'We demand justice. We just getting started': The constitutive rhetoric of 1Hood Media's hip-hop activism

Chenjerai Kumanyika

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    Abstract

    The hip-hop activism of Pittsburgh's 1Hood Media has been a key element of the success of several contemporary social justice campaigns, such as the 2010 Justice For Jordan Miles police brutality case. After offering some background on 1Hood Media and a discussion of constitutive rhetoric, this study offers a close reading of 1Hood's rhetorical appeal, focusing on the ways in which the audience is constituted as both collective and individual subjects whose participation in the narrative is essential to its closure. 1Hood Media's texts focus on a diverse range of victims of injustice who suffer at the hands of police brutality and murder, and other forms of systemic oppression. The villains in these narratives are institutional forces, such as racist police forces, or corrupt Wall Street banks. By focusing on music, lyrical and visual features of 1Hood's cultural products, this study contributes to studies of popular music, hip-hop, rhetoric and cultural politics.

    Original languageEnglish (US)
    Pages (from-to)432-451
    Number of pages20
    JournalPopular Music
    Volume34
    Issue number3
    DOIs
    StatePublished - Sep 8 2015

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Cultural Studies
    • Music

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