ABSTRACT
PraCh created a transnational hip hop nation through his music, connecting Cambodian American and Khmer youth cultures. Identity and location—dominant themes in hip hop—are complicated with regard to the transnational Cambodian American refugee experience, which is problematised given US foreign policy in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. The inclusion of a multimedia format—which combines samples from cinema, hip hop compositions, and traditional Khmer music—is replicated throughout the album. PraCh’s cultural work is more significant when contextualised against the lack of memorialisation in Cambodia and the paucity of such memorials in the United States. PraCh’s hip hop exploration of Cambodian American subjectivity through a double-sided resistance against erasure and marginalisation disrupts the 'traditional' Killing Fields narrative largely set in Cambodia and Southeast Asia. The impulse to memorialise Cambodian history connects praCh's work to that of other Cambodian American cultural producers who transnationally re-imagine Cambodian nationhood and selfhood.
