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Ludacris : hip-hop mogul
\"In this biography of Hip-Hop mogul Ludacris, read everything about him from his life-changing internship at a radio station to his rise to fame as a rapper and movie star\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Akuko na Egwu: Music, a Critically Un(der)played Leitmotif in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Storytelling
This essay attempts to draw close attention to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s leitmotif of sound(s), more specifically music. This is a major theme that has perplexingly received such minor scholarly interest, despite its extensive incorporations in Adichie’s storytelling and her signaling, in part through her 2009 TED Talk “The Danger of a Single Story,” that it is one of the cornerstones of her world and works. The huge significance of this critical gap is clearest when one considers the astonishing and still growing body of commentary on Adichie’s other concerns and craft, as even a cursory visit to the “Bibliography” section of Daria Tunca’s impressive, Adichie-tracking website would reveal.
Journal Article
IN THE TIME OF PLASTIC REPRESENTATION
To many men and women of color, as well as many white women, meaningful diversity occurs when the actual presence of different-looking bodies appears on screen. For them, this diversity serves as an indicator of progress as well as an aspirational frame for younger generations who are told that the visual signifiers they can identify with carry a great amount of symbolic weight. As a consequence, the degree of diversity became synonymous with the quantity of difference rather than with the dimensionality of those performances. Moreover, a paradoxical condition emerges whereby people of color have become more media savvy yet are still, if not more, reliant on overdetermined and overly reductive notions of so-called “positive” and “negative” representation. Such measures yield a set of dueling consequences: first, that any representation that includes a person of color is automatically a sign of success and progress; second, that such paltry gains generate an easy workaround for the executive suites whereby hiring racially diverse actors becomes an easy substitute for developing new complex characters. The results of such choices can feel—in an affective sense—artificial, or more to the point, like plastic. Black representation, as it's been understood in a popular sense, has been dominated by the circulation of mediated imagery yielding deleterious effects for the groups depicted. The fear of the effects of such “poor” representation has resulted in a set of binary, nonscientific, underdeveloped metrics—positive and negative—that constitute a nebulous catch-all system wherein the characteristics that define each pole on the spectrum shift depending on the era and the expectations of the audience. What marks a representation as “positive” or “negative”? Responses are often aligned with class (good job, education, community minded), behavior (hypersexual, well-spoken, “woke”), or with characterizations of character that either successfully assimilate into normative culture or fail to do so. However, such a scale oversimplifies the complexities of black identity that require audiences, pop culture critics, and scholars to invest in screen characters through experiencing nuances developed over time and ironically reinforces the stereotypes that operate as industry shorthand. The rationale for solely demanding plastic representation is understandable as a sanity-preserving tactic that can also build esteem and confidence, but it is not nearly enough. Meaningful, resonant diversity is a more difficult, underdeveloped approach that requires all stakeholders to think harder about what on-screen difference looks and feels like. But if representation truly matters, then it is an approach worthy of pursuit.
Journal Article
Telling (Nearly) Impossible Stories through Poetry
Shahi shares how poetry gives him hope and helped him tell what felt like an impossible story.
Journal Article
Auto-Tune as instrument: trap music's embrace of a repurposed technology
This article explores Auto-Tune's importance to the production, perception and reception of trap music, a sub-genre of hip hop. Central to this exploration is the observation that Auto-Tuned trap vocals are readily audible as such because the software's pitch correction function is applied unnaturally quickly to the vocal audio signal, a feature herein termed ‘zero-onset Auto-Tune’. First, I posit that although Auto-Tune is ostensibly a pitch-correction device, its impact on vocal timbre is not well documented or understood. Second, I argue that Auto-Tune's recent importance as a creative tool in trap recasts it as an instrument. Third, I suggest that understanding Auto-Tune's repurposing as an instrument begets its situation in a lineage of technologies repurposed, adapted and embraced by the hip-hop community, including the turntable, digital sampler, and analogue mixer. And fourth, I propose that this repurposing surfaces in Auto-Tune's ability to facilitate emotiveness in trap vocals.
Journal Article
GEORGIA (RICO) ON MY MIND 1
The Georgia RICO indictments against President Donald Trump, the Stop Cop City Protestors, and hip-hop entertainer Young Thug prompted debates regarding the proper scope ofprosecutorial discretion and the legitimacy of the charges. This Article adds two critiques to the discourse. First, it posits that the expansive scope of the Georgia RICO statute not only provides cover for prosecutors to legitimize their charging decisions, but it also permits other system actors, particularly legislators, to challenge the legitimacy of the prosecutions in which they disagree. By connecting the Georgia RICO Indictments to the ongoing debate regarding the proper scope of prosecutorial discretion, the first part of this Article calls for greater focus on the ultimate purveyor of discretion and legitimacy-the law itself. Second, this Article challenges the overall utility of the legitimacy label in evaluating criminal prosecutions in the court of public opinion. It argues that, when viewed through a critical lens, the Georgia RICO Indictments illustrate how certain prosecutorial decisions are used to perpetuate racial and social hierarchies under the cloak of legitimacy. These hierarchies are promoted by politicians and other leaders using their social media, news conferences, floor debates, and various platforms to publicly legitimize certain actions and decisions that occur within the criminal legal system. This phenomenon, which I identify as structural legitimacy messaging, labels communities of color, as well as certain protestors, as the appropriate targets of the criminal legal system. This Article contends that while repealing the Georgia RICO statute, and similar laws, would be a starting point towards substantive reform in the criminal legal system, the eradication of structural legitimacy messaging would result in greater strides towards equality and true systemic reform.
Journal Article
Kanye West, Colorism and Mixed Musings
The College Dropout (2004), Late Registration (2005), Graduation (2007), 808s & Heartbreak (2008), My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010), Watch the Throne (2011), Cruel Summer (2012), Yeezus (2013), The Life of Pablo (2016), Ye (2018), Kids See Ghosts (2018), Jesus is King (2019) and Donda (2021), of which all, except Kids See Ghosts (2018), Jesus is King (2019), and Vultures 1 (2024), are certified platinum or multiplatinum by the Recording Industry Association of America data (RIAA, 2024). [...]OJ's actions, distance from the Black community, during his college and profession football career, and perceived white longing and validation, made the statement believable. Colorism and Gender Prescription in the Rhetoric of Rap Lyrics (Ford, 2024), that emerged from an analysis of 355 color references in rap lyrics between 1986-2024, this paper examines color references and colorist instances in West's songs from his projects 7he College Drop Out (2004), Late Registration (2005), Graduation (2007), My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010), Cruel Summer (Good Music Album) (2012), Yeezus (2013), and his singles, \"Christian Dior Denim Flow\" (2010) and \"All Day\" (2015). Through the theoretical lens of Pheno-Multiracial Aspirationalism (PMA) which is a tool \"to examine instances of colorist yearnings, including anti-Black and multiracial fetishization, through rhetorical and visual depictions in music lyrics, media, art, and popular culture,\" I will also discuss colorist characteristics found in West's lyrics that show his preference towards light-skinned, mixed-race and non-Black women (Ford, 2024, p. 20).
Journal Article
Introducing the Special Issue “Interface Between Sociolinguistics and Music”
This Special Issue comprises six original studies that explore the interface between sociolinguistics and music, offering new insights into how language is stylized and perceived in English, Spanish, and code-mixed performance [...]
Journal Article