OBJECTIVE: How have African American rappers maintained/re-imagined verbal art forms and music sensibilities in the African American and African diasporic folk and music traditions?
1. Select a rap song released in the last 5 years ( i.e., published from 1/2019-1/2024). Avoid R&B, pop songs, and remastered songs. The emphasis is on rapping performances for this assignment. Identify ANY three different African American oral traditions:
- toasting,
- boasting,
- ritual insults games, sometimes called playing the dozens, joning, roasting, ribbing, ,
- call-and-response technique
- option one:verbal art tradition (oratory with a caller-leader and respondents)
- option two:musically (percussive/instrumental pattern alternation
- girl-gaming
- option one: lyrics
- option two: aural-oral-kinetic demonstrated in a video
2. should select a rap song that emphasizes rapping elements more so than R&B- or pop-singing styles. To complete the assignment, you might have to use more than one song and more than one artist.
- (10 points each): Follow the model below these guidelines. Give song details and then select the specific lines in the lyrics that address the verbal art form in question. Explain your rationale in about 250 words (+/- 10%). NOTE: if you use genius.com or some other website or source, you must acknowledge whomever you are paraphrasing. Therefore, include a Works Cited page.
- (5 points): Additionally, In a couple of sentences explain why it is important for consumers to know about these ancient folk forms and why it is important to recognize African Americans’ cultural traditions with respect to “changing same.”
Below is A very generic example of ONE of the three required folk forms (YOURs will be a song released within the last 5 years)
First Choice: Toasting.
Song: “Tom Ford” by Jay Z on Magna Carta Holy Grail (2013)
Rationale [~250 words]: The song is not a toast in the older folk tradition, but I argue it has elements of the toasting tradition that celebrates a character, in this case, a baadwoman, who, according to the glossary of our textbook (Orejuela 2022: 231), has “outlaw” characteristics and overcomes obstacles faced as a Black woman than many of us do not experience. The song’s title suggests that it is a song about the high-end fashion designer Tom Ford, and it is in minor ways, however, the piece can also be read as a celebration of all the baad folks coming out of Houston, Texas including his wife Beyoncé and her family and even Tom Ford who live there as a boy: “Riding clean fix your hair in my Crown/ Bad Bitch H town.” In this line, Jaz Z is complimenting his wife Beyoncé’s prowess as a baadwoman and a queen. He follows, “Keep it trill,” referring to Beyoncé as “Third Ward Trill” and playing with the idea of “Keeping it real” but also that Third Ward in Houston is a historically Black neighborhood and essential to the Civil Rights Movement in the Houston (Third Ward Initiative 2022)]”. Like toasting narratives, “baad” is not meant as a pejorative term—quite the opposite. Baad men and Baad women are the heroes of toasting narratives. Like Shine, who was able to survive the sinking of the Titanic and swim to NYC, or Annie Christmas, who was fiercer than the toughest men she worked alongside and still sexually alluring, Beyoncé deserves to be celebrated for her greatness as a Black-woman-centered musician and equally impressive self-titled 2013 album.
WORKS CITED
Jay Z. “Tom Ford.” *Genius*. Genius Media Inc. Web. 10 February 2015.
Orejuela, F. 2022. “Glossary: baadman/baadwoman” in Rap and Hip Hop Culture. New York: Oxford University Press. 231.
Third Ward Initiatice. 2022. “Third Ward.” https://uh.edu/third-ward/third-ward-map/ Links to an external site.
Links to an external site.Links to an external site.
Students, follow the example above for your 2nd folk form and 3rd folk form.
a Worksheet is attached for this. Just fill it in