2010/05/24 by H. Samy Alim, Jooyoung Lee, Joo-Young Lee +1
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Gender, Feminism, and Media #Music History and Culture #Sports, Gender, and Society
paper · doi:10.1111/j.1548-1395.2010.01052.x
openalex publication_date 2010/05/24 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
This article shows how emcees create local meanings of race and ethnicity in freestyle rap battles. We demonstrate how performers attach new social meanings to race and ethnicity in verbal duels, even as they also reproduce normative meanings around gender and sexuality. Further, we suggest that the construction of local, alternative meanings around race and ethnicity might actually help support dominant racial hierarchies by relegating “blackness” suitable for only a limited set of domains. Despite the enduring nature of these broader racial hierarchies, we conclude that performances are activities in which individuals contest and negotiate the social meanings of identities. [performance, style, race/ethnicity, verbal duels, freestyle rap]