Jordan Davis - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
I am a graduate of the University of Missouri-Kansas City (B.A. Sociology and History '17) and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (M.A. Anthropology '20) who maintains an interest in battle rap as a black performance space of radical self-definition.
Supervisors: Dr. Charles Price and Dr. Glen Hinson
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Conference Presentations by Jordan Davis
Academic and non-academic discourses on hip-hop culture often foreground its potential for subver... more Academic and non-academic discourses on hip-hop culture often foreground its potential for subverting and resisting oppressive social realities. Others engage hip hop as a vehicle for artistic expression and a means to social cohesion and making a living. In this presentation, I chart an anthropology of the hip-hop genre battle rap. Contemporary battle rap is a rich site of such social activity that encourages collaboration, experimentation, and transformation among participants and fans. Ideas and critiques about social life as well as money itself flows regularly between fans, battlers, and those who administer battle leagues, providing both social and economic means of making a living and contesting hegemonies—of making do. Yet despite the richness of battle rap not only as a performance but as a subculture, academic exploration into contemporary battle rap is sparse, and an ethnographic inquiry has yet to be undertaken. In this paper I thereby carve out an intellectual space for anthropological consideration of battle rap. Through an analysis of the current literature on hip hop music, as well as literature on music and making do, I argue that battle rap—both socially and sonically—is a prime site for tactics of making do to occur. I further posit these tactics of making do occur both within the subculture and, via battle rap, in participants’ broader social worlds. I accordingly begin to outline my designs for a productive ethnographic engagement with battle rap.
Papers by Jordan Davis
Contemporary battle rap is subgenre of rap that has risen to prominence over the last decade. Thi... more Contemporary battle rap is subgenre of rap that has risen to prominence over the last decade. This thesis will explore the ways in which battle rap participants—fans, rappers, and battle league administrators—collectively contribute to a black space in which complex, multifaceted ideas of blackness can simultaneously exist. Chapter 1 opens with an autobiographical example and places battle rap in conversation with older traditions of black oral performance. Chapter 2 narratively and theoretically explores moments in the line outside of a battle rap event, where fans and battlers congregate and take space in anticipation of the event to come. Chapter 3 continues the narrative, moving into the building and beginning to look at ways in which battle rappers construct multifarious notions of blackness through their lyrics onstage. Chapter 4 moves away from narrative and looks thematically at how battlers lyrically construct ideas about blackness more broadly.
Academic and non-academic discourses on hip-hop culture often foreground its potential for subver... more Academic and non-academic discourses on hip-hop culture often foreground its potential for subverting and resisting oppressive social realities. Others engage hip hop as a vehicle for artistic expression and a means to social cohesion and making a living. In this presentation, I chart an anthropology of the hip-hop genre battle rap. Contemporary battle rap is a rich site of such social activity that encourages collaboration, experimentation, and transformation among participants and fans. Ideas and critiques about social life as well as money itself flows regularly between fans, battlers, and those who administer battle leagues, providing both social and economic means of making a living and contesting hegemonies—of making do. Yet despite the richness of battle rap not only as a performance but as a subculture, academic exploration into contemporary battle rap is sparse, and an ethnographic inquiry has yet to be undertaken. In this paper I thereby carve out an intellectual space for anthropological consideration of battle rap. Through an analysis of the current literature on hip hop music, as well as literature on music and making do, I argue that battle rap—both socially and sonically—is a prime site for tactics of making do to occur. I further posit these tactics of making do occur both within the subculture and, via battle rap, in participants’ broader social worlds. I accordingly begin to outline my designs for a productive ethnographic engagement with battle rap.
Contemporary battle rap is subgenre of rap that has risen to prominence over the last decade. Thi... more Contemporary battle rap is subgenre of rap that has risen to prominence over the last decade. This thesis will explore the ways in which battle rap participants—fans, rappers, and battle league administrators—collectively contribute to a black space in which complex, multifaceted ideas of blackness can simultaneously exist. Chapter 1 opens with an autobiographical example and places battle rap in conversation with older traditions of black oral performance. Chapter 2 narratively and theoretically explores moments in the line outside of a battle rap event, where fans and battlers congregate and take space in anticipation of the event to come. Chapter 3 continues the narrative, moving into the building and beginning to look at ways in which battle rappers construct multifarious notions of blackness through their lyrics onstage. Chapter 4 moves away from narrative and looks thematically at how battlers lyrically construct ideas about blackness more broadly.