Chronicling Stankonia : The Rise of the Hip-Hop South

This vibrant book pulses with the beats of a new American South, probing the ways music, literature, and film have remixed southern identities for a post-civil rights generation. For scholar and critic Regina N. Bradley, Outkast's work is the touchstone, a blend of funk, gospel, and hip-hop developed in conjunction with the work of other culture creators--including T.I., Kiese Laymon, and Jesmyn Ward. This work, Bradley argues, helps define new cultural possibilities for black southerners who came of age in the 1980s and 1990s and have used hip-hop culture to buffer themselves from the historical narratives and expectations of the civil rights era. Andre 3000, Big Boi, and a wider community of creators emerge as founding theoreticians of the hip-hop South, framing a larger question of how the region fits into not only hip-hop culture but also contemporary American society as a whole. Chronicling Stankonia reflects the ways that culture, race, and southernness intersect in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Although part of southern hip-hop culture remains attached to the past, Bradley demonstrates how younger southerners use the music to embrace the possibility of multiple Souths, multiple narratives, and multiple points of entry to contemporary southern black identity. "Chronicling Stankonia situates hip hop as an intervention in constructing post-Civil Rights black identities and cultural discourse. For southern blacks, the past is often restricted to three recognizable historical moments - the Antebellum Era, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights Movement. Aside from the deeply traumatic experience of these periods of history, they also serve as cornerstones of validating and recognizing southern blacks' experiences. However, the challenge for post-Civil Rights generations of southern blacks is speaking truth to power when their truths depart the trajectory of what was considered power in the past. Chronicling Stankonia updates the black South using hip hop as an agent to reflect multiple intersections of time, race, and southernness in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Part of southern hip hop culture's truth remains attached to the past but its power is grounded in the fact that younger southerners use hip hop to embrace the possibility of multiple Souths, multiple narratives, and multiple entry points into contemporary southern black identities"-- Provided by publisher This vibrant book pulses with the beats of a new American South, probing the ways music, literature, and film have remixed southern identities for a post-civil rights generation. For scholar and critic Regina N. Bradley, Outkast's work is the touchstone, a blend of funk, gospel, and hip-hop developed in conjunction with the work of other culture creators--including T.I., Kiese Laymon, and Jesmyn Ward. This work, Bradley argues, helps define new cultural possibilities for black southerners who came of age in the 1980s and 1990s and have used hip-hop culture to buffer themselves from the historical narratives and expectations of the civil rights era. Andre 3000, Big Boi, and a wider community of creators emerge as founding theoreticians of the hip-hop South, framing a larger question of how the region fits into not only hip-hop culture but also contemporary American society as a whole.__Chronicling Stankonia__ Cover 1 Contents 8 Acknowledgments 10 Introduction. The Mountaintop Ain’t Flat 16 1. The Demo Tape Ain’t Nobody Wanna Hear 34 2. Spelling Out the Work 54 3. Reimagining Slavery in the Hip-Hop Imagination 76 4. Still Ain’t Forgave Myself 96 A Final Note. The South Still Got Something to Say 114 Notes 118 Bibliography 126 Index 130 A 130 B 130 C 130 D 131 E 131 F 131 G 131 H 132 I 132 J 132 K 132 L 132 M 132 N 133 O 133 P 133 R 133 S 134 T 135 U 135 W 135 Y 136 Z 136