Articles tagged with ‘gangsta rap’

• Hip-hop as dusty foot philosophy: Engaging Locality

  Dusty foot philosopher means the one that’s poor, lives in poverty but lives in a dignified manner and philosophises about the universe and talks about things that well-read people talk about, but they’ve never read or travelled on a plane.

  - K’Naan

  This paper aims to open up an understanding of the ways in which localised hip-hop can on the one hand still be part of a global, digital world and yet at the same time have its feet and fingers in the dirt; how it can participate in the global spread of hip-hop and yet at the same time be part of the critique of those forms of global media that participate in the denigration of African and Aboriginal people; how local hip-hop can be both part of international popular culture while at the same time articulating local philosophies of global significance; both dusty-footed and philosophical. This article is to appear in: H. S. Alim, A Ibrahim and A Pennycook (Eds) Global Linguistic Flows: Hip Hop Cultures, Youth Identities, and the Politics of Language, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

  Tags: localising hip-hop, politics, globalisation, gangsta rap, Alastair Pennycook, Tony Mitchell, refugee, Somalia, philosophy, Wire MC, K’naan, Canada, Africa, Conference Papers

• Lecture at University of Sydney - Aboriginal Hip-hop: a modern day corroboree.

  An edited recording of a lecture given by Tony Mitchell to the Koori Centre’s Indigenous Studies class (run by Peter Minter) on the 16th of May, 2007.

  Tags: DIY ethos, multilingualism, self expression, localising hip-hop, Aboriginal language hip-hop, Tony Mitchell, gangsta rap, education, Redfern, language, Sydney, workshops, cultural identity, community work, Indigenous hip-hop, Audio

• Te Kupu

  Te Kupu is a founding member and MC of the Maori hip-hop crew Upper Hutt Posse, who have been on the scene in Aotearoa since 1988. Upper Hutt Posse have recorded hip-hop tracks in Maori language, and are a strong political voice for Maori cultural, linguistic and historical autonomy in New Zealand. They have toured Australia a number of times, performing with Indigenous crews in solidarity. Their most recent trip was in October 2007, when they played a gig at UTS with Aboriginal hip-hop artists in support of Australian Indigenous communities affected by the Australian Federal Government’s controversial intervention. We talked to Te Kupu before the gig, and he spoke about his rapumentary project, Know Your Links, in which he is filming hip-hop in twenty different countries, Maori language hip-hop, politics in Aotearoa and his wariness at the New Zealand ‘Kiwi’ identity.

  Tags: New Zealand, Aotearoa, Maori language, Maori hip-hop, postcolonialism, Maori culture, Interview Transcript, gangsta rap, politics, language, breakdancing, battling, MCing, multilingualism, Interviews