Higher Hussle: Nipsey\u27s Post Hip Hop Literacies

Nipsey Hussle is a post hip hop icon. In this essay, we mine popular music and media coverage of Nipsey to describe his artistry and advocacy anchored by his articulation of an African American diasporic identity, his ambivalence as an independent rapper within a mainstream music industry, and his leverage of Black capital in his Crenshaw community. We address these relationships--identity, industry, and community--to situate Nipsey within African American and hip hop literacies. By recalling relationships and roots, we call attention to emancipated blackness enacted by Nipsey Hussle

When the Beat Drops: Exploring Hip Hop, Home and Black Masculinity

In this autoethnographic dissertation, I take readers on a narrative journey to three of my storied homeplaces and explore my lived experiences within each site. In the process of exploring my homeplaces, I analyze how I perform my black masculine self within the context of each location, how my cultural body supports and challenges hegemonic black masculinity, and how each location constrains and frees up my performance of self. With this dissertation, I will contribute to the field of communication studies by extending the method and writing practice of autoethnography, the theorization of the black masculine, and the exploration of black masculine performances represented in popular culture

When the Beat Drops: Exploring Hip Hop, Home and Black Masculinity

In this autoethnographic dissertation, I take readers on a narrative journey to three of my storied homeplaces and explore my lived experiences within each site. In the process of exploring my homeplaces, I analyze how I perform my black masculine self within the context of each location, how my cultural body supports and challenges hegemonic black masculinity, and how each location constrains and frees up my performance of self. With this dissertation, I will contribute to the field of communication studies by extending the method and writing practice of autoethnography, the theorization of the black masculine, and the exploration of black masculine performances represented in popular culture