For the Culture: Hip-Hop and the Fight for Social Justice

by Lakeyta M. Bonnette-Bailey, Adolphus Belk

For the Culture: Hip-Hop and the Fight for Social Justice documents and analyzes the ways in which Hip-Hop music, artists, scholars, and activists have discussed, promoted, and supported social justice challenges worldwide. Drawing from diverse approaches and methods, the contributors in this volume demonstrate that rap music can positively influence political behavior and fight to change social injustices, and then zoom in on artists whose work has accomplished these ends.  The volume explores topics including education and pedagogy; the Black Lives Matter movement; the politics of crime, punishment, and mass incarceration; electoral politics; gender and sexuality; and the global struggle for social justice. Ultimately, the book argues that Hip-Hop is much more than a musical genre or cultural form: Hip-Hop is a resistance mechanism.

346 pages, Hardcover

Published March 23, 2022

Reviews

[Niki Davis]

I find it hard to believe that no rating or review has been done yet on GoodReads for this book, For The Culture: Hip-Hop and the Fight for Social Justice by Dr Lakeyta M. Bonnette-Bailey & Dr Adolphus G. Belk Jr. I can't resist taking a moment to rectify that. The work in this book demands such respect, as do the editors responsible for it. Both these powerhouses of knowledge teach at the intersection of Political Science and Blackness in America, our history...our culture...our psychology...our MAAFA...our FIGHT for Liberation...our vision of JUSTICE and DEMOCRACY in America, the nation we were and are so terrorized for and by in order to build as what functions as a European invaded colonized enslaving racist capitalistic genocidal warmongering global Empire. And what has best been used, amplified, abused, appropriated and monetized to VOICE this fight for LIBERATION & TRUTH about America better than the dynamic artistic explosion of Hip-Hop? I can't WAIT to dig my time, focus and imagination into this book! Here is just a clip from one of my favorite reviews of this book written by Corey J Miles for the UC Press:

"As hip-hop has flowed transnationally, it has served as a form of political mobilization, an accounting of the softest and hardest parts of silenced communities, and a mode of making joy. Given the breadth of what hip-hop embodies, no singular text can capture the fullness of its social justice dimensions. This does not stop For the Culture: Hip-hop and the Fight for Social Justice from trying...

For the Culture is a collection of 18 essays, and in nuanced ways, they each make clear that hip-hop is more than just a cultural form. Rather, hip-hop is an epistemology, a way of knowing the world. It is also positioned as an ontological form or a way of being and embodying. The edited collection lives up to its name in that for Black people the culture has always been about loving each other, shouting out each other, and challenging each other. These chapters vibe with each other in this way."

Wow.