Street Scriptures: Between God and Hip-Hop

257 Pages·2022·3.262 MB·English

by  Alejandro Nava

Alejandro Nava
The University of Chicago Press
Chicago and London
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
2022 by The University of Chicago
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Published 2022
Printed in the United States of America
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ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 81914- 3 (cloth)
ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 81916- 7 (paper)
ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 81915- 0 (e- book)
DOI: https:// doi .org /10 .7208 /chicago /9780226819150 .001 .0001
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Nava, Alejandro (Author on hip hop), author.
Title: Street scriptures : between God and hip-hop / Alejandro Nava.
Description: Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2022. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021041772 | ISBN 9780226819143 (cloth) |
ISBN 9780226819167 (paperback) | ISBN 9780226819150 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Rap (Music)—Religious aspects. | Rap (Music)—History
and criticism. | Hip-hop—United States—Religious aspects. | Popular
music—Latin America—History and criticism.
Classification: LCC ML3921.8.R36 N38 2022 | DDC 782.421649—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021041772
This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48- 1992
(Permanence of Paper).

Introduction 1
A Street Theology 25
Between God and Hip-H op
A Brief Sonic History of Hip-H op 43
P rophets and Emcees 75
Righteous Rappers
T he Return of God in Hip-H op 109
Kendrick Lamar’s Street Theology
T he Dirty Latin South 139
Breaking, Reggaeton, and the Rise of the Global South
Native Tongues 169
Notes 197
Index 229

Introduction
If I keep my ear to the streets, I will hear the entire world.
DMX
In both religious studies and hip-h op studies, a noticeable sea change oc-
curred in the waning years of the twentieth century, the time of my graduate
studies at the University of Chicago. From where I stood, the approaching
millennium seemed to bring about a change in the prevailing wind patterns
of academic life, the currents now turning and spinning like a whirling dervish
around questions of style, grace, form, elegance, and, in a word, aesthetics.
While I found my way to the study of religion through the jarring and galva-
nizing work of liberation theologians, by the time I began my graduate studies
the sun appeared to be setting on prophetic- oriented approaches to religion,
now pushed to the shadows and eclipsed by rising concerns for style, form,
and beauty. Perhaps, I thought, the heyday of liberation theology had come
and gone. Perhaps it was played out, and I was joining the game as the clock
was expiring.
Take the concept of “liberation”: once the inspiration for dreams of equal-
ity and justice, and synonymous with ethical- political struggles, the term
started to lose some of its air by the late 1990s and early aughts, a sudden
tumble into obsolescence. If it didn’t disappear altogether, “liberation” was
often spiritualized and aestheticized, stripped of the communal and politi-
cal connotations that once prevailed in the civil rights and black power gen-
erations. It lost the clout that it once had in the 1970s and 1980s.1 To some,
as Daniel Groody chronicled in a volume on liberation theology’s legacy, it
became passé and moribund, smoke without fi re: “The fi re that ignited such