ABSTRACT
Hip hop is pre-eminently a product of its late-modern times – with race and class pivotal – and not of some primordial unchanging African essence. Hip hop is a house built by diaspora black people – in America. This chapter considers how hip hop theatre as a development within hip hop culture linked to the latter's now planetary reach provides a forum in which some questions can be reckoned with. It explores the scope offered by hip hop theatre for the 'colouring of culture' through the intersubjective and intercultural 'boundary work' of white hip hoppers. US hip hop artist Eisa Davis speaks of approaches to hip hop theatre as those that divide broadly between the form and content led. Nigga, in its loud articulation, has presented a large space of social discomfort, a line in the sand which the artists continually ask their listeners to cross, enticing and challenging.
