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.

Never before had MSF teams been the direct witnesses of genocide and repeated mass violence on such a huge scale. The method of observation adopted for this book was, as matter of priority, to focus on the work of field teams and reconstruct their perceptions, decisions and actions. The following sources were used: numerous reports submitted to MSF head offices by MSF teams; witness statements published by the Rwandans; public documents from international organisations and research studies based on field surveys. The history of Rwanda is also told through a series of events which shed light on the political dynamics of the 1990s. Lastly, a summary of MSF’s activities in the Great Lakes region since 1980 is also included.Three very specific questions about Rwanda and the Great Lakes region during the period 1990 to 1997 are formulated:Where were MSF’s teams working?What work were they involved in?Which of the obstacles they encountered became the subject of debate, and which of these went on to be made public?

In the first chapter, we look at the years 1980 to 1994, which are divided into four periods and start with the provision of aid to Rwandan Tutsi exiles in Uganda during the 1980s. We then examine how MSF, between October 1990 and April 1994, delivered assistance to people internally displaced within Rwanda after fleeing the military advance of Tutsi exiles (led by the Rwandan Patriotic Front) and to the 260,000 Burundian refugees living in camps as of October 1993. Next we look at the period of the genocide and the medical assistance the organisation provided – during which time more than 200 of MSF’s Rwandan employees were executed. And to finish, we analyse the call for armed intervention in Rwanda and, more specifically, the French military operation launched mainly in southwest Rwanda in June 1994.