Afro-Samurai: techno-Orientalism and contemporary hip hop

Ken McLeod

doi:10.1017/S0261143013000056

Afro-Samurai: techno-Orientalism and contemporary hip hop

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 May 2013

Ken McLeod

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Ken McLeod*: Affiliation:
Faculty of Music, University of Toronto, Edward Johnson Building, 80 Queen's Park, Toronto, Ontario M5S 2C5, Canada E-mail: [email protected]

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Abstract

This article examines the practice and recent rise in the use of various aspects of Japanese popular culture in hip hop, particularly as manifest in the work of RZA, Kanye West and Nicki Minaj. Often these references highlight the high-tech, futuristic aesthetic of much Japanese popular culture and thus resonate with concepts and practices surrounding Afro-futurism. Drawing on various theories of hybridity, this article analyses how Japanese popular culture has informed constructions of African American identity. In contrast to the often sensational media coverage of racial tensions between African American and Asian communities, the nexus of Japanese popular culture and African American hip hop evinces a sympathetic connection based on shared notions of Afro-Asian liberation and empowerment achieved, in part, through a common aesthetic of technological mastery and appropriation. The synthesis of Asian popular culture and African American hip hop represents a globally hybridised experience of identity and racial formation in the 21st century.

Type: Articles
Information: Popular Music , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , May 2013 , pp. 259 - 275

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143013000056 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013

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