Homework answers / question archive /  HISTORY OF HIP HOP – FINAL EXAM GUIDE For your final exam, you will write an essay that engages some of the most pressing questions about Hip Hop culture since its inception in the 1970s

 HISTORY OF HIP HOP – FINAL EXAM GUIDE For your final exam, you will write an essay that engages some of the most pressing questions about Hip Hop culture since its inception in the 1970s

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 HISTORY OF HIP HOP – FINAL EXAM GUIDE For your final exam, you will write an essay that engages some of the most pressing questions about Hip Hop culture since its inception in the 1970s. Choosing one of the questions or prompts below, you will write a 1200-1500-word (5-7-page) essay response. Approach this assignment in the same way that I have tried to develop the course—creatively and in your own voice. Assume your audience is vastly diverse and write as a creative scholar. Achieving this requires you to engage Hip Hop ’s material culture, and the evidence you use to make assertions must come from it’s imagery, sound, fashion, language, and literature. Your work must also contextualize the material evidence you use, so that you are not simply asserting your opinion on the topics you explore. This will mean that you must discuss the influence of historical forces on Hip Hop ’s intellectual expressions and introduce peer-reviewed scholarship into your essay. In this way, you will be thinking more deeply about the topics of our class lectures, readings, and discussions. Although there is no limit to the number of sources you can use, please be reasonable in your selection. In general, do not to exceed ten sources. You may draw from any combination of 3-5 primary sources AND 3-5 secondary sources – totaling 6-10. You can also send attachments of sound clips and video with your paper when you submit it via email. If you include such attachments, in a zipped compressed folder with your full name and the course number on it (i.e. Lacey Hunter – 014:250:01). Finally, your essay must include a full bibliography and the honor pledge at the beginning or end of your paper. Your final exam is due on May 10 at 6 pm. Please keep in mind that because of a very short grade submission time allowed for Rutgers faculty this year, I cannot accept late papers. Do your best to communicate with me in the weeks leading up to the final submission date so that I can help you meet the deadline. ESSAY PROMPTS – 1) Hip Hop’s cultural responses to the “crack epidemic” and “War on Drugs” shaped its formative years during the 1980s, and its dependence on drug references continue to scaffold the culture. Write an essay in which you make an argument about the ways in which one pillar in Hip Hop culture (rapping, break dancing, graffiti, DJ-ing, or knowledge of self) has evolved since the 1980s in response to the “War on Drugs.” 2) Although it remains overlooked, the relationship between Hip Hop culture and Black and Brown LGBTQ+ communities is longstanding. Write an essay in which you make an argument about how the existing gender DUE DATE: MAY 10, 2021 6 PM HISTORY OF HIP HOP – FINAL EXAM GUIDE norms in Hip Hop culture have helped and hindered LGBTQ+ creators in Hip Hop. In your essay, you must point to AT LEAST TWO Hip Hop creators whose work in Hip Hop supports your main assertion. 3) Write an essay in which you discuss the historical relationship between Hip Hop and a religious/spiritual belief of your choice. How have Hip Hop creators complicated traditional faith practices and belief by infusing it with political meaning? Be sure to discuss AT LEAST TWO Hip Hop creators whose work supports your argument. 4) Write an essay in which you discuss representations of men and women in Hip Hop. What are some of the reasons for the gaps in the representation of both genders? Why has this gap grown over time? How have Hip Hop content creators contributed to or challenged this gap? What are some of the complications embedded in making women more visible in Hip Hop culture? 5) Write an essay in which you discuss the rise of Hip Hop in the “dirty South” and its impacts on national trends in Hip Hop culture? How have rappers in other parts of the country absorbed the look and sound of the “dirty South”? What are some of the impacts of spreading southern culture outside of its political boundaries? 6) In the last twelve years, Hip Hop culture has become expressly more connected to individual politicians and major corporations. Write an essay in which you make an argument about the positive and negative impacts of this 21st century development on Hip Hop culture and the communities from which it emerges. 7) In the mid-1990s, state and federal government officials initiated a series of poverty de-concentration programs. Write an essay in which you discuss these efforts in the state of your choice, then make an argument for the ways in which community development and redevelopment realities prompted new shifts or deeper convictions in the Hip Hop scene there. 8) For some in the United States, the presidency of Donald Trump signaled the resurgence of the type of White supremacist rhetoric and racial violence presumed to have been eradicated with the rise of former President Barack Obama. For others, the rise of former President Donald Trump was a sign that our nation still values the traditions, discourse, and leadership that have long supported our economic strengths, resilient federal government, and civic industry. This divide in popular opinion has, in the last four years, split families and friends along rigid ideological lines. Write an essay in which you make an argument about the ways in which these ideological divides have emerged in Hip Hop culture. Who are the leading voices in Hip Hop’s latest political debates? What do the opposing sides in Hip Hop indicate about the culture at large? Marshall: I’m so Self-Conscious: Kanye West’s Rhetorical Wrestling with The I’m so Self-Conscious: Kanye West’s Rhetorical Wrestling with Theodicy and Nihilism Con? S. M. Marshall Journal of Hip Hop Studies, Special Issue I Gotta Testify: Kanye West, Hip Hop, and the Church Volume 6, Issue 1, Summer 2019, pp. 80–96 DOI: https://doi.org/10.34718/gjpm-r752 ___________________________________ Published by VCU Scholars Compass, 2019 1 Journal of Hip Hop Studies, Vol. 6 [2019], Iss. 1, Art. 10 I’m so Self-Conscious: Kanye West’s Rhetorical Wrestling with Theodicy and Nihilism Con? S. M. Marshall Abstract Whether Kanye’s plea to God is to intervene because “the devil’s trying to break [him] down,” or that he (Kanye) is “tryna keep [his] faith,” Kanye West’s lamentations communicate his wrestling of succumbing to sufferings within the world. Despite the twelve-year span between “Jesus Walks” and “Ultralight Beam,” Kanye West’s rhetoric in both songs attempt to make meaning of theodicy—suffering; while simultaneously combating nihilism—the lack of hope. As a professed Christian who articulates the multiplicity of God through Jesus and himself (Kanye West), affirmed on his 2013 album Yeezus track, “I am God,” West complicates religiosity and self-consciousness. He does so by situating himself as both God and human; recognizing limitations of God who has yet to impact his situation as a Black man in America, and his human-self that operates as a venerated deity. West’s consciousness is an amalgamation of his warring with theodicy and nihilism. My essay implements a theo-rhetorical analysis of “Jesus Walks” and “Ultralight Beam” exploring meaning-making processes of locating God. In doing so, I define theodicy and nihilism as repelling mores that aid in self-preservation for West. VOLUME 6 ISSUE 1 https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/jhhs/vol6/iss1/10 80 2 Marshall: I’m so Self-Conscious: Kanye West’s Rhetorical Wrestling with The Introduction Since the inception of his first nationally syndicated album, The College Dropout, Kanye West has teetered on these constellating mores of faith, God, humanity, theodicy and nihilism in an effort to mitigate warring inner tensions in response to the world around him. 1 His lyrics provide insight into individualized implications of torment, while simultaneously serving as case studies to Black millennials who are working through generations of God-talk that they have not felt concretized in their community.2 While Kanye’s recent life circumstances of canceling concert shows, being admitted to the hospital for mental care and boldly supporting President Donald Trump, might render answers to this warring of succumbing to theodicy with nihilism, this article will focus on his two songs in order to better understand how he consistently combats prescribing theodicy with nihilism and perhaps how he has come to these staggering conclusions as of late. This article highlights rhetoric used in two of Kanye’s songs “Jesus Walks” and “Ultralight Beam,” offering insight into dealing with the world around us. This article will utilize a theo-rhetorical lens to analyze Kanye’s lyrics. By theorhetorical, I refer to deriving meaning from the act of locating God. Rhetoric, as a discipline has developed into a field that privileges all cultures of deriving meaning within communication practices as opposed to simply applying Greek and Roman mores to other cultures’ communication practices.3 Theology as a discipline seeks to check the relationship between beliefs and practices, while locating God in the process.4 Thusly, I will synthesize the two concepts, implementing them as a mode of analysis. The reader will gain a better understanding of how Kanye makes meaning of theological concepts throughout his music. I will first define theodicy and nihilism to provide context for my claims. After having done that, I will explain them both in the context of Blackness in order to better understand rhetorical positionality of the lyrics used. I will then showcase how Kanye’s rhetoric operates within these tenets. “Devil’s Tryna Break Me Down”: Theodicy’s Suffering Sinner and Human Agency The concept of theodicy has developed over time to better understand its cause and capacity. Michael Eric Dyson explicates the basis of theodicy and its relation to God and humanity. 5 Dyson uplifted Philosopher Gottfried Liebniz’s 18th century Greek 1 Stacey Floyd-Thomas et al., Black Church Studies: An Introduction (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2007), 57. 2 Tyree A. Boyd-Pates, “Why Black Millennials Are Hopping from Church-to-Church,” Huffington Post, April 12, 2016, accessed February 4, 2018. 3 Elaine Richardson and Ronald L. Jackson, African American Rhetoric(s): Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University, 2007). 4 Floyd-Thomas et al., Black Church Studies, 74–75. 5 Michael Eric Dyson, “Supernatural Distaste?: Theodicy and Black Faith” in Come Hell or High VOLUME 6 ISSUE 1 Published by VCU Scholars Compass, 2019 81 3 Journal of Hip Hop Studies, Vol. 6 [2019], Iss. 1, Art. 10 etymology of the word theodicy, breaking it down to “theos” and “dike” which literally translates as, God Justice, although, throughout the chapter he refers to theodicy as human suffering and/or evil. Although Dyson’s work was trying to understand a natural disaster—Hurricane Katrina—in relation to governing matters with New Orleans surrounding the catastrophe, this work lends itself to the contextualizing theology and provides insight to how Kanye West finds himself situated in the main question that Dyson, myself, and Kanye are all posing, which is; “What is God’s role in human suffering?” Dyson puts conservative Christian parishioners as well as liberal scholars in conversation in order to better address this question. In doing so, the suggestion and/or solution is that there are varying theodicies taking place. According to Dyson, there are two types of theodicy, (1) conservative and (2) liberative attributive theodicies. Conservatives suggest that suffering is caused by God punishing the sinner. Therefore, the suffering sinners deserve their punishment. This group of thought would be amongst those who would justify enslaving Africans because of Ham’s actions toward his father, Noah.6 Ham sinned; therefore, descendants of Ham would be enslaved. Also, per the conservative viewpoint, Katrina victims were taking part in Voo-doo and same-gender sexual activities which are considered sinful to particular sects of Christianity. Therefore, Hurricane Katrina was a condemnation on sinners. On the other hand, liberal attributive theodicy suggests that political leaders are at fault as opposed to simply God’s wrath towards sinners. This thought goes beyond the questioning of “why do bad things happen?” to indicating the role that humans and institutions play within suffering. This takes up human suffering in a philosophical manner. It is important to ask this question of God’s role in suffering in order to know where to direct sentiments and solutions. While liberals take a stance suggesting the suffering came at the hands of government officials and people, Dyson wrestles with the placement of God in suffering. Though he notes that after the Enlightenment, scholars did away with God’s role in suffering, they focused solely on “human agency.”7 As a result, Dyson’s answer to locating God in suffering--enable to resolve this dilemma and unwilling to let it go--is that God is located in Black faith (in relation to the victims of Katrina mostly being poor Black people).8 This section does not seek to solve the problem of suffering, rather to name theodicy as such. James Cone, progenitor of Black theology, asserts that Christian theology must be Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster (New York: Basic Civitas, 2007). 