ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on rap as a principal language form and an integral part of the in school and out of school curriculum. The author suggests that rappers are public pedagogues and explores the notion that Black female rappers talk back to dominant discourses and construct alternative representations for their publics, ones that are simultaneously stereotypical and disruptive. The author analyzes lyrics to reveal how Black female rappers school or educate their audiences on sexual desire, heterosexual politics, and Black lesbian sexuality. More specifically, she discusses how Black female rappers frame desire and pleasure within heterosexual relationships; how power, money, language, and culture are connected within expressions of Black women’s sexual identities; and how Black lesbians’ sexual contexts and desires queer the space of hip-hop by way of explorations of same gender attraction. The author suggests the scripts Black female rappers offer are necessarily in dialogue with a long history of representations of Black women. In this sense, Black women rappers are explored as public pedagogues who raise important epistemological questions, and both trouble and enable dominant discourses.
