ABSTRACT
Focusing on the shortcomings of existing aesthetic approaches to rap music, this article seeks to understand current developments within political rap through a heuristic and fundamentally nonappropriative appli6cation of the aesthetic theories of Brecht. Highlighting the latter’s emphasis on self-production and didactics, the article discusses the intersection of the two in the recent mixtapes by militant rap duo dead prez. Given the often unrecognized importance of mixtapes within rap, as well as their capacity to escape the constraint of the music industry, the “organic intellectuals” of rap would benefit from an increased emphasis on self-production. Finally, the author brings dead prez’s didactics into dialogue with both early political rap and later gangsta rap to see that dead prez is indeed “somewhere in between NWA and P.E. [Public Enemy], and that this represents a positive historical development for rap and a fusion of the ghettocentric and the Afrocentric elements of broader Black culture.