6 Floyd-Thomas et al., Black Church Studies, 60. 7 The Enlightenment era of the eighteenth century was a philosophical and intellectual shift from the church and utilized reason as a primary source. Foundational scholars of this era include Immanuel Kant, Georg Hegel and Karl Marx. During and after the Enlightenment movement, Kant articulated the theological split between God ended where humans’ agency began. Hegel said that destruction was inevitable and Marx spoke of economics and humans created destruction. Thusly, suggesting that theology ends where theodicy begins. 8 Dyson, Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster, 10. VOLUME 6 ISSUE 1 https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/jhhs/vol6/iss1/10 82 4 Marshall: I’m so Self-Conscious: Kanye West’s Rhetorical Wrestling with The a theology of liberation as a direct response to oppressed communities.9 His theological offering begins as a response to suffering. It is within this understanding of a liberative theology as a response to suffering that Kanye situates himself. Jesus is a salvific figure. Kanye’s concept of the “devil trying to break me down” in his song “Jesus Walks” suggests that he understands theodicy as a force attempting to destroy his being or – break him down, in which he wishes to name, the devil. Why does Kanye do this? The reason is that his conception of God is good and liberating. He cannot fathom situating God as the very thing that is destroying him, so he situates the devil as such, the very entity that is antithetical to how Kanye has imagined God. It is not clear whether the devil can be realized or not—meaning if the devil is a force of sub-deitel being that conjures evil or if the devil is tangible resources, things and or people. We also know that Kanye is referring to a devil that extends beyond simple individualism, as he opens “Jesus Walks” with, “we at war with racism, we at war with terrorism…” indicating that he understands the larger ramifications of suffering. He reiterates this suffering in “Ultralight Beam” by stating that he is searching for “somewhere I can feel safe and end my holy war…so why send oppression not blessings?” As a result, these works, become chanted reminders that Jesus is accessible and alive. He says this after speaking of the women’s ills to jog his memory of a deity that is supposed to be working on his behalf. It is clear that Kanye believes that suffering can be combated with the power of Jesus and/or God as he calls out for them to help in the midst of turmoil. Kanye laments, “God show me the way”10 and “I’m tryna keep my faith”11 inferring there is assistance in God. Therefore, the devil, Jesus and God are to operate on both institutional and individual levels. It is clear that the theodicy is taking place, however it is not as clear if Kanye knows that theology is the answer though he relies on it. It appears that he has faith that theology may be the answer. “I Walk Through the Valley of the Chi Where Death Is”: Black Suffering in America Black communities have continued to endure suffering in America. Theodicy is a human condition, though some humans are on varying sides of suffering—some administering it and others victims to said suffering—and those suffering administer more suffering in a constellating continuum of human suffering. Black people have far too long been at the receiving end of suffering in this country; however, this is not to negate Black participation in patriarchy, homophobia, xenophobia and other oppressions. Cornel West explains nihilism in Black communities in relation to Black suffering as he positions two dichotomous perceptions of how to combat the world. He posits two concepts of Black nihilism as 1) liberal structuralists and 2) conservative 9 James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1986), 1. Kanye West, “Jesus Walks,” in College Dropout (Roc-A-Fella Records, 2004). 11 Kanye West, “Ultralight Beam,” in Life of Pablo (Roc-A-Fella Records, G.O.O.D Music, and Def Jam Records, 2016). 10 VOLUME 6 ISSUE 1 Published by VCU Scholars Compass, 2019 83 5 Journal of Hip Hop Studies, Vol. 6 [2019], Iss. 1, Art. 10 behavioralists. West claims that liberal structuralists dwell on institutional racism and major structures that impact inequalities within systems of education, incarceration, health care, economics, politics etc. All the while conservative behavioralists focus on the behavior of Blacks in the community, what they wear and how they navigate business, taking on the notion of respectability politics. Marc Lamont Hill12 and TaNehisi Coates13 would later take up these warring behavioralist and structuralist approaches to lived narratives of Black people in contemporary American culture. It is important to note that while Cornel West critiques both parties for missing out on nihilism as a more detrimental source of Black stagnation, West does not refute that both hypotheses are valid in the discussion of Black suffering. He understands what many scholars and Kanye have been articulating—Black suffering is orchestrated by both institutions and individuals and it is on both levels that they impact the Black psyche. Chicago as the valley of death signifies the complex realities of institutionalized and localized agency as well as an interjection of Black psychological rapport. It is important to note that along with being Kanye’s hometown, Chicago is ridden with poverty, environmental racism and violence.14 This is the place whereby Kanye is raised into his consciousness of God, humanity, suffering and nihilism. Within this same stanza of labeling Chicago “the valley of death,” Kanye alludes to suffering violence projected upon Black Americans by the police by suggesting that Blacks are “getting choked by detectives” and “harassed and arrested.”15 He is speaking to a reality that plagues the streets of Chicago and the larger American context—mass incarceration, a condition Michelle Alexander’s probes in The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, in which she explains correlations between drug usage amongst Americans and Blacks and Brown people being incarcerated at unequal rates.16 Kanye explains a similar relationship between drugs and incarceration stating, “We ain't goin' nowhere, but got suits and cases/A trunk full of coke rental car from Avis.”17 The cops are harassing them even though they are succumbing to the politics of how one must carry themselves. They are wearing the “appropriate” attire and driving an “appropriate” vehicle; yet, they are still criminalized. The absurdity is that they are assumed to have a trunk full of narcotics in spite of knowing the history among Black people and law enforcement, while following both legal and social laws. These 12 Marc Lamont Hill, Nobody: Casualties of America’s War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond (New York: Atria Paperback, 2016). 13 TaNehisi Coates, Between the World and Me (New York: Spiegel and Grau, 2015). 14 Anthony Pinn, The Black Church in the Post-Civil Rights Era (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2002), 82– 84. 15 West, “Jesus Walks.” 16 Michele Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: The New Press, 2012). 17 West, “Jesus Walks.” VOLUME 6 ISSUE 1 https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/jhhs/vol6/iss1/10 84 6 Marshall: I’m so Self-Conscious: Kanye West’s Rhetorical Wrestling with The circumstances create an environment of death—one that is created for Black suffering. The condition of Black suffering is the theodicy which Kanye alludes to in “Jesus Walks” and “Ultralight Beam.” Kanye echoes repeatedly, “So why send oppression not blessings?”18 as a clarion call for the cause of suffering. It is the same suffering referenced by James Bell, progenitor of critical race theory, in Faces at the Bottom of the Well, his conglomeration of anecdotal accounts, that suggests racism in America is intrinsically linked to power and will never end. 19 While it is not certain whether Kanye believes racism and/or suffering for himself and the Black community will ever end, it is clear that Kanye has held this sentiment of death in Black communities since his debut in 2004 and continues it through his latest project in 2016. “I’m Trying to Keep My Faith”: The Lack of Hope, Love, and Meaning Nihilism in the Black community should not be overlooked as a dangerous symptom of suffering. Cornel West writes: In fact, the major enemy of black survival in America has been and is neither oppression nor exploitation but rather the nihilistic threat—that is, loss of hope and absence of meaning. For as long as hope remains and meaning is preserved, the possibility of overcoming oppression stays alive. The self-fulfilling prophecy of the nihilistic threat is that without hope there can be no future, that without meaning there can be no struggle.20 West suggests that though suffering exists, it is the psychological ramifications of that suffering that we must consider as the largest detriment to Black communities. The threat of a community losing the capacity to think that things can get better is the beginning of the end for West. The lack of hope stagnates a people from working towards solutions and liberation. Therefore, West’s assertions that nihilism is the greatest threat, gains legitimacy in that structuralist and conservative solutions will never be implemented if Black people have no hope and/or desire to fight, struggle and overcome Black suffering. According to Cornel West, liberal and constructive nihilism are inseparable. Culture is just as structural as economics and politics.21 It is important to understand culture as structural so that we then could view despair, dread, lack of hope, and the collapse of meaning as structural. Conservatives contribute to nihilism by exceptionalizing people without taking into account structures, thus failing to admit that although Blacks adhere to American ethics, they are still on the bottom of the social ladder. They do not want Blacks to be “victimized” (but they are victims). Cornel West says, “For as long as hope remains and meaning is preserved the possibility of overcoming oppression stays alive…without hope there can be no future, without meaning there can 18 19 West, “Ultralight Beam.” Derrick Bell, Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism (New York: Basic Books, 1992). 