ABSTRACT
MCs are vocalists who take up the microphone to rap, spit and soliloquise with idiosyncratic flows. This chapter considers the MC's voice as the embodied expression of a particular person, as a social voice that includes the voices of others, and as a voice separated from the MC's body when it becomes recorded material to be manipulated in and through studio technologies. The MC's voice, words and images constitute a dispersed or distributed presence, arguably more diversely manifested than ever before. MC culture is also embroiled in the history of constructing 'black youth' as a problem and policing them. The growth in mobile media has played an important role in MC culture. The chapter explains the MC tracks, are full of hyperbolic interpretations of the means of production, distribution and consumption as well as more everyday reportage about musical work.
