Abstract (eng)
Hip-hop, a culture that emerged from the marginalization of black citizens in the postindustrial city in the 1970s, is now the most prominent genre in contemporary US pop music. Although rap has become very commercialized, it has never lost its revolutionary potential and still provides the discursive space to express the desire for change. This thesis illustrates, how the daily reality of African Americans is mirrored both musically and lyrically in rap and traces hip- hop’s utopian and dystopian discourses. As rap is not the first African American musical form that is aligned with resistance and subversion, an overview of the importance of popular culture for black resistance movements is provided. The theoretical part is concerned with utopian studies and its connection to concepts such as time, space, hope, and subversion. Beginning with Ernst Bloch’s monumental work The Principle of Hope, utopian theories by Fredric Jameson, Ruth Levitas, Bill Ashcroft, Alex Zamalin and others are connected and their potential for a musical and lyrical analysis of African American hip-hop is carved out. In the analysis, then, three different time periods are investigated in order to highlight the changing nature of utopian discourses in hip-hop from the 1970s until today. Firstly, the utopian beginnings of hip-hop in a dystopian reality and the emergence of hip-hop identities are delineated before contrasting Public Enemy’s vision of a new black cultural revolution with West Coast gangsta rap, which is analyzed through the lens of Michel Foucault’s concept of the “insurrection of subjugated knowledges.” Secondly, the question of subversion and commercialization is addressed as well as apocalyptic visions, Afrofuturist discourses, and the hope/disillusionment of the Obama presidency. Finally, several utopian discourses in contemporary hip-hop are analyzed, ranging from queer utopian interventions in the digital space to Kendrick Lamar’s deconstruction of the American Dream. As the diachronic analysis illustrates, socio-political changes not only influence the sound of hip-hop but also its utopian discourses. This foregrounds the critical potential of utopian thinking: imagining the future particularly changes our perception of the present.