This chapter highlights the parameters of modernity, because democracy today cannot rest on earlier practices created for small cities, like Athens, in the ancient world. Therefore, in 1917 and 1919, the German sociologist Max Weber described two new vocations, of “Science” and “Politics,” as characteristic of societies that grew out of the Enlightenment. “Scientists” used instruments and experiments to discover “knowledge” more reliable than “opinion.” The result is that their work overthrew many traditional beliefs and led to “disenchantment.” “Politicians” arose because, when “subjects” became “citizens” in many Western states, they needed leaders and spokespeople who would help them to organize their sentiments and express their preferences. In which case, politicians, elected on behalf of voluntary support from below, ruled on the basis of “tradition,” “legality,” or “charisma.” Weber’s terms overlooked at least two large problems. Charismatic politicians could break the “iron cage” of “bureaucracy,” but, as “demagogues,” they could also lead voters in undesirable directions. Voters, perhaps advised by scholars, would have to resist being led astray, but Weber said nothing about how they, in effect, should exercise a third new “vocation” in modern societies. Citizens were not present before the Enlightenment; they are everywhere now. What are they supposed to do? Weber did not say.

Rap has long enjoyed a generative relationship with spoken-word poetry, one that can be traced back to the politicized orientations and aesthetic preferences that distinguished the Black Arts poetry and early spoken word of the late 1960s/early 1970s. However, this chapter argues that differences between rap and spoken-word poetry are as salient as similarities. Rap’s relationship to the spoken word only starts to acquire political and strategic importance at the point at which gangsta rap – with its hyper-profanity and alleged nihilism – comes to prominence. Amid the antiblack racism and structural dislocation of Reagan’s America, rap in the spoken word can be seen as emblematic of hip-hop’s intra-cultural politics of uplift versus negativity. Yet, despite such claims, this does not suffice to settle the matter of the elevated and profane within rap. For in rap, carnality, irreverence, and high-mindedness are the alternating currents and tensions that make hip-hop penumbral, the goad to its intra-politics.

Looking to politically committed artists, this chapter asks how hip-hop has been shaped in both its form and its substance by a revolutionary critique of racial capitalism. After setting out the antinomies of Black capitalism and Black Marxism via listening to a song by Kendrick Lamar, the chapter demonstrates how hip-hop codifies its own forms of racialized and proletarian radicalism. To so do, and moving in roughly chronological order, it listens to a handful of songs by Public Enemy, The Coup, and Noname, reading their lyrical content and describing their musical form as a response to the interlock of race and class under capitalism.

I begin my empirical exploration by studying three states whose disfranchisement-era politics are characterized by relatively meaningful levels of inter-party competition. States that I study in subsequent chapters were politically dominated by the Democratic Party even before disfranchisement – usually on the back of violence and fraud. While historians argue that African Americans continued to vote and exert political power in those states (e.g., Kousser 1999, 20), it is quantitatively almost impossible in those states to distinguish between voter suppression and voter apathy, and between an engaged Black electorate and stolen Black votes. But perhaps the most concrete, indisputable evidence of African Americans’ continued political influence after the Redemption period is the sustained relevance of the Republican Party in Florida, North Carolina, and Tennessee up until institutional disfranchisement. In these states, Republicans were sufficiently strong to resist until the complete abrogation of Black voting rights.

This chapter explores the influence of Jamaican music and culture on the origin and development of hip-hop in the US. With roots reaching back to Jamaican sound systems and Nyabinghi drumming, hip-hop inspires a new flowering of Afrofuturism as Black resistance to colonial authority. The example of Jamaica’s Maroons, Afro-Caribbean freedom fighters, clarifies its strategy of cultural resistance: to seize and secure space for a Black future of living free. As hip-hop’s early innovators – DJ Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, and Rammellzee, among others – adapt the Jamaican sound system to new colonial territories, they use music, dance, raps, and tags as weapons to create spaces of freedom in the oppressive world of the Bronx in the mid 1970s. This legacy of Afrofuturism informs the ensuing history of hip-hop, half a century of Black musical creativity that extends from Brother D and the Sugar Hill Gang through X Clan, Public Enemy, and NWA to Dr. Octogon, Deltron 3030, Janelle Monáe, Ras G, and beyond.

In the four previous chapters, I document Black disfranchisement’s significant effects on state legislative politics in the American South. In Chapter 4, I illustrate how in Florida, North Carolina, and Tennessee, disfranchisement eliminated the Republicans as a meaningful political force, dramatically shifted the ideological behavior of representatives of more-Black legislative districts toward the Democrats, and entrenched Democrats as the main political power in the legislature. In Chapter 5, I described how disfranchisement changed roll call voting in states dominated by Democrats by shifting representatives of more-Black areas toward the roll call behavior of their more agrarian, reform-oriented colleagues; I also, however, showed that disfranchisement may have empowered different groups depending on the distribution of influence in state legislatures. In Chapter 6, I extended this exploration to two other Deep South states, Alabama and Louisiana, where unique political cleavages, political economies, and the timing of disfranchisement produced consequences of disfranchisement with distinctive features. Across all of these states, disfranchisement was associated with meaningful changes in legislative politics.

