1997/06/01 by Theresa A. Martinez · 2 citations
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Music History and Culture #Caribbean history, culture, and politics #Theater, Performance, and Music History
paper · doi:10.2307/1389525
openalex publication_date 1997/06/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Bonnie Mitchell and Joe Feagin (1995) build on the theory of oppositional culture, arguing that African Americans, American Indians, and Mexican Americans draw on their own cultural resources to resist oppression under internal colonialism. In this paper, rap music is identified as an important African American popular cultural form that also emerges as a form of oppositional culture. A brief analysis of the lyrics of political and gangsta rappers of the late 1980s and early 1990s, provides key themes of distrust, anger, resistance, and critique of a perceived racist and discriminatory society. Rap music is discussed as music with a message of resistance, empowerment, and social critique, and as a herald of the Los Angeles riots of 1992.