Volume 2, Issue 2: Roots of a Culture — Blues, Philosophy and Cultural Lineage
Volume 2, Issue 2 explores the deep cultural roots of hip-hop by tracing its connections to earlier Black expressive traditions such as the blues, jazz, and spoken word. Essays and interviews examine how these traditions shaped hip-hop’s storytelling, philosophy, and political voice. The issue expands the journal’s scope by incorporating fiction, poetry, and visual culture alongside cultural theory.
Publisher: Words Beats & Life Inc.
Publishing Date: 2007
Why This Issue Is Important
This issue situates hip-hop within a longer lineage of Black cultural expression. By connecting hip-hop to the blues, philosophy, and oral storytelling traditions, it demonstrates how the culture extends earlier forms of resistance, creativity, and historical memory.
Preview What’s Inside the Issue:
Flip through the pages of volume 2 issue 2 in this free digital preview of the Global Journal of Hip Hop Culture.
Work Featured in this Issue:
1. Genealogical and Intergenerational Analysis
This issue traces hip-hop’s deep cultural lineage, particularly its relationship to:
The blues
Jazz
Spoken word
Black vernacular philosophy
Rather than treating hip-hop as rupture, the issue frames it as continuity, extending Black expressive traditions into new technological and social contexts.
2. Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Cultural Theory
The issue includes formal engagement with philosophy through reviews and essays that interrogate:
Hip-hop as a system of meaning-making
Ethics, authenticity, and representation
Cultural ownership and appropriation
The review of Hip-Hop & Philosophy: Rhyme 2 Reason situates hip-hop within canonical philosophical discourse, challenging the exclusion of popular culture from serious theory.
3. Interviews and Oral History
A centerpiece of the issue is the interview with Jeff Chang, which situates hip-hop history within broader political and cultural movements and underscores the importance of narrative control, archiving, and movement memory.
4. Fiction, Poetry, and Narrative Experimentation
Unlike earlier issues, Volume 2 Issue 2 leans heavily into short fiction and narrative prose, alongside poetry. These works explore:
Memory
Migration
Class
Gender
Intergenerational trauma and love
This expansion reinforces the journal’s claim that hip-hop culture is not confined to music but is a literary and narrative ecosystem.
5. Visual Culture as Cultural Evidence
Photography, graffiti sketches, and design spreads are used as documentation, not decoration. Youth at play, early hip-hop scenes, and graffiti drafts function as primary sources.
Contributors of Note
Clyde Woods
His work drawing parallels between the blues and hip-hop is foundational, placing hip-hop within a long tradition of Black resistance and expressive survival.Jeff Chang
Featured in an in-depth interview that reinforces his role as a leading historian of hip-hop and cultural movements.Jason Nichols
Contributes cultural criticism connecting hip-hop to global political formations, including empire and resistance.Tori Arthur
Author of the short story “Blue,” representing the journal’s deepening commitment to literary fiction rooted in Black life.
Significance of Volume 2, Issue 2
This issue cements the WBL Journal as a hybrid intellectual platform, equally comfortable with theory, history, poetry, fiction, interviews, and visual documentation. It expands the journal’s scope from hip-hop studies to Black cultural studies more broadly, without losing hip-hop as its organizing center.
Volume 2 Editorial Arc:
Issue 1 establishes historical grounding, definitions, and pedagogy
Issue 2 deepens lineage, philosophy, and narrative experimentation
Together, they mark Volume 2 as the point at which the WB&L Journal fully becomes:
A teaching tool
A cultural archive
A scholarly intervention
A movement document