Real Hiphop

Morgan Marcyliena Morgan

Description

Project Blowed is a legendary hiphop workshop based in Los Angeles. It began in 1994 when a group of youths moved their already renowned open-mic nights from the Good Life, a Crenshaw district health food store, to the KAOS Network, an arts center in Leimert Park. The local freestyle of articulate, rapid-fire, extemporaneous delivery, the juxtaposition of meaningful words and sounds, and the way that MCs followed one another without missing a beat, quickly became known throughout the LA underground. Leimert Park has long been a center of African American culture and arts in Los Angeles, and Project Blowed inspired youth throughout the city to consider the neighborhood the epicenter of their own cultural movement. The Real Hiphop is an in-depth account of the language and culture of Project Blowed, based on the seven years Marcyliena Morgan spent observing the workshop and the KAOS Network. Morgan is a leading scholar of hiphop, and throughout the volume her ethnographic analysis of the LA underground opens up into a broader examination of the artistic and cultural value of hiphop.Morgan intersperses her observations with excerpts from interviews and transcripts of freestyle lyrics. Providing a thorough linguistic interpretation of the music, she teases out the cultural antecedents and ideologies embedded in the language, emphases, and wordplay. She discusses the artistic skills and cultural knowledge MCs must acquire to rock the mic, the socialization of hiphop culture's core and long-term members, and the persistent focus on skills, competition, and evaluation. She brings attention to adults who provided material and moral support to sustain underground hiphop, identifies the ways that women choose to participate in Project Blowed, and vividly renders the dynamics of the workshop's famous lyrical battles.

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique
• Anthropology
• California

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 13 avril 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822392125
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

THEREALHIPHOP

;/, 9,(3 /07/67 #BUUMJOH GPS ,OPXMFEHF 1PXFS BOE 3FTQFDU JO UIF - " 6OEFSHSPVOE .BSDZMJFOB .PSHBO +\RL <UP]LYZP[` 7YLZZ %VSIBN BOE -POEPO 

∫2009 Duke University Press All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper$

Designed by Jennifer Hill Typeset in Scala by Keystone Typesetting, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.

For Julie, Maurie, and the Good Life

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION I Am Hiphop

ONE The Hippest Corner in LA

TWO Welcome to the Underground Building Hiphop Culture and Language

THREE Thursday Night at Project Blowed

FOUR (Ph)eminists of the New School Real Women, Tough Politics, and Female Science

FIVE Politics, Discourse, and Drama ‘‘Respect Due’’

SIX It’s Hiphop Nation Time Enter the KAOS

APPENDIX Transcription Conventions

NOTES GLOSSARY REFERENCES INDEX

ix

1

21

47

85

131

161

185

195

197 207 211 223

contents

acknowledgments

Art is a discovery in itself. Seen in detail it is a series of discoveries, perhaps intended in the first instance to stave o√ boredom. In a long range view, art is the setting up of monuments to the ordinary things about us, in a moment and in time.

zora neale hurston, Folklore, Memoirs, and Other Writings

h i p h o p i s a m o n u m e n tto the youth, both black and brown, who resided in low-income communities in the New York area in the 1970s. In the act of living their lives and doing ordinary things, they created an art form that now resonates for the masses throughout the world. When hiphop began to move stealthily into the mindset of youth in the United States and elsewhere in the world, some of its fans were sitting in class- rooms at colleges and universities. These students considered hiphop to be as serious as traditional academic study about the importance of knowl- edge, and as a result they presented new challenges to the establishment and to hiphop itself. Students and fans of hiphop began to agitate for classes, radio stations, artistic representations, research projects, and gen- eral inclusion in institutions at every level. I began developing the Hiphop Archive around 1995 when I was teaching at University of California, Los Angeles, in the department of anthropology and the Center for African American Studies. In 2002 I formally established the Hiphop Archive at