In his recent performance at the 2015 Black Entertainment Television (BET) Awards in June, Los Angeles rapper Kendrick Lamar performed the song ‘Alright’ while standing defiantly upon a defaced police car, an impossibly large United States flag fluttering behind him. The obvious political nature of both the staging and song choice (with lyrics like ‘we hate po-po/Wanna …
View More Kendrick Lamar and the Dialectics of Performing Hip HopAuthor: Bryan Banker
Bryan Banker is a PhD candidate at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich. His research focuses on how 20th century black intellectual artists used literature and performance as the analytical process in which to negotiate their political, social, and aesthetic consciousnesses.