20 21 Cornel West, Race Matters (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), 23. West, Race Matters, 3–19. VOLUME 6 ISSUE 1 Published by VCU Scholars Compass, 2019 85 7 Journal of Hip Hop Studies, Vol. 6 [2019], Iss. 1, Art. 10 be no struggle.”22 These dichotomous ideations become polarized as they fail to take into account the necessity of the other and ultimately misses a critical component of Black consciousness that Kanye West addresses in his music. Incriminating institutions unearth historical backings for current manifestations of minority environments; however, it does not allow for agency within oppressed communities. Conversely, placing blame upon communities’ agency without fully taking into account systems that have strategically displaced certain people on the margins who have little political and economic power. These polarized camps of thought continue postulating theories and solutions, while they fail to posit psychological ramifications of it all—lack of hope. The psychological ramifications are real and there is no movement without hope. While academicians and activists alike struggle with privileging the other side of this dilemma of oppression and suffering, looking to Kanye West’s music provides us an entry point into conversing about the varying aspects of theodicy and nihilism through his understanding of his environment.23 Likening those on welfare as victims suggests that welfare is one that preys on and subjugates people. “To the victims of welfare for we living in hell here hell yea.”24 While dominant narratives would suggest welfare recipients benefit, suck up tax payers’ money and live lavish lifestyles, Kanye recognizes the hardships and bondage associated with welfare, the circumstances leading to it and the suffering restrictions that come along with it. Though the requirements differ from state to state to obtain welfare benefits, the main premise is that a family has been unable to provide basic resources for their family. No one would ever ask for such a situation, which is why Kanye emphatically states that this circumstance is hell. Most welfare benefits provide the minimum amount of resources for living and remaining in poverty with strict standards to keep up those benefits without any transition period or romantic involvement. Hell becomes not only a damned location, but redefined meaning and lack of hope in a system that has historically and contemporarily been against them, Black nihilism. Kanye West also understands his surroundings as one that requires deliverance, “deliver us serenity, deliver us peace, deliver us loving, we know we need it, you know we need it…” 25 Requiring deliverance connotes a state of needing rescue or freedom which furthers this concept of nihilism as a state that lacks serenity, peace and love. This lament for escaping a place that lacks these essential elements (according to Kanye), is reminiscent of the hell that he speaks of in “Jesus Walks” being portrayed here in 22 West, Race Matters, 23. Tricia Rose, Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop—and Why It Matters (New York: Basic Books, 2008) 138. 24 West, “Jesus Walks.” 25 West, “Ultralight Beam.” 23 VOLUME 6 ISSUE 1 https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/jhhs/vol6/iss1/10 86 8 Marshall: I’m so Self-Conscious: Kanye West’s Rhetorical Wrestling with The “Ultralight Beam.” Theology is anthropological in that we, humans upholding religion or theos, have not been able to speak of or locate God within history devoid of God’ relationship to humans, leaving us to distinguish this relationship between God and humanity. Nihilism encompasses the “profound sense of psychological depression, personal worthlessness and social despair.”26 It’s evident that Kanye seeks to combat the lack of hope through his emotive lament for help. His call is to help right his wrongs, keep his mind and stop terrorism, racism and self-despair. We could position his music before and after many events in his life from the death of his mother to the marriage to his wife to the birth of his children to his clothing/fashion involvement. Within “Ultralight Beam,” Kanye has a plea to be rescued from nihilism and his conception of God’s role has changed slightly in that in 2004 the devil was the source of evil and God or Jesus was the salvific figure. Now God becomes one that both sends oppression as well as the capacity to bring blessings and deliverance. This move of understanding God as a source of oppression allows for nihilism to grow in that if God, who was the only hope for liberation cannot and does not send blessings, but rather is complicit in Black suffering and galvanized oppression, where does hope lie? And it is within this place that Cornel West calls the greatest danger of Black communities because it stops action. Kanye’s nihilism interjects when his concept of theology fails to answer theodicy. His hopelessness serves as a pretext to his lyrics. “I’m tryna keep my faith” implies that his faith is at risk. His requests include wanting peace, serenity and blessings instead of oppression. How then can his conception of God be both all-powerful and all good God that his mother told him about while allowing suffering to take place? Is it because God allows free will thus allowing for the suffering of some? These questions are birthed out of Kanye’s lament to keep his faith in the midst of Black nihilism. “My Mama Said Only Jesus Can Save Us”: Black Liberation Theology of Redemptive Suffering Nihilism or hopelessness in Black communities has been the premise for Black religious’ institutions and activism. The genius of Black people has been to create meaning, love, and hope in the midst of despair for the possibility to fight, dream and reach equality and prosperity. 27 Creating a space where Black people have space for liberation of some kind was needed. Some forms of hope in Black communities were introduced by faith based institutions. For the sake of this article, I will reference the Black church as a pillar of faith in the midst of nihilism/Black suffering; however, I acknowledge other religious, spiritual and psychological forms of healing. As Dyson and Cone explain, Black people 26 27 West, Race Matters, 23. Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, 143. VOLUME 6 ISSUE 1 Published by VCU Scholars Compass, 2019 87 9 Journal of Hip Hop Studies, Vol. 6 [2019], Iss. 1, Art. 10 situated God in the will of people, a concept derived from Black liberals. Black religious leaders have questioned their oppressive conditions since the 1700s. Richard Allen, Denmark Vessey and several others, challenged oppressive conditions and slavery by positing Black people as people of God.28 Though, this narrative has become dominant, this theological situating of God in Black suffering has not been consistent throughout history. Black religious scholar, Anthony Pinn agrees with ethicist, Gayraud Wilmore in suggesting that during the Great migration, the Black church began to turn inward, in accordance to conservative thoughts to work on Black church endeavors.29 It wasn’t until the civil rights era that dominant narratives of locating God within Black and human injustices became more popular. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X were huge influences as King played a role in shaping theology and Malcolm contributed to defining Blackness. Allen, Sojourner Truth, and King were catalysts in the formation of the National Committee of Negro Churchmen’s (NCNC) that eventually took up the concerns of theologically addressing media and white Christians.30 The NCNC wrote the first definition of Black theology.31 James Cone was then the first to systematize Black theology in 1969, 32 furthering the previous definition, claiming that God was ontologically Black in that God’s message was for the oppressed Israelites and Jesus’ plight was likened to Black Americans’.33 While his method has been contested by his brother Cecil Cone and Wilmore Gayraud as European theology with Black rhetoric, it has stood the test of time as one of the dominant definitions of a Black theology of liberation. Cone’s work was also taken to task theologically by William Jones. In 1973, Philosopher William R. Jones questioned dominant discourses surrounding Black Liberation Theology by asking a pivotal question in his work, Is God a White Racist: A Preamble to Black Theology. His work sought to move progenitors of Black Christian liberation theology to critically engage theodicy or suffering with humanism, implicating men and women as agents of change in their economic and social environment, while in conversation with the omnibenevolent God of Black liberation theology. He deduced that, if suffering for Blacks (who Black liberation theologians have aligned with the suffering of the Israelites in Biblical text) is necessary for redemption, then God may very well be a White racist. Therefore, God cannot be located within Black healing.34 However, this is not the conviction of many Black Christians as they believe that God is essential in their daily lives. 28 Floyd-Thomas et al. Black Church Studies, 9–26. Anthony Pinn, “Black Theology” in Liberation Theologies in the United States: An Introduction (New York: New York University Press, 2010), 15–26. 30 James H. Cone, “Black Theology and the Black Church: Where Do We Go From Here?” Cross Currents 27, no. 2 (1977): 147. 31 Cone, “Black Theology and the Black Church,” 147. 32 James H. Cone, Black Theology and Black Power (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1969). 33 James Cone, God of the Oppressed (New York: Seabury Press, 1975). 34 William R. Jones, Is God a White Racist?: A Preamble to Black Theology (Boston: Beacon Press, 1997). 29 VOLUME 6 ISSUE 1 https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/jhhs/vol6/iss1/10 88 10 Marshall: I’m so Self-Conscious: Kanye West’s Rhetorical Wrestling with The Unlike William Jones’ theology, Dyson, West, Kanye and many other Black Americans, believe that God can be located in Black faith. Christianity or Christian theology is a theology based upon liberation. That does not come into being without an oppressed people; it is within this context that Cone situates Black theology. It is with this theological premise that the politics of Black circumstances and conditions are worked out. Because White people have subjected and created a suffering disposition for Black people, Black people begin to locate themselves with the Israelites of the Hebrew Bible or the people of God who were subjected by the Egyptians. There’s no Black theology as we have come to know it as God being on the side of the oppressed if there is no Black theodicy, caused by White supremacy and theology. Black Theology and or religiosity serves as a theology of last resort to hope—or survival theology. Black communities spend most of its time trying to survive physically, psychologically, spiritually and economically in their daily lives. Black sacred worldview holds the apostolic witness of the previous generations within the community serving as Truth. Therefore, it is understandable when Kanye puts his trust in his mother’s witness that “only Jesus can save us,” as opposed to his own witness of God’s liberative nature. “The genius of our black foremother and forefathers was to create a powerful buffer to ward off the nihilistic threat, to equip the black fold with cultural armor to beat back the demons of hopelessness, meaninglessness, and lovelessness.”35 These buffers, that West speaks of are what Cone calls survival theology and what Kanye’s mother taught him about Jesus’ redemptive powers. Privileging his mama, though he does not know for certain whether Jesus has redeemable qualities, he trusts that she is correct in her declaration. This is why, though God may or may not have worked over these twelve years between albums, Kanye asserts that “Jesus Walks” is living and operating, even if he cannot see it. In similar regard, an ultralight beam, or direct communication tool from humans to God is existing in the “God dream.” “But Most of all We at War with Ourselves”: Human Agency of God Kanye West, like academicians and theorists, does not provide concrete answers to conceptions of theodicy, rather he takes action; doing what he can to meet circumstances where they are. Thusly, in action he refutes nihilism, for without hope that something can be changed there is no redemptive acts that can be made. Through his music, Kanye provides redemptive agency to combat theodicy. His action enacts hope. He laments a bit more ring stronger in an attempt to challenge God as opposed to believing that God will act on his behalf, as earlier declared as a proclamation and conviction of his mother. When writing “Jesus Walks” Kanye’s mother was alive and served as an inspiration. It would not be asinine to think that