Hip Hop Beats, Indigenous Rhymes: Modernity and Hip Hop in Indigenous North America

196 Pages·2018·6.77 MB·English

by  Kyle T. Mays

Hip Hop Beats, Indigenous Rhymes
SUNY SERIES, NATIVE TRACES
Jace Weaver and Scott Richard Lyons, editors
Hip Hop Beats,
Indigenous Rhymes
MODERNITY AND HIP HOP IN
INDIGENOUS NORTH AMERICA
kyle t. mays
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2018 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever
without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic,
electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press,
Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Mays, Kyle, author.
Title: Hip hop beats, indigenous rhymes : modernity and hip hop in
indigenous North America / Kyle T. Mays.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, 2018. | Series:
Native traces | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017024529 (print) | LCCN 2017031345 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781438469478 (e-book) | ISBN 9781438469454 (hardcover :
alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438469461 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Indians of North America--Music--History and
criticism. | Rap (Music)—History and criticism. | Hip-hop—North
America.
Classification: LCC ML3531 (ebook) | LCC ML3531 .M29 2018 (print) |
DDC 782.421649089/97—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017024529
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
TO RJ, DJ, JASMINE, HAYDEN, ANGELA,
BRANDON, JJ, CHERISH, AND MAKIAH;
KEEP WORKING HARD.
AND TO ALL MY BAD AND BOUGIE
INDIGENOUS MILLENNIALS, WITH LOVE.

CONTENTS
PREFACE ix
A Note on Language:
Black English and Uncensored Mode
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xiii
INTRODUCTION 1
Can We Live and Be Modern and Indigenous?:
Toward an Indigenous Hip Hop Culture
CHAPTER ONE 23
#NotYourMascot:
Indigenous Hip Hop Artists as Modern Subjects
CHAPTER TWO 49
The Fashion of Indigenous Hip Hop
CHAPTER THREE 67
Indigenous Masculinity in Hip Hop Culture:
Or, How Indigenous Feminism Can Reform
Indigenous Manhood
CHAPTER FOUR 87
“He’s just tryna be black”:
The Intersections of Blackness and
Indigeneity in Hip Hop Culture
CHAPTER FIVE 113
Rhyming Decolonization:
A Conversation with Frank Waln, Sicangu Lakota
viii Contents
CONCLUSION 129
“It’s bigger than Hip Hop”:
Toward the Indigenous Hip Hop Generation
NOTES 147
WORKS CITED 167
INDEX 179
Preface
A NOTE ON LANGUAGE
Black English and Uncensored Mode
Black Language
Whenever I open up a book on hip hop culture, or any ethnic/racial
group, I first ask if that writer honors, respects, and utilizes the language
of the particular group that he or she is writing about. I ask this not
because I believe in racial essentialism, but because I believe that differ-
ent ways of being and cultural expression, through language, should be
valued in a variety of contexts, whether in the church or on the block.
Given all of the work that scholars have done in language and literacy,
education, and the advocacy of various linguistic practices, I assume and
hope that people will also do that when writing about hip hop culture,
which is also related to black ways of speaking and knowing.
Black language is legitimate. By black language, I mean African
American vernacular English, Black English, US Ebonics, and a host of
other names. (Please note that there are other varieties and these can vary
regionally and even geographically; there is, for example, black language
in the Caribbean.) From Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn to Lorenzo Dowd
Turner in the early twentieth century to the work of the queen of black
language, Geneva Smitherman, aka Dr. G, in the late twentieth and early
part of the twenty-first centuries, the use and study of black language and
culture has existed and continues to thrive as a subject of academic inquiry.
According to Smitherman, Black English is “Euro-American speech
with an Afro-American meaning, nuance, tone, and gesture.”1 Smitherman
further argues that Black English has two parts: language and style. That
is, while there is the technical, linguistic part of the language, there is
also the style in which that language is employed—better yet, the philos-
ophy embedded in that language.2 The word “language” is crucial here.
ix