Mothering in Hip Hop Culture

Representation and Experience

Edited by Maki Motapanyane

Motherhood is an experience that is ever-present yet invisible in the global music genre of hip-hop. This aspect of women’s experience has garnered little attention from journalists, writers and scholars of hip-hop culture. Nor do we have any understanding of how mothers who remain hip-hop culture enthusiasts negotiate their relationship to the culture of hip-hop and its music with their children. Furthermore, what are the discursive spaces that motherhood occupies in hip-hop? Are there ways of understanding mothering in hip-hop along a historical continuum? What are some of the ways that motherhood complicates the hyper- masculinity so dominant in hip-hop? What does empowered and feminist mothering in the context of hip-hop look like, and how might it challenge the status quo? How are mothers engaging with hip-hop, both locally and globally? Broad themes covered in this volume include: representations of motherhood in rap, feminist analyses of mothering in hip-hop, and experiential reflections on mothering in the process of artistic production.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Motherhood Between Invisibility and Trope/ Maki Motapanyane

Chapter 1: “Mama Tried”: Narratives of Good Mothering in Rap Music/ Travis L. Gosa

Chapter 2 Mom Be Pimpin’: Exploring the Mother-Whore Dichotomy in Hip-Hop/ Nicholas Powers

Chapter 3: Making Room for “Dear Mama” in Rap Music/ Erik Nielson

Chapter 4: Shine: A Queer Cosmology of Mothering From Audre Lorde to MeShell Ndegeocello/ Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Chapter 5: 360 Degrees/ Ruth Henry (MC OASIS)

Chapter 6: Seven Generations – Mothering, Indigeneity and Hip-Hop: A Conversation with Lindsay “Eekwol” Knight/ Shana L. Calixte

Chapter 7: “Mommy, I’m in Anomolies too!”: A Conversation Between Two Members of an All-Female Hip-Hop Collective/ Shantelena Mouzon (Helixx C. Armageddon) with Sharon Miller (Pri the Honeydark)

Chapter 8: Mothering the Northside: Hip-Hop Mothers North of the 49th Parallel/ Maki Motapanyane and Mark V. Campbell

Contributor Notes

About the Author

Maki Motapanyane is Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies at Mount Royal University. She has published in the areas of feminist theory, transnational feminist research, and cultural studies. Her research is focused on feminism in Africa, and gender and international development. She is currently completing a monograph that examines the legacy of African feminist thought in South Africa.