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Hip Hop Studies Commons

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Articles 1 - 5 of 5

Full-Text Articles in Hip Hop Studies

Give The Drummer Some: A Dive Into Drum Breaks And Drum Break Production, Kyle Kaldhusdal May 2023

Give The Drummer Some: A Dive Into Drum Breaks And Drum Break Production, Kyle Kaldhusdal

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

This paper traces the history of hip-hop culture through the evolution of the drum break, the original context of drum breaks in funk and soul music, their influence on DJ culture, and the subsequent impact of drum breaks on music and music production. It follows the development of breakbeat compilations in the 1970s and 1980s, parallel to the development of turntablism and sampling techniques. It also examines in detail how copyright litigation in the 1990s shaped the development of sample-based music genres and created a niche market for originally-recorded drum breaks over the subsequent decades.


'Space Is The Place:' Afrofuturism In Black Popular Music, Tamyka Jordon-Conlin Jul 2022

'Space Is The Place:' Afrofuturism In Black Popular Music, Tamyka Jordon-Conlin

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on developing a theory of Afrofuturist music. Afrofuturism is an umbrella term used to describe Black cultural productions that reflect on the African diasporic culture of the past while imagining potential futures, often while appropriating imagery of technology and science-fiction tropes. With the intent of redefining notions of blackness, Afrofuturist artists create alternative historical narratives and speculative future projections. These productions create space that allows the Afrofuturist to discorporately negotiate the limits of Black subjectivity. Poet, activist, and avant-garde musician Sun Ra is credited as the progenitor of Afrofuturism, and his model has since been adapted by …


The Correlation Between Traditional And Modern Day Performance Poetry: Where Music And Poetry Collide, Jaya Hodges May 2021

The Correlation Between Traditional And Modern Day Performance Poetry: Where Music And Poetry Collide, Jaya Hodges

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

"Music and poetry have similar roots that have made them both into what they are today. From chants to church hymns, they both have kept the Black community intact during times of sorrow and grief. The words that ride along the rhythm and structure of any song brings an unforgettable emotion out of these art forms. This paper will discuss how they have merged themselves together along with the influences they have made within Jame Weldon's "Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing" and Lauryn Hill's "Doo Wop (That Thing)".


All Day In The Trey-Fold: Sound, Objecthood, And Place In The Mixtapes Of Dj Screw, Matthew K. Carter Sep 2020

All Day In The Trey-Fold: Sound, Objecthood, And Place In The Mixtapes Of Dj Screw, Matthew K. Carter

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation traces the impact of the mixtapes of DJ Screw on the emergence of Houston hip hop culture in the 1990s. The relationship between these “screwtapes” and local culture resists demonstration through conventional modes of representational analyses, due in part to the screwtape’s preponderant use of hip hop tracks that originally represent other places. I suggest that representation itself is the result of the structuring tension emerging from a threefold field of representation of sound, objecthood, and place, and that when a hip hop artist or critic or fan claims to "represent" Houston (or any other constituted and constituting …


Audio Quality As Content: Everyday Criticism Of The Lo-Fi Format, Elizabeth Newton Jun 2020

Audio Quality As Content: Everyday Criticism Of The Lo-Fi Format, Elizabeth Newton

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the matter of authenticity with respect to audio recordings. In the early 1990s, the term “lo-fi” (“low-fidelity”) emerged as a label used to categorize many different types of popular music, indicating widespread fascination with what I call audio quality, the perceived character of an audio recording. I define audio quality as the relationship between content and mediation, which varies greatly by circumstance. My archival research of zines, press releases, and correspondence examines this relationship in three case studies: Wu-Tang Clan, Bratmobile, and Elliott Smith. I posit the lo-fi format as a critical structure that emerged in …