In this section of the Black Language Homework, we present BLACK LANGUAGE AND HIP HOP. We highlight the world stage that Black Language built for the culture of Hip Hop and what that means for Black youth.
About Black Language and Hip Hop
Hip Hop began in the early 1970s by marginalized youth of the South Bronx in New York City. The culture gave these youth a platform to be seen and heard, which placed them at the center—for better or for worse. The four original elements of Hip Hop are writing (aerosol art), DJing, breaking and MCing; knowledge of self and community was added later. MCing (rapping) is the most notable and perhaps lucrative of the elements. Rap music unapologetically articulates the social, political, cultural and economic issues in Black communities by employing the Black Language. Moreover, there is no Hip Hop without Black Language—no matter the element. The whole culture revolves around the elaborate Black storytelling that catches audiences' ears, imaginations, and hearts.
Hip and hop is more than music. Hip is the Knowledge, hop is the Movement. Hip Hop is Intelligent movement. |
Rap finds its ancestral home in Black oral traditions and the long lineage of Black music from the Negro spirituals, Blues, early rock n’ roll, Jazz and R&B. More than music, Black sound is about melodic narratives. While some thought that Black youth were just making “noise” in rap, Black youth's consciousness and versatile bars extended what we call literary devices such as double entendres, metaphors, alliteration, foreshadowing, juxtaposition, oxymoron, and personification. More importantly, rappers are speaking to and about their community in their language with particular pronunciations and linguistic features such as the copula and "invariant be.” The graf writers were also throwing up pieces on the side of New York City subway trains; they were talking to each other too—it just happened to be seen by millions of riders throughout the city that never sleeps.
While these adolescents were trying to out-rhyme each other to be the best MC, they created their own words, phrases, and definitions that then became part of a deep and broad Black Language lexicon, style, and linguistic philosophy that spread even further during events, mixtapes, radio, and the military. This created a symbiotic relationship: what you heard on the streets, you heard on the track and if you heard it on a track, then you heard it on the streets. There is no separating Black Language from Hip Hop. There is no separating Hip Hop from Black Language. This is how we do.... |
Watch and play the videos on the slideshow/movie below to see and hear how emcees have described Black Language for us across the years. While it is obvious that Hip Hop is rooted in Black language and rhetoric, I am asking you to further understand that rappers are also very conscious language-scholars who are always showing and telling us what Hip Hop does linguistically/ verbally. In Hip Hop, Black youth make knowledge about the world AND their language in that world. For the culture!
Black Language and the M.I.C.:
From the Jazz Hepster (Hipster) to the Hip Hop Era
Cabell "Cab" Calloway III
1907–1994 Jazz singer, dancer, bandleader and actor Repping Harlem Hepster’s Dictionary in 1938 Explanation of Black Language in Jazz |
Lamont “Big L” Coleman
1974 –1999 Rapper and songwriter Repping Harlem “Ebonics (Criminal Slang)” in 1998 Explanation of Black Language in Hip Hop |
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OK people, class is in session now...
In the spring of 1931, jazz musician Cab Calloway was on national radio and forgot the words to his most popular song, "Minnie the Moocher" so he decided to freestyle "Hi-de-hi-de-hi-de-ho. Hi-de-hi-de-hi-de-ho..." The studio audience went wild. Calloway had his band follow his vocals and the audience join in (Perkins, 1996). This improvisation of Calloway and his band are examples of freestyling--- or "off the dome"--- and the call and response that is found in rap music. Somebody say "Ho!" |
"I was rappin' 50 years ago, my rap lyrics were a lot more dirty than those in my songs." ~Cab Calloway, 1991 (Perkins, 1996) |
In 1938 Calloway created the Hepster’s (Hipster’s) Dictionary which was a glossary of jive or words spoken by Harlem natives, more specifically, references to the language used by the musicians and entertainers during that era. It is the first dictionary written by a Black man. The dictionary had six editions and was added to the New York Public Library’s reference book collection.
Jive spread into mainstream media and around the world especially with the help of the Armed Forces.
Fast forward now 60 years to 1998, Harlem rapper Big L joined the conversation and released his own language dictionary “Ebonics (Criminal Slang).” Like the Hepster’s Dictionary, “Ebonics” breaks down not just language of Hip Hop, but Black culture as well, just in verse:
Jive spread into mainstream media and around the world especially with the help of the Armed Forces.