after the passing of his mother, her faith in God left with her—transitioning his faith in God’s salvific actions to his own. This is Kanye’s answer to God not helping the way he saw fit, not unlike philosophical thinkers that had to intervene. If he is to intervene as human, then he 35 West, Race Matters, 24. VOLUME 6 ISSUE 1 Published by VCU Scholars Compass, 2019 89 11 Journal of Hip Hop Studies, Vol. 6 [2019], Iss. 1, Art. 10 transcends to God in doing something about the suffering—blurring the lines of self and God. Cone believes Black faith locates God as one who identifies with oppression. To locate God in suffering positions God to be against poor, Black, gay and other oppressed communities. Another implication would be that God is not all powerful and/or all good. If so, God would not allow such a thing to take place. And for those suggesting God loves humanity so much that God allows free will, it would imply that God loves us into human suffering, which is hard to digest as well. Therefore, in relation to human suffering— unrelated to natural disasters—humans have created evil. God has no role in the suffering—the creation or liberation thereof. “End My Holy War”: Conclusion Has Kanye’s holy war ended? While on the surface, Kanye’s recent outbursts of not voting in the U.S. Presidential election and exclaiming that if he were to have voted he would have voted for Donald Trump, seems antithetical to his consciousness of Black theodicy and Trump’s policies, seeks to perpetuate Black suffering. However, what if the war is over and nihilism “won”? If this were the case, Kanye’s recent outbursts, canceling of his Saint Pablo tour, and admittance to the hospital for mental concerns would be in line with succumbing to pressures of having to hopefully act in a space that has created and sustained Black suffering. Kanye’s recent antics do not mean that we cannot learn from his warring. Ultralight beam, with the collaboration with Kelly Price, Kirk Franklin and Chance The Rapper, serves as a plea for Kanye West. The Ultralight beam is the confession that God is still there, still good and still on the side of the oppressed. Kanye says these words as if to stir up his faith and remind himself of God’s redeemable characteristics. This shows us that faith is fluid and war has casualties. Sometimes faith is high and at other times it is low or maybe even depleted, but Kanye’s actions of composing a last will call, if you will, in “Ultralight Beam” to proclaim God’s goodness, showcases his willingness to fight. Action prohibits stagnation. If Kanye can continue to make music and call on gospel artists to work alongside him, so can we act and collaborate with others who may uphold ethics that we find slipping within ourselves. This is not to suggest stagnation will never occur; it suggests that we have record of fighting and living through the fight of theodicy and nihilism. VOLUME 6 ISSUE 1 https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/jhhs/vol6/iss1/10 90 12 Marshall: I’m so Self-Conscious: Kanye West’s Rhetorical Wrestling with The Bibliography Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: The New Press, 2010. Bell, Derrick. Face at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism. New York: Basic Books, 1992. Cone, James. Black Theology and Black Power. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1969. ---. “Black Theology and the Black Church: Here?” CrossCurrents 27, no. 2 (1977): 147–56. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24458316. Where Do We Go From ---. God of the Oppressed. New York: Seabury Press, 1975. ---. A Black Theology of Liberation. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1986. Coates, TaNehisi. Between the World and Me. New York: Spiegel and Grau, 2015. Dyson, Michael Eric. Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster. New York: Basic Civitas, 2007. Floyd-Thomas, Stacey et al., Black Church Studies: An Introduction. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2007. Hill, Marc Lamont. Nobody: Casualties of America’s War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond. New York: Atria Paperback, 2016. Jones, William R. Is God a White Racist? A Preamble to Black Theology. Boston: Beacon Press, 1997. Pinn, Anthony. The Black Church in the Post-Civil Rights Era. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2002. ---. “Black Theology.” In Liberation Theologies in the United States: An Introduction, edited by Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas and Anthony B. Pinn. New York: New York University Press, 2010. Richardson, Elaine, and Jackson, Ronald L. African American Rhetoric(s): Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University, 2007. Rose, Tricia, Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop—and Why It Matters. New York: Basic Books, 2008. West, Cornel. Race Matters. New York: Vintage Books, 2001. VOLUME 6 ISSUE 1 Published by VCU Scholars Compass, 2019 91 13 Journal of Hip Hop Studies, Vol. 6 [2019], Iss. 1, Art. 10 West, Kanye, “Jesus Walks.” College Dropout. Roc-A-Fella Records, 2004. ---. “I am God.” Yeezus. Def Jam Records, 2013. ---. “Ultralight Beam.” Life of Pablo. Roc-A-Fella Records, G.O.O.D Music, and Def Jam Records, 2016. VOLUME 6 ISSUE 1 https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/jhhs/vol6/iss1/10 92 14 Marshall: I’m so Self-Conscious: Kanye West’s Rhetorical Wrestling with The Appendix A: Kanye West’s “Jesus Walks” Lyrics Order, huh Yo, we at war We at war with terrorism, racism, but most of all we at war with ourselves (Jesus Walks) God show me the way because the Devil's tryin' to break me down (Jesus Walks with me, with me, with me, with me, with me) You know what the Midwest is? Young and Restless Where restless niggas might snatch ya necklace And next these niggas might jack ya Lexus Somebody tell these niggas who Kanye West is I walk through the valley of Chi where death is Top floor of the view alone will leave you breathless Try to catch it, it's kinda hard Getting choked by detectives yeah, yeah, now check the method They be asking us questions, harass, and arrest us Saying “We eat pieces of shit like you for breakfast!” Huh! Y'all eat pieces of shit? What's the basis? We ain't goin' nowhere, but got suits and cases A trunk full of coke rental car from Avis My Mama used to say only Jesus can save us Well Mama, I know I act a fool But I'll be gone 'til November, I got packs to move, I hope (Jesus Walks) God show me the way because the Devil's tryin' to break me down VOLUME 6 ISSUE 1 Published by VCU Scholars Compass, 2019 (Jesus Walks with me) The only thing that I pray is that my feet don't fail me now (I want Jesus) (Jesus Walks) And I don't think there is nothing I can do now to right my wrongs (Jesus Walks with me) I want to talk to God, but I'm afraid because we ain't spoke in so long (I want Jesus) God show me the way because the Devil's tryin' to break me down The only thing that I pray is that my feet don't fail me now And I don't think there is nothing I can do now to right my wrongs I want to talk to God, but I'm afraid because we ain't spoke in so long, so long So long (Jesus Walks with me) To the hustlers, killers, murderers, drug dealers even the strippers (Jesus walks for them) To the victims of welfare for we living in hell here hell yeah (Jesus walks for them) Now hear ye hear ye want to see Thee more clearly I know He hear me when my feet get weary Cause we're the almost nearly extinct We rappers are role models we rap we don't think I ain't here to argue about his facial features Or here to convert atheists into believers I'm just trying to say the way school need teachers The way Kathie Lee needed Regis that's the way I need Jesus 93 15 Journal of Hip Hop Studies, Vol. 6 [2019], Iss. 1, Art. 10 So here go my single dog radio needs this They said you can rap about anything except for Jesus That means guns, sex, lies, video tape But if I talk about God my record won't get played Huh? Well let this take away from my spins Which will probably take away from my ends Then I hope this take away from my sins VOLUME 6 ISSUE 1 https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/jhhs/vol6/iss1/10 And bring the day that I'm dreaming about Next time I'm in the club everybody screaming out (Jesus Walks) God show me the way because the devil trying to break me down (Jesus Walks with me, with me, with me) The only thing that I pray is that me feet don't fail me now 94 16 Marshall: I’m so Self-Conscious: Kanye West’s Rhetorical Wrestling with The Appendix B: Kanye West’s “Ultralight Beam” Lyrics I'm tryna keep my faith We on an ultralight beam We on an ultralight beam This is a God dream This is a God dream This is everything This is everything Deliver us serenity Deliver us peace Deliver us loving We know we need it You know we need it You know we need it That's why we need you now, oh, I Pray for Paris Pray for the parents This is a God dream This is a God dream This is a God dream We on an ultralight beam We on an ultralight beam This is a God dream This is a God dream This is everything Everything (Thing, thing, thing) I'm tryna keep my faith But I'm looking for more Somewhere I can feel safe And end my holy war I'm tryna keep my faith So why send oppression not blessings? Why, oh why'd you do me wrong? (More) You persecute the weak Because it makes you feel so strong (To save) Don't have much strength to fight So I look to the light (War) To make these wrongs turn right Head up high, I look to the light Hey, cause I know that you'll make VOLUME 6 ISSUE 1 Published by VCU Scholars Compass, 2019 everything alright And I know that you'll take good care of your child Oh, no longer am afraid of the night Cause I, I look to the light When they come for you, I will shield your name I will field their questions, I will feel your pain No one can judge They don't, they don't know They don't know Foot on the Devil's neck 'til it drifted Pangaea I'm moving all my family from Chatham to Zambia Treat the demons just like Pam I mean I fuck with your friends, but damn, Gina I been this way since Arthur was anteater Now they wanna hit me with the woo wap, the bam Tryna snap photos of familia My daughter look just like Sia, you can't see her You can feel the lyrics, the spirit coming in braille Tubman of the underground, come and follow the trail I made Sunday Candy, I'm never going to hell I met Kanye West, I'm never going to fail He said let's do a good ass job with Chance three I hear you gotta sell it to snatch the Grammy Let's make it so free and the bars so hard That there ain't one gosh darn part you can't tweet 95 17 Journal of Hip Hop Studies, Vol. 6 [2019], Iss. 1, Art. 10 This is my part, nobody else speak This is my part, nobody else speak This little light of mine Glory be to God, yeah I'mma make sure that they go where they can't go If they don't wanna ride I'mma still give them raincoats Know what God said when he made the first rainbow Just throw this at the end if I'm too late for the intro Ugh, I'm just having fun with it You know that a nigga was lost I laugh in my head Cause I bet that my ex looking back like a pillar of salt Ugh, cause they'll flip the script on your ass like Wesley and Spike You cannot mess with the light Look at lil Chano from 79th We on an ultralight beam We on an ultralight beam This is a God dream This is a God dream This is everything Everything I'm tryna keep my faith But I'm looking for more Somewhere I can feel safe And end my holy war Father, this prayer is for everyone that feels they're not good enough This prayer's for everybody that feels like they're too messed up For everyone that feels they've said “I'm sorry” too many times You can never go too far when you can't come back home again That's why I need Faith, more, safe, war VOLUME 6 ISSUE 1 https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/jhhs/vol6/iss1/10 96 18 et al.: Contributors James A. Manigault-Bryant, PhD Professor of Africana Studies Williams College Hollander Hall 148 jm6@williams.edu 413.597.2107 Tari Wariebi Directing Fellow, American Film Institute tariwariebi@gmail.com (484)-477-2986 LeRhonda S. Manigault-Bryant, PhD Associate Professor of Africana Studies Williams College rmanigau@williams.edu office: 413.597.2217 Rev. Larrin Robertson Pastor of Word For