The Africanist Aesthetic in Global Hip-Hop Poer Moves [Hardcover]

Asserting that hip hop culture has become another locus of postmodernity, Osumare explores the intricacies of this phenomenon from the beginning of the Twenty-First century, tracing the aesthetic and socio-political path of the currency of hip hop across the globe.Phat Beats, Dope Rhymes, and Def Moves: The Africanist Aesthetic Meets the Hip Hop Globe Beat Streets in the Global Hood: Hip Hop's Connective Marginalities Props to the Local Boyz: Hip Hop Culture in Hawaii 'It's All About the Benjamins' Postmodernism and Hip Hop's Appropriation

Now in the time where corporations have extracted the economic DNA of American hip-hop to fuel their bottom line with the lowest common denominator, Halifu Osumare's reach into the global importance of the genre is a much needed cultural reclamation. With the power of rap music as a new world language, hip-hop's style and substance is an explosive supplement to the new millennium that is currently lacking knowledge on world cultural and social history, as well as geography. The Africanist Aesthetic in Global Hip-Hop gives us a way to plough through these new global dynamics. - Chuck D, Public Enemy

It may seem as though hip-hop has suddenly gone global, but Halifu Osumare s The Africanist Aesthetic in Global Hip-Hop is a timely and important reminder that hip-hop has always lived in a world larger than the boundaries we impose upon it. - Mark Anthony Neal, Associate Professor of Black Popular Culture, and co-editor, That s the Joint!: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader

Halifu Osumare's work - a power move in and of itself - compels us to acknowledge the power of technology and capitalism to co-opt and transform a culture-specific phenomenon into a global assault - for better or worse. It is required reading for those of us interested in the social, political, and cultural shifts that shake and quake our worlds. Highly recommended. - Brenda Dixon Gottschild, author of The Black Dancing BodylÃ