Writing in the Break: On the Textuality of Hip-Hop

My dissertation seeks to situate hip-hop outside the alternatives of emergent literary form or extension of West African oral culture with which it’s traditionally identified. Rather, I contend that hip-hop resists the “ideology of literacy”—the notion that the ability to read and write defines the subject, especially the subject of the state—by virtue of its combination of writing, sound, performance and technological innovation. Leveraging Fred Moten’s concept of the break as rupture in hip-hop’s use of literal recontextualized break beats from old funk and soul records, I argue that hip-hop’s oft-discussed writing practice ought to be understood in an ecosystem that includes performance and non-verbal sonic practices. As such, “Writing the Break” wrestles with the significance of literature in the absence of a text. For example, some southern traditions like New Orleans Bounce or Atlanta Crunk primarily depend on orality’s affective signification over an emcee’s penmanship, while recordings like “My Melody” rely on lyrical density and the written word to make meaning. Instead of privileging one of these styles over the other, I argue that hip-hop enacts a fugitive aesthetics in which artists constantly (re)configure their expressive modes, even in the same album or song. To this end, my research draws from a decidedly broad archive that turns to primary sources like the holdings at the Cornel Hip-Hop Archive and the Schomburg Center, media interviews, recorded music, studio field work, and interviews I’ve conducted over the past four years. Above all, my dissertation aims to credit artists as collaborators in the development of hip-hop theory.Doctor of Philosoph