Life Church Ministries 11519 Fort Washington Road Fort Washington, Maryland 20744-5814 larrin@hotmail.com (301) 467-8452 Rev. Nathaniel Yates Pastor of Bethany Community Church office@bethanylaurel.org Con? Marshall Assistant Professor of Religion University of Rochester Department of Religion and Classics Rush Rhees Library Room 428 cona.marshall@gmail.com office: (585) 275-5378 Jasmine Mans Author, performer, poet, teacher https://www.jasminemans.com/ VOLUME 6 ISSUE 1 Published by VCU Scholars Compass, 2019 137 3 Reproduced with permission of copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. IAFOR Journal of Media, Communication & Film Volume 5 – Issue 1 – Summer 2018 Reality of Trap: Trap Music and its Emancipatory Potential Jernej Kaluža Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana and Radio Študent, Slovenia Abstract: The reality that has been presented in rap music and its celebrity culture has always been connected with two extremes: the reality of the “thug” life of the streets on the one hand and with a specific sort of “American Dream” reality that presents climbing from bottom to top on the other hand. This article explores the reasons why trap music, which originated as a type of rap music in the south of the USA, is now with its specific mixture of hedonism and nihilism, darkness and joy, becoming the music of our times. It argues that this is not a coincidence: the two-fold reality, the cruel reality of living “in a trap” on the one hand and the idealized, dreamy reality full of gold and diamonds on the other hand, is the main allegory of “real” life in late capitalism. How to get out of the trap? In the article, I investigate some crucial problems of contemporary theory regarding class and racial differences and argue that we can extract farreaching social, political, and theoretical statements through interpretation of music that is often presented as apolitical, vacant, and of poor quality. Interpretation of contemporary development in pop culture will be combined with readings of theorists such as Foucault, Mbembe, Balibar, Marx, Moretti, and Deleuze and Guattari. I argue that identification with trap music, even if it seems conformist and non-critical, is producing paradoxical minoritarian universalism, that could, if we understand the universalization of a dream of individual success as an implicit request for egalitarian society, present certain emancipatory potential. Keywords: Trap music, universalism, race, class, becoming, identification, American Dream 23 IAFOR Journal of Media, Communication & Film Volume 5 – Issue 1 – Summer 2018 Introduction Usage of the word trap in contemporary media and public-speech is very diverse. This, sometimes, causes misunderstandings because the word itself could be connected with many different discursive fields: trap is a name for 1) a certain genre in hip-hop; 2) a certain subgenre of EDM music (sometimes also labeled EDM trap) (“What is Trap Music”, 2013); 3) broader tendencies in contemporary pop music that often uses elements of trap, as music writer Taylor Bryant suggests “…what’s considered trap is just as much Migos’ ‘Bad and Boujee’ as it is Major Lazer’s ‘Lean On’ or even Katy Perry’s ‘Dark Horse’.” (2017). Interest in trap music increased after 2012, with an increase in online searches for the term.1 At the same time a relative decrease in searches for the term “hip hop” was noted, supporting what many commentators observed: “[f]rom hip-hop to pop to EDM and beyond, the sound of trap music is everywhere” (Setaro, 2018). The majority of contemporary mainstream rap is actually trap (Migos, Rae Sremmurd, Savage 21) or at least possesses some of its elements (Kendrick Lamar, Drake, Kayne West) (Friedman, 2017). The rise of rap in general in the last few years is impressive. Music journalists commenting that for “… the first time ever, R&B/hip-hop has surpassed rock to become the biggest music genre in the U.S. in terms of total consumption, according to Nielsen Music's 2017 year-end report” (Ryan, 2018). Interest in the genre has also grown, with “… [l]istening in the genre increased 74% on Spotify in 2017...” (Bruner, 2018). In this article, I will not try to define trap as a genre or to present its genealogy. I will focus on a more specific question, which requires only certain elements from trap as a music genre: why is trap so popular? What is the link between trap music and the contemporary moment that could give an answer to this massive identification with trap music? Trap music was a tradition of rap that developed during the 1990s outside traditional centers of rap creativity, neither on the east side (New York, Philadelphia) nor on the west side (Los Angeles and California), but in the south of the USA in Atlanta, Memphis, Miami, and Houston (Friedman, 2017; Setaro, 2018). This is an interesting moment for us: a new trend came from an unexpected place, from the “Dirty South”. The term Dirty South, which was in a certain period almost a synonym with the term trap (in the narrower sense), was used as a “standard way of referring to the American South among rap music listeners” (Miller, 2004, n.p.). It connotes negative valuation: “[d]irt and dirtiness have … connotations of uncleanliness, disorder, corruption, unfairness and sexuality” and the south has, in the American context, connotations of “poverty, ignorance, rurality and violence” (Miller, 2004, n.p.). Trap music was, as we can see, among many not perceived as especially relevant or of good quality. Critics saw it as a vague, trivial and cheap genre, appropriate only for wild and excessive parties (Louis, 2015). Part of this rejection was based also on cultural prejudices that are similar to historical prejudices that were addressed to non-European cultures from the perspective of European civilization, which will present a crucial moment for our argumentation. Trap began to reach strong presence on the mainstream Billboard music charts after 2009, with artists such as Young Jeezy, Gucci Mane, and Future, and producers such as Lex Luger and 1 Google word searches for the term ''trap'' received significant growth in the number of searches after 2012, with its peak between 2015 and 2017. In comparison, the word rap, received equal attention between 2004 and 2017, while searches for the word hip-hop gradually declined in that period. Trends and interests, visible from the statistics of the history of Google search, could be checked on a public web facility Google Trends. The result that are presented are the product of the following parameters: time period – 2004 till today, area (whole world, excluding China, part of Asia and larger part of Africa (Google Trends does not cover those areas). Other parameters (categories of searched topics, etc.) are not specifically defined. We have to read those results with restrains. (there could be, for example, some events or phenomena that generated interest in the word “trap” that are not connected with the analysis). 24 IAFOR Journal of Media, Communication & Film Volume 5 – Issue 1 – Summer 2018 Mike Will Made It (Lee, 2015; Adaso, 2017). It was at this time when the characteristic 808kick drums and melodic synths that create an overall dark and grim, but sometimes also bright and laid-back atmosphere, started entering mainstream music in general. It became one of the most “default” sounds of the mainstream of today, separated from its roots (Bruner, 2018). As music writer Sammy Lee suggests, “… trap-rap stars are now hitting the top of the charts and electronic music’s take on the sound is everywhere from high-street shops to summer music festivals” (2017). This all-presence causes difficulties in defining what exactly trap is. Some argue that the word should, because of the cultural appropriation, be reserved for a specific genre of rap, while others use it as a loosely defined buzzword that has been continuingly creating hype in clubs and festivals and passionate debate on comment sections and internet forums across the world.2 However, trap is not just a sound. Or conversely, sound cannot be separated from the practice of production in which it originally appears: those circumstances are somehow preserved inside the sound. The word trap (in the slang of Atlanta’s African American population) signifies a place, usually a typical wooden house from Atlanta’s devastated suburbs, where drugs and other illegal businesses take place, and where a certain lifestyle is practiced (Adaso, 2017). The term trap is appropriate, because it is hard to escape out of such a life-style in which people are entrapped. Studios, where the trap sound first appears, were usually a side product of the surplus money of illegal activities, while local night-clubs, strip-clubs, and street-corners were usually places where trap music was consumed. Trap music was therefore deeply connected with the under privileged community in which it originally appeared and it described nothing but the cruel reality in which that music was produced (Carmichael, 2017). That is why trap music is, often perceived as devoid of deeper meaning, promoting immoral behavior, talking mostly about money, drugs, women3, criminal and other stories of “real” life. This reality is best described by the state of entrapment in a certain situation or in a certain way of life. However, trap also presents exactly the opposite reality: it is also music about escaping the trap, about getting rich, having too much gold, and succeeding in life. Gold, jewelry and other prestigious objects shine out in many trap videos (Roberts, 2017). Viewer gets the impression that there is always too much money: dollars fly in the air or are burnt. As I shall examine in detail later, mostly through the example of Migos’ hit Bad and Boujee, trap presents amtwofold reality: a reality of being entrapped on the one hand and a reality of extreme success (“from nothing to something”) on the other. It presents a story of a transition from one extreme of social reality to the other. It is a reality of the “thug” life of the streets on the one hand, and a specific sort of “American Dream” reality on the other. Here a realistic presentation of life of the rich is not found, rather what is expressed is the phantasm of rich-life from the perspective of the poor. “Rap was for people who were on the bottom of the social hierarchy... So, when a select few were able to climb out of that despair into the ranks of the rich...it wasn’t enough to have it... It had to be shown for all the world to see” (Roberts, 2017, n.p.). Most of those elements could already be seen in (especially gangsta) rap from the 90s and 00s (Roberts, 2017). However, climbing from bottom to top is not only something that is presented in (some forms) of rap. It is also what rap as an act is all about. Rap, in its sincere and often angry speech from the perspective of the suppressed, entrapped or inferior, is sometimes similar to Michel Foucault's concept of fearless speech. Presented in one of his seminaries (Foucault, 2 See for example answers on Quora on quesiton: “Why do some hip hop fans dislike trap music?” (Why do some hip hop fans dislike trap music?, 2017). 3 Trap has been criticised a lot also because of its sexism. However, in the last years, many female rappers have appeared and some of them are adressing exactly this problem (Jordannah, 2018). 