Fast forward now 60 years to 1998, Harlem rapper Big L joined the conversation and released his own language dictionary “Ebonics (Criminal Slang).” Like the Hepster’s Dictionary, “Ebonics” breaks down not just language of Hip Hop, but Black culture as well, just in verse:
(Speak with criminal slang)
That's just the way that I talk, yo
(Vocabulary spills, I'm ill)
The hook is sampled from “It Ain’t Hard to Tell” by Nas from his classic debut album, Illmatic. As “Criminal slang,” we are talking about the fact that “within the confines of larger white society, the language of the Black community becomes the language of the poor and deviant." (Harris, 2019 p. 28) This deviation is criminalized, even though the words that Big L defines in his oral dictionary have absolutely nothing to do with crime. That’s just the way we talk, yo!
Because rap music has roots in jazz, there is no surprise that these two Harlemites have created dictionaries about their language and culture. Both musical genres feature an element of improvisation and contrast the notion of what is theoretically “correct” with what is musically“ right” (Dixson, 2005) and contribute to our larger conversations. What Western music views as incorrect, jazz sees right. Then there is the concept of voice as used by jazz musicians and the practitioners of Hip Hop culture (writing, rapping, mixing, dancing). It’s through voice, no matter the medium, that one can “listen,” “interpret,” and “dialogue” with Black subjectivity (Dixson, 2005) . It is important to note that there were and are other cultural influences such as Latino community that is central to the culture also (Perry, 2004).
Because rap music has roots in jazz, there is no surprise that these two Harlemites have created dictionaries about their language and culture. Both musical genres feature an element of improvisation and contrast the notion of what is theoretically “correct” with what is musically“ right” (Dixson, 2005) and contribute to our larger conversations. What Western music views as incorrect, jazz sees right. Then there is the concept of voice as used by jazz musicians and the practitioners of Hip Hop culture (writing, rapping, mixing, dancing). It’s through voice, no matter the medium, that one can “listen,” “interpret,” and “dialogue” with Black subjectivity (Dixson, 2005) . It is important to note that there were and are other cultural influences such as Latino community that is central to the culture also (Perry, 2004).
Activity: What words and terms would you include in your dictionary? |
Sources:
Dixson, Adrienne D. 2005. "Extending the Metaphor: Notions of Jazz in Portraiture". Qualitative Inquiry. 11(1): 106-137. Harris, Jasmine L. 2019. "BLACK WOMEN TALKING: USING LANGUAGE TO DEVELOP BONDS BETWEEN BLACK WOMEN DURING INTERVIEW DATA COLLECTION." Michigan Sociological Review 33: 25-45. Perkins, William Eric. 1996. Droppin' science: Critical essays on rap music and hip hop culture. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Perry, Imani. 2006. Prophets of the hood: politics and poetics in hip hop. Durham, N.C: Duke University Press. |
Selected Resources
Books and Chapters
Alim, H. Samy. 2006. Roc the mic right: The language of hip hop culture. London: Routledge.
Alim, H. Samy. 2010. Global linguistic flows: hip hop cultures, youth identities, and the politics of language. New York: Routledge.
Alim, H. Samy. 2015. Hip hop nation language: Localization and globalization. In Jennifer Bloomquist, Lisa J. Green & Sonja L. Lanehart (eds.), The Oxford handbook of African American language, 850–862. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Brown, Ruth Nicole. 2009. Black girlhood celebration: toward a hip-hop feminist pedagogy. New York: Peter Lang.
Brown, Ruth Nicole, and Chamara Jewel Kwakye. 2012. Wish to live the hip-hop feminism pedagogy reader. New York: Peter Lang.
Connor, Martin E. 2018. The Musical Artistry of Rap.
Dalzell, Tom. 2014. Hip-hop slang. In Julie Coleman (ed.), Global English slang: Methodologies and perspectives, 15–24. London: Routledge.
Morgan, Joan. 2000. When chickenheads come home to roost: a hip-hop feminist breaks it down. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Morgan, Joan. 2018. She begat this 20 years of The miseducation of Lauryn Hill. New York: 37 Ink.
Morgan, Marcyliena H. 2001. ‘Nuthin’ but a G thang’: Grammar and language ideology in hip hop identity. In Sonja L. Lanehart (ed.), Sociocultural and historical contexts of African American English, 187–209. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Perry, Imani. 2006. Prophets of the hood: politics and poetics in hip hop. Durham, N.C: Duke University Press.
