Volume 5, Issue 1: Who Are We: Deconstructing Identities in Hip Hop
Volume 5, Issue 1 examines how identity is expressed, contested, and embodied within hip-hop culture. Through essays, poetry, interviews, photography, and visual art, contributors explore how hip-hop shapes conversations about race, gender, spirituality, and public space. The issue highlights hip-hop as a cultural practice that lives not only in music, but in bodies, images, language, and creative communities.
Publisher: Words Beats & Life, Inc.
Publishing Date: 2013
Preview the Issue:
Flip through the pages and see what’s inside.
In this Issue
Scholarly Essays & Interviews:
“In the City of Ink” — Nick Schonberger
“Can I Get a Window Seat?”: Erykah Badu as a Site of Expression, Resistance and Erotic Power — Mia K. Reddy, PhD
“Political Public Art: Street Art, Turf Battles, and the Political Landscape of Burma” — Susie Taylor
“Rasquachismo: A Theory, Methodology, and Pedagogy for Hip-Hop Intersections” — Sarah Hentges, PhD
“The Ellis Report: The Disjointed Artist” — Chee Malabar
Interview with Hank Willis Thomas — Jef Tate
“Bum Rush the Boards: A Pawn’s Potential” — DJ 2-Tone Jones
Poetry:
“Slang” — Kyle Dargan
“O.P.P.” — Kyle Dargan
Book Reviews:
Rap and Religion: Understanding the Gangsta’s God — Ebony A. Utley, PhD
Reviewed by Bomani Armah
I Mix What I Like!: A Mixtape Manifesto — Jared Ball
Reviewed by P. Khalil Saucier, PhD
Hip-Hop Culture in Students’ Lives — Emery Petchauer, PhD
Reviewed by Rob Jackson (Blue Black of The Unspoken Heard)
Visual Art & Photography
Featured Visual Artist — Che Kothari
“She Got Game” — Visual Art by Holly Bass
Commentary by Hank Willis Thomas, Toni Blackman, Charles Jean-Pierre, and Deb Willis
MuralsDC Photography — Corey Thompson
Editorial Staff
Founder / Executive Director — Mazi Mutafa
Editor-in-Chief — Jason Nichols, PhD
Managing Editor — Shonda Goward, MA
Art Director / Graphic Designer — Mia D. DuVall
Art & Culture Director — Nick Schonberger
Book Review Editors — Rob Jackson and Bomani Armah
Literary Editor — Fred L. Joiner
Copy Editor — Felicia A. Ramos
Why This Issue Matters
Volume 5, Issue 1 expands conversations in hip-hop studies by examining identity through multiple forms of cultural expression. Essays, poetry, interviews, and visual art explore how hip-hop operates across bodies, communities, and creative practices—from tattoo culture and feminist critique to street art and spirituality.
Together, these works demonstrate that hip-hop is not only a musical genre but a broader cultural framework through which identity, resistance, and artistic expression are negotiated and documented.