25 IAFOR Journal of Media, Communication & Film Volume 5 – Issue 1 – Summer 2018 2001), Foucault analyses the ancient concept of “parrhesia” to define fearless speech as completely and absolutely real. It is real because it is completely and absolutely fearless, because it dares to tell things as they are, no matter the consequences, no matter what the lord (or any other sort of authority) would think about it: “if there is a kind of ‘proof’ of the sincerity of the parrhesiastes, it is his courage. The fact that a speaker says something dangerous – different from what the majority believes – is a strong indication that he is parrhesiastes” (Foucault, 2001, p. 15). Such speech is true also because it cannot be a mere performance or representation. The speaker cannot take any sort of distance towards his words: “He says what he knows to be true”, as Foucault argues (Foucault, 2001, p. 14). Parrhesia is therefore “verbal activity” in which a speaker “expresses his personal relationship to truth” and “recognizes truth-telling as a duty” (Foucault, 2001, p. 19). It cannot be understood as a mere opinion, but it is in a certain sense complete and undoubted truth, truth including the “real” situation of the speaker. Similar discussion between real and true could be found in the rap community, where a crucial question is whether certain rap is “real” and “true” or if it is “fake” or “performed”. Most of the critique that comes from the “old school” perspective, perceive trap and mainstream rap as being “fake”, part of a post-modern mix of images that is completely separated from its roots and its emancipatory potential (Bryant, 2017). Of course, we cannot deny reproduction of some of the most problematic tendencies inside the cultural industry (for instance appropriation and commercialization), but nevertheless, I argue, that the mainstreaming of rap in general cannot be treated as “fake” appropriation of once authentic culture. Therefore, there is something “real” and “true” in identification with the imaginary of the previously described narrative of the two-fold reality of trap. I argue that trap is “music of our time”, not only as a sound, but more as a complex ideological mixture of certain affects. The concept of affection is, as Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari define it, an “encounter between the affected body and affecting body (with body taken in its broadest possible sense to include ‘mental’ or ‘ideal bodies’)” (Massumi, 1987, p. xvi). There are common affects therefore, between the music and listeners who identify with it worldwide. Those affects are “real” in the tautological sense, exactly because they are perceived as real, because the identification is real. This same tautology is at work in Deleuze’s and Guattari’s concept of desire: desire is always real, it is producing something, it is in direct correspondence with social production (Deleuze & Guattari, 2004, pp. 10–11). We will have to ask ourselves in this context, which social production is combined with such a desire of production as it is presented in trap music. This article argues that late-capitalism in general, with its reproduction of inequality that increases social differences, also produces the two-fold reality presented in trap music. Individuals no longer identify themselves with the middle class, white, suburban situation, if this was previously the most common form of identification. This is in direct correspondence, as it will be demonstrated, with a turn in the main model of identification: from middle class suburbia to “the dirty south”, as we argue in section “New Universalism”. Spontaneous movements of expropriated masses of people are always fascinating leftist (especially Marxist) intellectuals. Reasons for this fascination do not always come up from the ideological content that is expressed in those movements but first of all because of their specific structural position. The question of the self-awareness of ruled classes as the ruled – a selfawareness that is a precondition for the realization that their ideology is not the ideology of ruling class – has always been specifically complex in Marx. In German Ideology “the ruling ideas” are defined as “the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance” (Marx & Engels, 2010, p. 169). Ruling ideas are therefore ideas of the ruling class, “hence among other things [they] rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas 26 IAFOR Journal of Media, Communication & Film Volume 5 – Issue 1 – Summer 2018 of their age” (Marx & Engels, 2010, p. 169). In difference with those who argue that trap music simply represents the ruling ideas of late capitalism (materialism, competition, individual success) (ndwogan, 2017), I will argue for the opposite: trap music represents the ideals of those who are suppressed. This thesis is comparable with the thesis of Slovenian Marxist Rastko Mo?nik who, in his analysis of the Punk movement in Yugoslavia in the 1980s, explains why Marxist theoretical approaches are useful in the context of subculture and pop-culture phenomena: When we analyze contemporary movements of expropriated youth crowds, we have to be aware that those crowds are not expropriated only directly “economically”, but also ideologically – their “culture” and their “ethics” are taken away from them as an ability to establish their own ideological (class) platform on a progressive historical tradition. (Mo?nik, 1985, p. 62) Class difference is therefore not embodied only as a different position in production, but also as a cultural difference. Antonio Gramsci may be the first who addressed the question of cultural difference, between ‘the south’ and ‘the north’, which could be useful in today’s global context, even if it was originally applied only to Italy: why “southern” masses are not convinced by Marxist theory and why their “reality produces a wealth of the most bizarre combinations' of beliefs and expectations” (as cited in Arnold, 2013, p. 28). As E. P. Thompson commented in the context of colonial India, “there might be a radical disassociation – and at times antagonism – between the culture and even the ‘politics’ of the poor and those of the great” (as cited in Arnold, 2013, p. 36). In this context I argue that from a Marxist perspective, we should not treat the culture of the masses as irrelevant and useless and that we cannot dismiss identification with trap music worldwide as a mere trend of late capitalism. This article seeks to explain identification with trap music and to present its correlation with the system of late capitalism. I attempt to defend the view, that this identification has emancipatory political potentials, even if it appears – with its promotion of materialism and individual success – as an ideology of a today’s ruling class. The research data in this study is drawn from two main sources: 1) articles, essays and opinions about trap music and contemporary development in pop culture; 2) previously described theoretical background from critical theory, post-structuralism and Marxism. The article is divided into two parts. In the first part (“New Universalism”) I establish the correlation between the imaginary of trap music and bipolar subjectivity of late capitalism. In order to point to the emancipatory potential of entrapped subjectivity, I introduce Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of “becoming minority” and Achille Mbembe’s understanding of universalism that is concentrated in a moto “Becoming Black of the World”. In the second part (titled ‘Bad Boujee’) I further develop and strengthen our thesis through Marxian interpretation of concrete example of trap music, and Migos’s hit Bad and Boujee that implicitly addresses questions of class and cultural differences. New Universalism As previously discussed, I am not interested primarily in trap as a music genre, but more on the wider sense of the concept of reality of trap. Trap, in a combination of the general meaning of the word trap and its more specific use in context of trap music, consists of a series of specific and often contradictory affects: trap is bitter-sweet, it includes nihilism and joy, states of ecstasy and states of depression, life up’s and down’s, entrapment and escape. As the main motto of the first season of Noisey’s online documentary series Noisey: Atlanta (2015) states: “Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose” (as cited in “Welcome to the Trap”, 2015). Such 27 IAFOR Journal of Media, Communication & Film Volume 5 – Issue 1 – Summer 2018 statement presupposes a specific conception of reality. As Simon Reynolds pointed out in 1996, “real” in hip hop “signifies that music reflects a “reality” constituted by late capitalist economic instability...” (Fischer, 2009, p. 10). Mark Fischer similarly argues that: …the affinity between hip hop and gangster movies ... arises from their common claim to have stripped the world of sentimental illusion and seen it for ‘what it really is’: a Hobbesian war of all against all... where dog eats dog, where you’re either a winner or a loser, and where most will be losers (Fischer, 2009, p. 11). Such extreme competition is, as Franco “Bifo” Berardi explains, not sustainable in the long run: “a depression treatment based on artificially induced euphoria will not work” as the growth in economy could not prevent the next crisis, which is inherently inscribed in capitalism (Bifo, 2009, p. 210). According to Bifo, there is, therefore, strict correspondence between economic insecurity seen in the unpredictable growth and fall of values on financial markets, and insecurity on the psychological level, seen in the ambivalence of the main affects. This conception is similar to Mark Fischer’s thesis that capitalism is, “with its ceaseless boom and bust cycles … fundamentally and irreducibly bipolar, periodically lurching between hyped-up mania... and depressive come-down...” (2009, p. 35). That bipolarity is composed of two complementary beliefs; one corresponding to state of mania, the other to state of depression. On the one hand there is an underlying conviction of depression, “that we are all equally uniquely responsible for our own misery and therefore deserve it” (Fischer, 2014, n.p.). On the other hand, is “the belief that it is within every individual’s power to make themselves whatever they want to be” (Fischer, 2014, n.p.). According to Fischer, this is the “dominant ideology and unofficial religion of contemporary capitalist society” (Fischer, 2014, n.p.), that can be detected in the imaginary of hip-hop. For example, Kayne West’s latest album hosts the contradictory, but self-explanatory motto “I hate being bipolar, it’s awesome” (Fitzgerald, 2018). However, psychological classification of affects produced by late capitalism, should not be understood as a legitimization of the system: “[t]he current ruling ontology denies any possibility of a social causation of mental illness. The chemico-biologization of mental illness is of course strictly commensurate with its depoliticization” (Fischer, 2009, p. 37). On the contrary, and in the vein of the radical political theory and politics of the 1960s in 1970s (such as Laing, Foucault, and Deleuze & Guattari,), Fischer calls for the politicization (and not naturalization) of “extreme mental conditions” (Fischer, 2009, p. 19). Bipolar affects are, I argue, not present only in trap music in the narrower sense of the term, but can be found in the large part of contemporary pop-culture in general. Therefore, it is not only a sound of trap, but the whole imaginary of being in the trap, that became mainstream and reached its worldwide presence. Today we are faced with many different identification movements rising autonomously worldwide, deep-inside of the streets, that share with trap music the same series of affects, sometimes similar aesthetics, combining dangerous and nihilistic atmosphere made of drugs, guns, money and a bit of “unheimlich”, post-apocalyptic feeling. Trap in this wider sense could, therefore, be found not only in grime, drill, cloud- and mumble-rap or in the phenomenon of so called “SoundCloud rap” (Burford, 2018), but also in the Latin-trap (Leight, 2017; Suarez, 2017), in rap combined with turbo-folk in the Balkans (Maksimovi?, 2015), and in Chinese trap (Hawkins, 2018). However, those affects also go beyond the sphere of musical form of expression. Slav-squat Facebook and meme pages, popular especially in the Eastern Europe, present a caricatured image of street life in eastern Europe (Song, 2016). Furthermore, Rick and Morty (2013-present), a globally successful cartoon series, is all about entrapment and escape and especially about the absurdity of the life in general, without any superior or idealistic value in which one should believe (as cited in 28 IAFOR Journal of Media, Communication & Film Volume 5 – Issue 1 – Summer 2018 Cinnamon, 2015). Trap music also became one of the most significant elements used in movies that present cruel social situation such as Spring Breakers, American Honey, and The Florida Project. In general, aesthetics in all those contexts includes in itself moments of “being nothing” or “being trash” on the one hand and moments of extreme richness, self-respect, and selfconfidence on the other. I