5 - Youth communities: the Hiphop Nation

Summary

This chapter investigates the linguistic, discourse and ideological aspects of the Hiphop speech community in the US and globally. The hiphop speech community is largely made up of youth who function both as an imagined cultural community and, just as importantly, as a community of imagination. As Morgan and Bennett argue, hiphop's “artistic and linguistic practices are not merely part of its culture, but the central driving force that defines and sustains it” (2011: 12). Members assume that there are others that communicate and participate in similar activities and practices. The use of the term “Hiphop Nation” to describe the citizens of the global Hiphop cultural community has not been officially declared, but it is increasingly common. Citizenship in the Hiphop Nation is not defined by conventional national, social or racial boundaries, but by a commitment to Hiphop's multimedia arts culture that represents the social and political lives of its members (Forman and Neal 2004; Keyes 2004; Morgan 2009c). Moreover, because most Hiphop artists are self-taught or taught by peers in the Hiphop community, it has empowered young people from all socioeconomic backgrounds to participate in their own right.

The Hiphop speech community

Irrespective of where in the world one finds Hiphop, it incorporates local, national and culturally marked symbols to represent space, place and context. The term Hiphop refers to the artistic elements of: (1) deejaying and turntablism; (2) the delivery and lyricism of rapping and MCing; (3) breakdancing and other forms of Hiphop dance; (4) graffiti art and writing; and (5) a “fifth element” that unites them all – knowledge. Hiphop knowledge refers to the cultural, aesthetic, social, linguistic, intellectual and political identities, beliefs, behaviors and values produced and embraced by its members, who generally think of Hiphop as an identity, a worldview and a way to say the truth. American writer and social activist Kevin Powell (2003) explains the Hiphop lifestyle:

When I say I am a hiphop head, I mean that I speak hiphop, I dress hiphop, I walk hiphop, I think out of the box, like hiphop, and that, as KRS-One famously said, I am hiphop. And I understand that hiphop, really, is a reaction to the failures of the United States government to help poor people, since it was poor people who created hiphop in the first place, and that hiphop is also a reaction to racism and oppression.

(Powell 2003)