The “Cathartic Cry” in Hip-Hop: Redefining Sonic Warfare
Leah Marie Amarosa
University of Oregon
Modern hip-hop artists are embracing vulnerability, challenging the legacy of hypermasculinity and braggadocio that epitomized the genre in the 90s. While various scholars and journalists have written on this paradigm shift (Jones 2017; Brown 2006), few have addressed the role of vocality in navigating hip-hop’s dynamic landscape. Yet as rappers express their deepest regrets and vulnerabilities in their music, one expressive voice arises, a combination of rapping and crying, which I name the “cathartic cry.” Recent music-theoretical studies in popular music have highlighted the rich semiotic and phenomenological capabilities of the recorded voice (Heidemann 2016; Wallmark 2022), but in a genre where a distinct vocal persona is the marker of authenticity, what results when hip-hop artists transgress the norms of vocal expression?
In this paper, I center the “cathartic cry” as a cultural weapon against hegemonic masculinity. This voice is characterized by its fusion of crying and rapping, with distinct audible markers including irregular breathing, sudden pitch and volume fluctuations, and a squeaky or raspy timbre. Utilizing methodologies from music cognition (Colling and Thompson 2013; Cox 2011) and race and masculinity studies (Forman 2021; Shabazz 2014; White 2011), and repurposing Steve Goodman’s (2010) term “sonic warfare,” I argue that the cathartic cry declares sonic warfare on hypermasculinity and braggadocio in hip-hop, and through shared motor resonance, motivates ethical involvement and activism in the hip-hop community.
While there are many examples, I analyze three hip-hop tracks that feature the cathartic cry:
- “u” by Kendrick Lamar (2015)
- “I Can’t Go to Sleep” by Wu-Tang Clan (2000)
- “2Honest” by Vic Mensa (2020)
In these tracks, energy often directed towards performative Black hegemony is instead propelled toward emotional vulnerability.
Importantly, the cathartic cry requires more physical and emotional effort from the performers, and through mimetic motor imagery, listeners experience this voice bodily. In hearing, and consequently feeling these emotions for themselves, listeners are prompted toward action. Though the call to arms may not be as obvious as “Grab ya Glocks when you see Tupac," hip-hop artists are using their voices to inspire connection and empathy, inevitably motivating activism.
Night of the Social Dead: Hip-hop, Zombies, and the Aesthetics of Vulgarity in Lupe Fiasco's The Cool
Alexander Joshua Moore
University of California, Los Angeles
Originating from Haitian voodoo, the concept of the “zombie” is inherently rooted in Afrodiasporic cultural memory by religion and folklore. Traditionally, the zombie serves as a folkloric cautionary character: a deceased individual that is ritualistically resurrected and is forced into slavery. Contemporary depictions of the zombie in media today dissociate from and overshadow the rich cultural and religious history in favor of highlighting the degradation and violence as a means of exemplifying horror. This paper examines how this negative representation leads to stereotyping Black individuals as violent and nonhuman. In On the Postcolony, Achille Mbembe posits that the African-descended encounter “negative interpretation” in a world post-slavery. Orlando Patterson calls this “social death,” where he considers all Black people as figuratively dead at birth—frequently battling for essential human rights. I frame this paper upon racist contemporary depictions of the Black zombie and how these interpretations reflect upon the socially dead Black individual.
In 2007, Chicago-born rapper, Lupe Fiasco, released a concept album, The Cool, weaving together a narrative that follows a Black man who is murdered from gang violence and is miraculously resurrected. The Cool tells a story of cultural memory, inner-city struggle, and social death as the protagonist attempts to navigate through a second life as a Black zombie. Often interpreted as violent, hip-hop music and culture has allowed Black musicians to communicate political and social commentary. Musicologist William Cheng writes about how hip-hop music reinforced racist stereotyping during the #BlackLivesMatter movement, where Black bodies have unjustly been perceived as both inhuman and superhuman, much like a zombie. Using Afropessimism and Afrofuturism, this paper investigates the Afrodystopic horror imposed onto Black bodies by connecting the violent characterizations and interpretations of hip-hop music and culture to the popular depictions of the Black zombie. The zombie, originating from cultural fable, is reimagined in Fiasco’s concept album as a tragic hero involved in a twisted web of social misfortune. This metaphorical storytelling successfully allows the audience to retroactively and introspectively reconsider the stock character, and hip-hop, as empathetic--representative and reflective of sociopolitical injustice rather than intrinsic truth.
SIGNIFYIN’ THE GOLDEN AGE: ESTABLISHING A HIP-HOP COMMUNITY THROUGH INTRA-GENRE QUOTATION
Matt Yuknas
University of Oregon,
Hip-hop artists use methods other than sampling to engage with the past, including masked self-referential and intra-genre quotation in song lyrics. This kind of unsigned borrowing is particularly common among independent artists whose membership in the hip-hop community is contested based on region, race, or gender. To diffuse critiques of inauthenticity, independent artists interpolate lyrical tropes from hip-hop’s late-1980s and early-1990s “Golden Age” to mark credibility and establish their affiliation with Blackness. This practice resonates with prior notions of signifyin’ (Gates, 1988); however, the outsider now transmits encrypted language to articulate blackness for the insider. Hip-hop scholars (e.g., Williams, 2014) have long noted the signifying potential of sampling on the past, but few have addressed how rappers intertextually signify within the closed world of hip-hop. In this paper I explore how rappers incorporate signifying to bind themselves with their idolized hip-hop predecessors through intra-genre quotation.
Incorporating methodologies from literary theory, musicology, and music theory, I taxonomize intertextual signifying techniques rappers use in order to argue that signifying highlights a deep knowledge of hip-hop practices that indicates an imagined community of interpretation among hip-hop afficionados. As a case study, I focus on Minnesota underground hip-hop duo Atmosphere, whose mixed-race background and peripheral location marginalized them from the rap mainstream, to distinguish different signifying practices. Classifications include what I term homographic quotation (multiple words spelled the same but different pronunciation and meaning); new perspective cover (alternative point of view); and sequel covers (continuation of a prior narrative). Intertextuality, specifically intra-genre quotation from hip-hop’s Golden Age, permits Atmosphere and other artists membership into the broader hip-hop community and becomes coded language for the listener that, when properly deciphered, grants access to its imagined community of interpretation.
In sum, I show that signifying in hip-hop is not only a clever literary device, but also a carrier of privileged information that negotiates membership, articulates authenticity, and develops an insider discourse that results in self-canonization. Consequently, this project expands the theoretical framework of musical quotation, intertextuality, and signifying in music; brings musicological awareness to undertheorized artists; and illuminates hip-hop’s symbolic relationship with its Golden Age.
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