argue, therefore, that described affects are becoming universal and that there are real and material reasons for that universalization. In order to defend that thesis, we have to address the most common criticism of popular (t)rap music which reduces its popularity to cultural appropriation, and claims that this popularity could be explained as a mere trend produced by the music industry without any relation to reality, and consequently also without any emancipatory potential (Thompson, 2017). Cultural appropriation is supposedly first observed with the rise of rap to the mainstream of pop-culture in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when youth from both underprivileged areas and middle and upper class, started to identify with an underprivileged position. A central question in the evaluation of rap music in general, the question of who is authentic and who is performing and appropriating street aesthetic, was in the context of rap deeply connected with racial difference (Williams, 2017). In particular, the phenomenon of Vanilla Ice and Eminem provoked debates, some similar to the question surrounding white rap and trap music of today: can white people identify with black? Must they be poor, from under privileged areas or from broken families in order to be authentic? (Setaro, 2017; Charity, 2014). It is not a coincidence that the slang term “wigga” – signifying a white person who adopts some clichéd characteristics of black culture – became used in the context of hip-hop culture (Usborne, 1993). As the title of an influential book on rap culture suggests: “Everything but burden (what white people want to take from the black)” (Tate, 2003). However, cultural appropriation is not so problematic on the level of individual white consumers as on the level of the whole (predominantly white) cultural industry, which functions through appropriations of inventions of the “dirty streets”. As Andre 3000 from OutKast observed (in the song Hollywood Divorce) “all the fresh styles always start off as a good, little, hood thing, ... take our game, take our name, give us a little fame and then they kick us to the curb that’s a cold thang” (Burgess, 2012). I do not deny that part of the phenomenon of “trap-identification” could be explained with the concept of cultural appropriation, neither do I deny the role of the music industry that (to a certain extent) reproduces the popularity of trap music. Nevertheless, I argue that there are also certain important differences between mainstream rap and mainstream music in general. Music, that is becoming mainstream, usually loses its edginess, its subversive message and its cultural identity (Livewire, 2006). It is interesting that in some cases of rap music, this scheme does not seem to fit entirely because it is the universal message of the suppressed and excluded, expressed in certain rap lyrics, which seems to be a crucial part of its mainstream potential. As Reynolds explains in the article Street Rap it is a “crucial paradox” that “the hardcore street scenes are populist but anti-pop. Their populism takes the form of tribal unity against what’s perceived as a homogenous, blandly uninvolving pop culture. They are about the ‘massive’ as opposed to ‘the masses’” (Reynolds, 2011, p. 241). Their popularity, comparable to the popularity of today’s Migos, Future or Rae Sremmurd, is “responsive to the motility of popular desire” (Reynolds, 2011, p. 241). The imaginary inside it goes beyond the borders of blackghettos: its universal popularity is in direct correspondence with the insecure and unstable bipolar subjectivity of late capitalism. 29 IAFOR Journal of Media, Communication & Film Volume 5 – Issue 1 – Summer 2018 I argue that identification with a state of entrapment, seemingly universal today, produces a multitude of minority subjectivities that are gradually replacing the dominant, middle-class white male subjectivity of universal human subjectivity. Like Deleuze and Guattari in Thousand Plateaus, I argue for the universal minoritarian becoming that is in contrast with the concept of majority: all becoming is a becoming-minoritarian. When we say majority, we are referring not to a greater relative quantity but to the determination of a state or standard in relation to which larger quantities, as well as the smallest, can be said to be minoritarian: whiteman, adult-male, etc. Majority implies a state of domination, not the reverse. (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 291) The historic situation of black people has been (and still is) a paradigmatic example of a minoritarian state of entrapment. I do not argue for a form of change in which black identity replaces white to become a majority that represent universal human identity. On the contrary, the very idea of homogeneous majority, which is a foundation for universalism (from which minority is excluded), should be replaced with heterogeneous multitude of minorities that form a foundation for a universalism of a different kind. A universalism without exclusion, negation and without inner difference – present in the universalism of European enlightenment – that restrains it from becoming really universal. On the contrary, new universalism is a universal recognition of entrapment, a universal “becoming-minoritarian” of Deleuze and Guattari, that affirms diversity on the level of minoritarian identities. It is, because it resists the formation of normative a majority, not in contradiction with the equality between them. As Deleuze and Guattari argue: There is no subject of the becoming except as a deterritorialized variable of the majority; .... Becoming-minoritarian is a political affair and necessitates a labor of power [puissance], an active micropolitics. This is the opposite of macropolitics, and even of History, in which it is a question of knowing how to win or obtain a majority. As Faulkner said, to avoid ending up a fascist there was no other choice but to becomeblack. (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, pp. 291 292) Many difficulties arise in such a constellation of “non-fascist” life which dem&s becoming minority. “Becoming-black” in Deleuze and Guattari’s meaning of the term must be strictly separated from reversed racism. Blackness is not a basis for a new privileged, normative and major identity, exactly because reterritorialization of becoming in certain stable identity is something Deleuze and Guattari try to oppose with the concept of “minoritarian becoming”: “[o]ne reterritorializes, or allows oneself to be reterritorialized, on a minority as a state; but in a becoming, one is deterritorialized. Even blacks, as the Black Panthers said, must becomeblack.” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 291). However, the tradition of black emancipation produced this thought in one of the most explained ways: Achille Mbembe’s universalism, concentrated in the motto “Becoming Black Of the World”, is not affirmation of only black identity, but “affirmation of the irreducible plurality of the world” (Mbembe, 2017, p. 156). Furthermore, as Mbembe argues, the term black itself often designates “a heterogeneous, multiple, and fragmented world” (p. 6). Black identity is therefore only one of the minor identities. It is, nevertheless, the paradigmatic historic example of entrapped identity. The concept of “Blackness” was namely from its historic beginnings formed in relation to major (white culture), which is superficial and free in relation to subjected and entrapped blackness. As Mbembe argues: “The notion of race made 30 IAFOR Journal of Media, Communication & Film Volume 5 – Issue 1 – Summer 2018 it possible to represent non-European human groups as trapped in a lesser form of being” (2017, p. 17). It is not a coincidence, therefore, that one of the main forms of success in this context was expressed in the notion of the “runaway” (Robinson J. C. & Robinson E. P., 2017, p. 3). Success of entrapped is therefore not to sustain or to defend the existing state or existing stable identity, but escape from the state of entrapment. This entrapment, that was in history most directly embodied in the figure of a black slave, represents impossibility of social transition, of any escape and becoming. On the discursive level this is legitimized by the exclusion of blacks from humanity, that was defined on the figure of majority, on the figure of the ideal (white) man: “[t]hey were the impoverished reflection of the ideal man, separated from him by an insurmountable temporal divide, a difference nearly impossible to overcome” (Mbembe, 2017, p. 17). In the same sense was according to Mbembe “Africa” in modern consciousness “the name generally given to societies that are judged impotent – that is, incapable of producing the universal and of attesting to its existence” (p. 49). It would be a non-sense, to affirm such a form of black identity. That is why Mbembe’s universalism is not based on it, but on universalization of difference. On the one hand, this universalization is affirmation of any difference inside humanity without any exclusion, what is precondition for real universalism. On the other hand, it is also an affirmation of desire for difference, that “emerges precisely where people experience intense exclusion” (2017, p. 183). “In these conditions, the proclamation of difference is an inverted expression of the desire for recognition and inclusion” (p. 183). Such universalism is a reversed image of an old universalism: a heterogenous minoritarian universalism of those who are excluded from homogenous majoritarian universalism. As Mbembe argues, to “affirm that the world cannot be reduced to Europe is to rehabilitate singularity and difference.... universal is always defined through the register of singularity” (p. 158). The great danger of this approach is that it could lead to ignorance of differences between classes, races, and sexes. If I simply say, “we are all entrapped”, we can find ourselves in a specific Foucauldian paradox. In one of his lectures on power, after explaining that power is not repression, that it is not in someone's hands and that it forms a “net-like” structure, Foucault stated: “… [b]ut I do not believe that one should conclude from that that power is the best distributed thing in the world, although in some sense that is indeed so” (1994, p. 215). If power (or entrapment) is everywhere, inflation of the very concept of power (or in our case the concept of entrapment) occurs. This inflation is used in certain white-supremacist ideologies as also in alt-right and some other neo-conservative movements, that have gained prominence in recent years. In order to be successful, even they have to put themselves in a position of an “underdog”, in which the privileged (white-male-man) are presented as oppressed and excluded, as David Neiwert noticed (Neiwert, 2017). Appropriation of the discourse of the repressed, of the minority whose existence is endangered by a majority culture, presents a crucial ground for the legitimization of radical politics, that are suddenly seen as a mere selfdefense of the suppressed. “White people are becoming second-class citizens”, uttered David Duke in 1977 (as cited in Neiwart, 2017, p. 80). As Mathew Heimbach wrote in 2013 in the “Youth for Western Civilization (YWC)”: “...we deserve the right to exist, deserve the right to defend our culture, and deserve the right to have a future for our culture” (as cited in Neiwart, 2017, p. 241). However, I believe that the argumentation provides also a principle of selection that excludes such an appropriation of the entrapped position. First of all, in such an identification with the majority that only pretends to be a minority, there is no real “becoming minoritarian” in Deleuze and Guattari’s meaning of the term. On the contrary in such an identification, 31 IAFOR Journal of Media, Communication & Film Volume 5 – Issue 1 – Summer 2018 unchangeable majoritarian identity is affirmed. Furthermore, universalism that is “defined through the register of singularity” (Mbembe, 2017), affirms singularity of each trap (even if it is the trap of white male mentality that is usually behind historic universalism) and each speech that presents entrapment, as analyzed earlier through Foucault’s concept of parrhesia, must reflect the reality