American Studies Journal (May 2010)
Conscious Hip-Hop, Change, and the Obama Era
Abstract
This article identifies a particular aspect of hip-hop’s range of cultural production—conscious rap—in order to isolate one of the more politicized discursive options available to youth in America and a site where critical perspectives on post-Civil Rights America have emerged most forcefully. It further suggests that Obama’s political rise corresponds with a new phase in hip-hop and has impacted the ways in which its creative artists frame and articulate issues of race, class, and identity.