Richardson, Elaine. 2003. African American literacies. London: Routledge.
Richardson, Elaine B., Ronald L. Jackson, and Keith Gilyard. 2004. African American rhetoric(s): interdisciplinary perspectives. Carbondale (Ill.): Southern Illinois Press.
Richardson, Elaine B. 2007. Hiphop literacies. London: Routledge.
Smitherman, Geneva. 2000. Talkin that talk: Language, culture, and education in African America. London: Routledge.
Journal Articles
Alim, H. Samy. 2002. Street-conscious copula variation in the hip hop nation. American Speech 77(3). 288–304.
Cutler, Cecilia. 2007. Hip-hop language in sociolinguistics and beyond. Language and Linguistics Compass 1(5). 519–538.
Edwards, Walter F. & Leslie Ash. 2004. AAVE features in the lyrics of Tupac Shakur: The notion of ‘realness’. Word 55(2). 165–178.
Newman, Michael. 2005. Rap as literacy: A genre analysis of hip-hop ciphers. Text 25(3). 399–436.
Sánchez, Deborah M. "Hip-Hop and a Hybrid Text in a Postsecondary English Class." Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 53, no. 6 (2010): 478-87.
Alim, H. Samy. 2006. Roc the mic right: The language of hip hop culture. London: Routledge.
Alim, H. Samy. 2010. Global linguistic flows: hip hop cultures, youth identities, and the politics of language. New York: Routledge.
Alim, H. Samy. 2015. Hip hop nation language: Localization and globalization. In Jennifer Bloomquist, Lisa J. Green & Sonja L. Lanehart (eds.), The Oxford handbook of African American language, 850–862. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Brown, Ruth Nicole. 2009. Black girlhood celebration: toward a hip-hop feminist pedagogy. New York: Peter Lang.
Brown, Ruth Nicole, and Chamara Jewel Kwakye. 2012. Wish to live the hip-hop feminism pedagogy reader. New York: Peter Lang.
Connor, Martin E. 2018. The Musical Artistry of Rap.
Dalzell, Tom. 2014. Hip-hop slang. In Julie Coleman (ed.), Global English slang: Methodologies and perspectives, 15–24. London: Routledge.
Morgan, Joan. 2000. When chickenheads come home to roost: a hip-hop feminist breaks it down. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Morgan, Joan. 2018. She begat this 20 years of The miseducation of Lauryn Hill. New York: 37 Ink.
Morgan, Marcyliena H. 2001. ‘Nuthin’ but a G thang’: Grammar and language ideology in hip hop identity. In Sonja L. Lanehart (ed.), Sociocultural and historical contexts of African American English, 187–209. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Perry, Imani. 2006. Prophets of the hood: politics and poetics in hip hop. Durham, N.C: Duke University Press.
Richardson, Elaine. 2003. African American literacies. London: Routledge.
Richardson, Elaine B., Ronald L. Jackson, and Keith Gilyard. 2004. African American rhetoric(s): interdisciplinary perspectives. Carbondale (Ill.): Southern Illinois Press.
Richardson, Elaine B. 2007. Hiphop literacies. London: Routledge.
Smitherman, Geneva. 2000. Talkin that talk: Language, culture, and education in African America. London: Routledge.
Journal Articles
Alim, H. Samy. 2002. Street-conscious copula variation in the hip hop nation. American Speech 77(3). 288–304.
Cutler, Cecilia. 2007. Hip-hop language in sociolinguistics and beyond. Language and Linguistics Compass 1(5). 519–538.
Edwards, Walter F. & Leslie Ash. 2004. AAVE features in the lyrics of Tupac Shakur: The notion of ‘realness’. Word 55(2). 165–178.
Newman, Michael. 2005. Rap as literacy: A genre analysis of hip-hop ciphers. Text 25(3). 399–436.
Sánchez, Deborah M. "Hip-Hop and a Hybrid Text in a Postsecondary English Class." Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 53, no. 6 (2010): 478-87.
To reference this page:
Hutchinson, Kashema. "Black Language and Hip Hop." Black Language Syllabus, 30 Jan. 2021, http://www.blacklanguagesyllabus.com/black-language-and-hip-hop.html
Hutchinson, Kashema. "Black Language and Hip Hop." Black Language Syllabus, 30 Jan. 2021, http://www.blacklanguagesyllabus.com/black-language-and-hip-hop.html