Assignment:
Part 1
A - Historian Marybeth Hamilton characterizes the mainstream's obsession with "authenticity" in African-American culture as "a faintly colonial romance with Black suffering, an eroticization of African American despair".
B - How does the above jibe with the way we see Hip Hop from the South and its eventual dominance?
C - Does RZA's quote, "The South has evolved later than us.... they haven't picked up on the wavelength of where their mind should be", relate in any way to Hamilton's?
Part 2
A - When we look at how Hip Hop travels around the world and becomes an important vehicle for expression outside of America and outside of American culture, what do you think needs to be kept in order to be "real"?
B - Does what we see and hear in American Hip Hop need to be present, or is it something more subtle - a sentiment that lays in the heart of the creation of Hip Hop?
C - What might that sentiment be?
Readings:
"We Can Tell Our Own History, We Can Tell Our Own Future
By CHRIS LALONDE