The word griot has been linked with hip-hop since its early days in the 1980s, but it is a fragile connection. Initially used by French travelers to West Africa who thought they were using a local term, it refers to hereditary praise singers, instrumentalists, and oral historians. Although there is some overlap between what modern-day rappers and griots do, there are also some significant differences, especially in their social status and roles in society. If rap has distant origins in Africa, dispersed via the transatlantic slave trade, and come back transformed, then how can we think about the highly specialized skills and roles of griots in Africa, their inspirations in the diaspora, and their intersections with rappers? Tracing the institution of griots in western Africa and charting how the term took root and expanded in the US will help us appreciate their congruencies and incompatibilities with hip-hop.

This chapter examines the transformative work of Danielle Dumile, the masked rapper who went by the stage name DOOM (among other aliases), and who was known for his complex lyricism and innovative personae. Adrian Matejka considers the MC’s use of persona through the dual lenses of hip-hop and poetry, highlighting the ways in which DOOM’s lyrics borrow from and enhance these twinned literary traditions. Drawing parallels between DOOM’s innovative lyricism and the tradition of persona poetry, Matejka considers how contemporary poets – particularly Black American poets – adopt various masks to explore history, culture, and identity. This longer tradition is related back to DOOM, whose layered personae subverted mainstream rap in the early 2000s. Matejka frames the rapper’s work as an enduring testament to persona’s power in mythmaking and cultural commentary.

On the eve of disfranchisement, African Americans in different states – and different parts of states – found themselves in very dissimilar political circumstances.Disfranchisement’s consequences thus also varied substantially. In some areas voting was relatively unfettered, while in others approaching a polling place may have risked serious physical harm. Even where voting was feasible, African Americans faced starkly different alternatives at the ballot box. In some states, Republicans continued to seek office and provided a real,meaningful vehicle for African Americans to pursue their programmatic goals. In others, the choice that African Americans faced at the ballot box – if there was a choice – was between different varieties of white supremacist Democrat.

This chapter examines funk music as a central artery of rap music and hip-hop culture. It charts a funk current that crests and flows throughout hip-hop’s fifty-year span such that, what Maner calls the funk impulse – the percussive, kinesthetic energy that undergirds and drives Black sound and Black life – is rendered audible. After charting the patterns of sampling that developed in the early stages of hip-hop, the chapter moves on to the evolution of the funk impulse in the contemporary era, from renderings on album covers to live stage performances. James Brown, Public Enemy and the Bomb Squad, George Clinton, and Parliament-Funkadelic, Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, and OutKast are all discussed in detail.

The Founders committed the country to a “democracy” which at that time excluded most Native Americans, Blacks, and women. But the commitment was there, and eventually most of the excluded were granted full citizenship rights. Furthermore, for more than a century, considerable “wherewithal” was provided for them. The elements of wherewithal were provided by political “parties,” by “education,” and by “journalism.” Parties got organized almost immediately, so that politicians could offer voters policy choices and so that the politicians themselves could bring different parts of the new government to work together. “Public schools” started teaching children to maintain religious faith but, during the 19th century, morphed into institutions culminating in land-grant and other “universities” aimed at educating citizens in science, useful occupations, and democratic culture. Journalism first belonged to parties, but technology produced the penny press sold to anyone and hawking sensationalism, which got a professional response in the 1890s when the New York Times announced it would publish only news “fit to print.” Ominously, however, early decades in the 20th century cast “doubts” on the viability of democracy, when thinkers like Gustave Le Bon, Sigmund Freud, and Walter Lippmann described ordinary citizens as in thrall to the “herd instinct” and “stereotypes,” and when leaders like Adolf Hitler explained how the masses can be swayed by “big lies.”

This chapter explores the interplay between community, capitalism, and cultural production within Detroit’s hip-hop underground. It focuses on the women-centered collective The Foundation (2009–2014) and its contemporary counterpart We Are Culture Creators (WACC). The Foundation championed women in hip-hop and intergenerational collaboration but faced insurmountable economic challenges. WACC’s transition from nonprofit to hybrid nonprofit–LLC highlights new avenues that arts organizations are pursuing in their efforts to secure funding. The study also highlights the socioeconomic complexities of Detroit’s revitalization during the city’s municipal bankruptcy, with gentrification and neoliberal capitalism often undermining grassroots creative arts’ efforts. The chapter situates Detroit’s hip-hop underground as a microcosm of broader tensions between cultural resistance, community building, and capitalist pressures. It also advocates for the reestablishment of connections between contemporary hip-hop innovations and educational as well as community-oriented practices, which were integral to the work of the Foundation.

Reality entertainment first appeared in the late 1980s, with the emergence of the TV entertainment genre – inaugurated by shows such as Cops and America’s Most Wanted; the daytime talk shows hosted by Geraldo, Oprah, and Donahue; and the tabloid news of A Current Affair. Yet what we now call “reality TV” emerged in dialog with another kind of entertainment that served as its foil and borrowed its techniques – what rappers Ice Cube and Ice-T called “reality rap.” While N.W.A.’s ‘Fuck Tha Police’ countered Cops’ vision of Black lives in America, subsequent reality rappers such as Snoop Doggy Dogg and Tupac Shakur embraced tabloid spectacle and the media’s obsession with Black criminality. Reality rap and reality TV, this chapter contends, were twin components of a cultural revolution that redefined popular entertainment as a truth-telling medium by borrowing journalistic tropes while dispensing with the professionalism and responsibility demanded of reporting.