that strictly corresponds with the position of the speaker. With this principle of selection, I can easily exclude such a performing of entrapment that wants to make America great again in the same way as rappers are excluded as being “fake” appropriation. Universalization of entrapped position therefore calls for an adequate presentation of each singular entrapment. A similar argument was used by Foucault when he was confronted (by one of his students) with the reproach, that his analysis relativizes power: …because you are a student, you are on a certain position of power, and me, as a professor am also on certain position of power; I am on a position of power because I am a man and not a woman, and you are also on a position of power, because you are a woman. Of course, not on the same position of power, but we all are on positions of power. (Foucault, 2012) There are different sorts of power (and different sorts of traps) and each speaker must, as in the case of Foucault’s fearless speech, express the singular reality of his own singular trap. Bad Boujee Late capitalism, as explained, produces also its own main bipolar subjectivity or, better said, a series of subjectivities, that can be understood as different stages inside the story that presents individual success. It is a story of becoming what you want to be or what you have been before, if you already succeeded, or a dream about what you are going to become and how entrapped you are now, if you have not yet succeed. In this section I will further develop our argument for the popularity of such a frame and present some aspects of genealogy of modern capitalism leading to a state in which, as I argue, world-wide masses identify with movable and transient subjectivity. Through interpretation of Migos’ 2017 top chart hit Bad and Boujee, I will analyze the question of cultural transformation of identity (on its way from the bottom to the top) and the question of legitimization of individual success (that is at the same time legitimization of the system that is based on ideal of individual success). Transformation of subjectivity presented in the imaginary of Migos’ song, prompted analysis that discussed relations between trap music, critical theory and Marxism (Mueller, 2017; Zhang, 2017; Ganz, 2017; Wijesinghe, 2017; ndwogan, 2017). This was due mainly to the rapper’s demonstration of “a movement from the working class to a rich and materialist ‘boujee’ class” (Wijesinghe, 2017) and the introduction of the “new bourgeoise”, which is, as I will argue, different from the old bourgeoise in the same way as new universalism is different from the old universalism produced by European bourgeoise of the 18th and 19th century. “We came from nothin' to somethin' nigga” sang Migos in “Bad and Boujee”. The choice of the word “boujee”, an abbreviation of the French “bourgeois”, even if there are more common words in rap for a description of rich life, is crucial in this context. The structure of social climbing can first be observed in the literature of the 18th and 19th century, as it is presented by Franco Moretti in The Bourgeois: Between History and Literature (2013). The figure of the bourgeois in this context does not function as it does today. It does not signify someone who already possesses wealth and power, but exactly this transformation “from nothing to something” that directly corresponds with the rising of the bourgeoisie as a class, that from the 32 IAFOR Journal of Media, Communication & Film Volume 5 – Issue 1 – Summer 2018 16th to 19th century gradually replaced the aristocracy as a ruling class (Moretti, 2013, pp. 12– 17). The main legitimization was based on the idea that the bourgeois is somebody who’s wealth is not simply inherited (as in the case of aristocracy), but a “self-made” man, who deserves what he has, because he himself with his own abilities of “self-restraint; intellectual clarity; commercial honesty; a strong sense of goals”, came to privileged position (Moretti, 2013, p. 16). Moretti chooses as a paradigmatic example Daniel Defoe's novel Robinson Crusoe: the legitimate way to success is a combination of “adventure”, “the sense for risk” and bravery on the one hand (pp. 25–29) and “rational work ethic”, and delay of immediate satisfaction on the other (pp. 29–35). The same duality can be found in back story of today’s pop-stars. Some praise dedication and hard work, and others God’s gift, but a common factor is that they make money in their own. In the words of Migos’ Bad and Boujee: “You know so we ain't really never had no old money – We got a whole lotta new money though” (Mueller, 2017). The word bourgeois today signifies the opposite of its original meaning, now attributed to someone who inherited his wealth and social status by bourgeoisie pedigree and is therefore delegitimized on exactly the same basis as the aristocracy of old. Moretti does not speculate the number of individuals who inhabit this privileged position, but nevertheless, anticipates that the “American way of life” is probably the “Victorianism of today” (Moretti, 2013, p. 23). We can agree that “American way of life”, or rather, the idealized image of this life as presented in the American Dream, is now a globally recognized ideal which functions analogically to the ideal of the bourgeoisie in the 18th and 19th century. In both cases, we are confronted with transformation which results in legitimate success. With legitimization of this form of success, the social system in which this success was possible is also legitimized. A separate discussion will be needed to precisely analysis how liberal political thought, while establishing paradoxical thesis in which individual interest is equated with an interest of society as a whole, also blurs the division between the minority of those who can realize their interest, and the majority, who are excluded and even do not get this possibility. This was part of the function of the figure of Bourgeois and of American Dream imaginary: to (re)produce “universal” identification with values of the particular group (Livewire, 2006). As Moretti emphasizes, the word Bourgeois was not popularized in the Anglo-American context in 19th century, mainly because of the long tradition of capitalism and consequently, because of the existence of a larger middle class (in difference to continental Europe) (Moretti, 2013, pp. 8– 12). “The lack of clear ‘frontline’ for the discourse on “Biirgertum” is what made the English language so indifferent to the word ‘bourgeois’ (p. 10). It follows that only a large gap between classes makes the Bourgeois visible as a particular (and not universal) figure in society. It is not coincidence that the word Bourgeois latter appears in African American discourse with slightly different meaning, including not only class but cultural difference and mixed them both. The resulting effect is that a change of class also implies a change of culture. Citing the editor of Journal of Hip Hop studies, Daniel White Hodge, Catherine Zhang argues the term “Bougie” in 1950s among black community was used to describe an “…‘elitist, uppity-acting African American’ who has a higher education and income level than the average African American, and who ‘identifies with European American culture and distances him/herself from other African Americans’.” (Zhang, 2017, n.p.). Being “Bougie” at that time “implies the adoption of whiteness as a social identity” (Zhang, 2017, n.p.). The gap between both parts of African American society is therefore so obvious exactly because of the radical change of 33 IAFOR Journal of Media, Communication & Film Volume 5 – Issue 1 – Summer 2018 cultural identity, that happened during the process of becoming bourgeois, which is not so obvious in case of the white community.4 However, it is crucial for us that Migos’ Bad Bougie is not becoming white and does not change cultural identity while climbing a social ladder. Quite the opposite, what stands out is a very distinctive figure of “black bougie”; a bougie that preserves a lot of the clichéd customs from the previous ‘street’ life. As Zhang notes: In the song, Migos rap about stirring pots of drugs with Uzis, a type of Israeli submachine gun, making money off of the sale of cocaine, and having sex with women. The music video is filled with contradictory imagery. Women drink champagne poured out of gold bottles but eat Cup Noodles and fried chicken. (Zhang, 2017, n.p.) This new “bougie” is not legitimized in the context of white bourgeois morality where bourgeois has to be a noble and respected person or – if we take a classic Victorian form of Bourgeois ideal analyzed by Moretti – a gentleman (Moretti, 2013, p. 120). And it is obvious that Migos in Bad and Boujee addresses exactly this perspective: why is their ethics (and aesthetics) seen as bad, sometimes even as degradation, from certain specific cultural perspectives or, if we put question in a Nietzschean manner, which interest is behind such judgment? In rap culture as a whole, there are many different wordings signifying exactly the opposite idea, that legitimate success is a route on which the subject remains the same as it was at the beginning without adoption to another culture: consistency, being true, being faithful to oneself, to the streets, to one’s roots (Carmichael, 2017; Livewire, 2006). A slight, but crucial, difference has occurred since the golden era of the American Dream ideal in the 1950s when a universal ideal was constructed of values of the white middle class. Identification with an image of life in the suburban white neighborhood does not seem to fit with the identification of the contemporary masses (Amadeo, 2018). This change has a material cause. As mentioned, the middle class is gradually disappearing in the time of late-capitalism. The gap between the bottom and the top is becoming more obvious. We therefore encounter a paradoxical twist: the universal position, historically prescribed to different types of white men (bourgeois, gentlemen, American dad), seems to lose its hegemony. It is gradually substituted by identification that was traditionally perceived as a minority. As I argue in this article, the ideology of the dominant class does not seem to be the dominant ideology anymore. Which is, according to Marx and Engels, basic for real (and not ideological) identification of subjected groups, and for their self-recognition (Marx & Engels, 2010, p. 169). That is the reason why we count on possibilities that are opened with this twist. As argued, I do not need new universal subjectivity, but qualitatively different universalism, the universality of that what was excluded from the bourgeoise universality. It is significant in this context, that Migos named their megasuccessful 2017 album, on which also song Bad and Boujee could be found, with such a universal title as CULTURE: culture as such, new universal culture, but not a culture of a certain defined identity. Migos’ culture is often perceived as a part of general trend of non-critical affirmation of late capitalism in pop-culture that embodies all its problems and reproduces inequality: “[r]appers 4 A similar, but exactly reversed change of culture happened in the context of one of the first modern subcultures, hipsters or “white negros”: in order to be rebellious “frontiersman in the Wild West of American night life”, Hipster has to identify with black (or at least perform this identification), “[s]ince the Negro knows more about the ugliness and danger of life than the White”, as Norman Mailer argues in his famous essay (Mailer, 1957). 34 IAFOR Journal of Media, Communication & Film Volume 5 – Issue 1 – Summer 2018 are incentivized to put personal achievement over social awareness, materialism over restraint, and Uzi-carrying as a better way of staying true to one’s roots than giving back to the community” (ndwogan, 2017). Individualism, egoism, narcissism and dedication to work and individual success are in general often perceived as symptoms of the absolute triumph of late capitalism. Even if we look at a definition of the term that usually represents universal subculture of today – “millennials” – we can see common moments to those presented in trap music, which supports the thesis that we talk about universal ideals. Millennials – despite the fact that te...