rhythm & blues and rock & roll to the Civil Rights Movement, and classic soul and funk to the Black Power Movement, “The Hip Hop Movement” critically explores what each of these musics and movements contributed to rap, neo-soul, hip hop culture, and the broader Hip Hop Movement.
Ultimately, The Hip Hop Movement’s “remixes” reveal that black popular music and black popular culture have always been more than merely “popular music” and “popular culture” in the conventional sense and most often reflect a broader social, political and cultural movement.
With this in mind, “The Hip Hop Movement” critically reinterprets rap and neo-soul as popular expressions of the politics, social visions and cultural values of a contemporary multi-issue movement: the Hip Hop Movement.
It is hip hop’s supporters’ and detractors’ belief in its ability to inspire both self transformation and social transformation that speaks volumes about the ways in which what has been generally called the “Hip Hop Generation” or the “Hip Hop Nation” has evolved into a distinct movement that embodies the musical, spiritual, intellectual, cultural, social and political, among other, views and values of the post-Civil Rights Movement and post-Black Power Movement generation.
Throughout “The Hip Hop Movement,” sociologist and musicologist Reiland Rabaka argues that rap music, hip hop culture and the Hip Hop Movement are as deserving of critical scholarly inquiry as previous black popular musics, such as the spirituals, blues, ragtime, jazz, rhythm & blues, rock & roll, soul and funk, and previous black popular movements, such as the Black Women’s Club Movement, New Negro Movement, Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Movement, Black Power Movement, Black Arts Movement and Black Women’s Liberation Movement.
In equal parts an alternative history of hip hop and a critical theory of hip hop, this volume challenges those scholars, critics and fans of hip hop who lopsidedly over-focus on commercial rap, pop rap and gangsta rap while failing to acknowledge, as the “remixes” here reveal, that there are more than three dozen genres of rap music and many other socially and politically progressive forms of hip hop culture beyond DJing, MCing, rapping, beat-making, break-dancing and graffiti-writing.
“Persuasively argued, carefully researched, ‘The Hip Hop Movement’ places hip hop in the tradition of previous Black political movements. Reiland Rabaka presents a bold challenge to hip hop scholars, Black Studies practitioners, Civil Rights historians and youth politics pundits alike…. One of the most important analyses of hip hop and hip hop scholarship to date, Reiland Rabaka’s ‘The Hip Hop Movement’ is a major contribution to our understanding of post-civil rights era politics and movement-building.”
— Bakari Kitwana, Author of The Hip Hop Generation