Politics, Identity, and Belonging

This chapter focuses on Iraqi-British rapper Lowkey, the Palestinian-British “First Lady of Arabic Hip-hop” Shadia Mansour, and Iranian-British rapper Shay D. It discusses the ways in which their multi-layered and heterogeneous identities provide a context for wider political critiques, with lyrics frequently discussing war, terrorism, and post-Imperial power relations in the Middle East. Given Britain’s role in creating “mandatory Palestine,” Iran, Iraq, and other MENA nation-states after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Arab-British and other rappers of Middle Eastern heritage also engage forcefully with the United Kingdom’s colonial and neocolonial politics, intersecting with and co-creating Multicultural London Youth cultures in striking ways.

Politics

This chapter discusses the Scottish independence debate as performed in hip-hop, which deals with issues of power, economics, stereotypes, and civic nationalism in a postcolonial era. The chapter shows how these artists reinvent and subvert the notion of “Otherness” and minority identity by using humor and wordplay to critique stereotypes of Scottishness, Englishness, (African American) mainstream hip-hop, and most politically, the status quo. Stanley Odd and Loki address the referendum in different ways, but both utilize rapping as a folk protest medium by which to sound out their concerns and relevant debates surrounding independence. Primary case study tracks discussed in this chapter include “Marriage Counselling,” “Antiheroics,” “Son I Voted Yes,” all by Stanley Odd, and Loki’s album Government Issue Music Protest (G.I.M.P).

History

This chapter focuses on a particular track, “The Thieves Banquet,” from Akala’s eponymous 2013 album and its critique of neocolonialism. His theatrical performance on these tracks, with their use of multi-accentuality and code combining with elements of Western classical music, creates a multi-layered and intermedial hybrid text. As Black vernacular forms such as hip-hop have become a powerful site of (capitalist) critique, Akala’s performative skills as a rapper allow him to present a complex and didactic allegory informed by imperial history, the literature of the global south, and the global financial crisis. It also points a way forward for the study of accent in hip-hop as well as looking more closely at a performative approach to rap music that acknowledges its inherent theatricality.

Conclusion

Yo Theresa May where’s the money for Grenfell? WHAT YOU THOUGHT WE JUST FORGOT ABOUT GRENFELL!? —STORMZY THE FIRST CHAPTER of this book included an account of Kanye West’s 2015 BRIT awards performance as an example of grime’s mainstream and international recognition. I will end with another performance from the same awards show but in 2018. Grime artist Stormzy (who ended up winning two awards that night) performed his hits “Blinded by Your Grace Pt. 2” and “Too Big for Your Boots” with a freestyle in between the two songs. He was front and center stage, with simulated rain falling down on him from above (see ...

Humor

While different forms of humor have been deployed to different ends and purposes in hip-hop culture, this chapter focuses on humor in hip-hop parody songs by two acts in particular, the Welsh hip-hop parody group Goldie Lookin Chain and the “Eastern European immigrant” character of Bricka Bricka (played by David Vujanic). By comparing these two case studies of “Othering,” the chapter sheds light on themes from opposite sides of the insider/outsider coin, raising issues of hyper-localism, race, and regional and national identity. Their music videos perform a notion of “backwardness” (socially, ideologically, and temporally) that highlights and critiques those who suffer from postcolonial melancholia in post-Empire Britain. Through Welsh provincial and Eastern European stereotypes, and through widely mediatized associations of hip-hop with “blackness,” the groups spotlight the absurdity of such stereotypes.

Subculture/Style

This chapter focuses on the punk-rap duo the Sleaford Mods (“Tied up in Nottz,” “Tiswas,” “Liveable Shit”) and grime-pop rapper Lethal Bizzle (“Babylon’s Burning the Ghetto”), artists who appropriate and translate punk aesthetics via different means to varying consequences. It examines the result of combining aesthetics from an older genre with newer developments, highlighting the racialized identities that often exist within these genres. While punk is not the only musical genre utilized in hybrid hip-hop styles in the United Kingdom, it nevertheless lends particular sonic and ideological meanings to English rap music, meanings which complicate an already multifaceted history of racially essentialized categorizations of the music industry and their listeners.

Nationalism

This chapter surveys the performance of attitudes towards English nationalism in hip-hop, from banal nationalism to ambivalent Englishness, to the role of history and tradition in constructing the national, to the localism of “hip little Englishness,” and finally to multicultural Englishness with examples from Lady Sovereign, Speech Debelle, The Streets, and others. Rapper responses to constructed “official” versions of England complicate these dominant narratives, and often create or build upon others such as English white working-class identity. By looking at these various examples and categories based on Cloonan’s types of Englishness in pop music, it provides alternative ways to think about the nation and how it is performed, overtly and subtlety, in twenty-first-century English rap music.

Introduction

This chapter introduces the subject matter of the book, highlighting how rappers in the United Kingdom engage with politics to create a counternarrative to more mainstream narratives. Paul Gilroy's concept of “postcolonial melancholia” is discussed, and that the tacit whiteness of British identity has only intensified since Gilroy discussed the concept in the early twenty-first century. It also discusses the objects of rap analysis, linguistic aspects of accent in regional rap, as well as geographical units of analysis and the dangers of “methodological nationalism.” It lays out the time period of the study (2002–2017) and the relevant political contexts, starting with the devolution of powers in 1997 to Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. I acknowledge my own positionality in the study, reflecting on how this has shaped my perspectives. Lastly, the introduction provides a brief summary of the chapters that follow and artists involved.