ABSTRACT
Cultural ideas about “what it means to be black” or “what it means to be white” have evolved over time and differ from place to place. Since its origins, rap music has been identified as black music, and to engage with rap music at any level is to negotiate a relationship with blackness. Throughout its history, hip hop has “sounded” blackness in different ways, even as societal definitions of blackness have changed. After forty years, white rappers are still an anomaly, which suggests to some that rap continues to resist white appropriation (unlike rock and roll, disco, or jazz, for instance). On the other hand, the fact that the major media corporations are largely run by white men and that close to 70% of rap music is bought by white males would seem to suggest otherwise. While discussions about race in hip hop are often framed in terms of black and white, it is useful to explore how other communities of color have embraced rap music and navigated the issues of race and oppression that are central to the genre.
