Race and Space in Rap: Conceptions of (Multi)Racial Identity and Urban Life in Rap Music

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This article analyses the representation of race and space in rap music. The study conducts a content analysis of the work of three artists. The article clearly situates itself in relation to work on the representation of space in hip hop culture. It has the potential to make a significant and original contribution to scholarship on rap music.

The literature review develops a good discussion of research on space and spatial practice, but there is little consideration of scholarship on race. Although the introduction refers to race as socially constructed, 'Black identity' is taken as a given - something that can be embraced or not - rather than constructed in different ways by the artists and others. Given the inclusion of Drake, the article needs to consider whether 'black identity' is the same in the US as in Canada. 

The section on 'The Great Migration and Hip Hop' might be better oriented towards a discussion of conceptions of race and black identity in the US and Canada.

The analysis appears to use references to violence and poverty as a proxy for black identity. The methods could be clearer regarding how the coders interprete a 'reference [to] blackness' (page 5). There is a conflation of drawing on popular rap motifs (such as violence) and claiming 'Black identity'. The article could be substantially improved by being clear about how it conceptualises 'Black identity' as a socially constructed category. The discussion of how skin tone is associated with race (page 6, lines 238-248) contrasts with the discursive association with place, violence, poverty, and the sex industry in the analysis. The author may consider engaging with research on black identity from both inside and outside the US (particularly Canadian scholarship). 

The author draws on data beyond the content analysis to discuss Logic's interest in science fiction and how this relates to black identity. The author might consider discussing alternative conceptions of black identity (beyond associations with violence and poverty) such as Afrofuturism (within hip hop, jazz and other forms).  

The very short paragraph (p. 8, 309-311) needs to be integrated with the paragraph that immediately follows it.

After acknowledging that their hypothesis is contradicted by Drake, the author continues to frame Drake within a framework of racial authenticity. It may well be the case that Drake references particular cities, to gain some form of legitimacy, but are there other potential explanations? The claim that Drake might seek to 'enhance his authenticity by collaborating with other prominent Black male artists based in the U.S.' suggests an attempt to restore the credibility of the disproved hypothesis. The article could be substantially stronger if it gave more serious consideration to the significance of these artists not fitting its hypothesis. Could there be a commercial imperative to such collaborations? What is the significance of Drake's collaborations with those who are from places outside the US or are not not African-American men (e.g. Skepta from the UK, French Montana from Morocco, and Rihanna from Barbados)? Do Drake's rap songs indicate other ways of being black, that are inclusive of 'bi-racial' individuals?

In the conclusion (page 16, 713-4) the author states that the hypotheses are nuanced. I was unclear about the intended meaning here. In what way are they nuanced? In relation to this, the article could be clear about whether the categories black and bi-racial mutualy exclusive, or not? Is the context of the US important to the analysis, even though Drake is not from the US and collaborates with artists outside as well as inside the US?

Given the role that statements made by other artists and family members have played in the discussion, it would be useful if the article addressed the limitations of content analysis.

Although it touches on class in several places, there is no critical engagement with the concept and the significance of being working-class to notions of authentic black identity is under-explored. The author might consider addressing how a focus on race and space leads towards an analysis of class in the discussion and conclusion.

Recommendations

The article needs to include a substantial discussion on theories of race in the literature review. I strongly suggest that the review includes some examples of  scholarship on the construction of black identity in a non-US context.

The article needs to be clear about how the references to 'Black identity' were interpreted in the coding process.

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Title: Race and Space in Rap: Conceptions of (Multi)Racial Identity and Urban Life in Rap Music

This study offers an innovative analysis of three biracial (Black and white) Hip Hop artists’ songs. The author expertly contextualizes their findings through their literature review about the role of space, place, and race in Hip Hop. The methodology section offers a detailed explanation of the author’s research process and analysis. The author’s findings are analytically sound and the discussion and conclusion offer interesting insights for scholars to consider.

Thank you for the opportunity to review this paper. It is very well written so I only have a few suggestions that the author might consider:

On page 3, the author writes, “I analyze how these artists frame their racial identities and urban locales.” Would it make sense to add “through their lyrics” since that is what your analysis is based on (and some interviews)? If so, you might consider adding that they (if I’m not mistaken) write their own songs and how that plays into authenticity (unless that is beyond the scope of what you are trying to accomplish).

On page 4, the author writes, “…Black and brown youth in the South Bronx created Hip Hop, a movement that included rapping, DJing, graffiti art, and break-dancing.” A citation would be good here, to show the reader that Hip Hop is not just a musical genre; scholars have documented that it includes these four elements. Jeffrey Ogbar (2007), which you cite elsewhere in your paper, is a suggestion.

On page 5, the author writes, “However, this strategy for gaining legitimacy may not readily apply to non-Black males, even those with multiracial Black backgrounds. Based on existing research suggesting a strong connection between urban residence and Black racial identity—Black urbanity—I argue that biracial artists, particularly those of Black and white descent, must navigate the racialized and geographical conventions of rap music.” Excellent explanation of the complexity of not only multiracial identity, but multiracial Black (with white) identity.

When the author explains J. Cole’s background, it is broken into two paragraphs and one is very short. These two paragraphs can be combined so that it follows the same format as Drake’s background and Logic’s.

If you think it makes sense to add, Logic also authored This Bright Future, released in 2021, also a NYT bestseller. In it, he details his mother’s severe mental illness.

On page 9, the author writes, “Moreover, he indicates that his mere presence in this environment may lead to his death, like Trayvon Martin, a young Black male killed while walking through his father’s neighborhood by a white Hispanic male in 2012 (Lebron 2017).” Might the author consider adding that Zimmerman is also biracial? Mitchell’s work critically analyzes how multiracialness interacts with Blackness vs. Hispanicness (and whiteness) in her work. This will draw a connection between biracialness, and also a distinction between biracialness/multiracialnes when Blackness is at play.

Mitchell, J. (2022). Deployments of multiracial masculinity and anti-black violence: The racial framings of Barack Obama, George Zimmerman, and Daunte Wright. Social Sciences, 11(6), 238.

I appreciate that the author blended each artist’s lyrics with interviews and then offered a sharp analysis of both.

On page 11, the author writes, “Indeed, in another interview for the website Genius.com, the artist mentions that he was “hurt” by the prejudice and discrimination he experienced from both Black and white family members and peers.” Might you consider adding, “termed monoracism by scholars.” It would read, “Indeed…the prejudice and discrimination he experienced from both Black and white family members and peers, termed monoracism by scholars (Johnston and Nadal 2010).” I think adding this largely unknown form of racial discrimination will also help situate Logic’s quotes in your discussion.

            Johnston, M. P., & Nadal, K. L. (2010). Multiracial microaggressions: Exposing monoracism in everyday life and clinical practice.

On page 11, the author’s complex, layered interpretation of J. Cole’s, Drake’s and Logic’s racial identities is particularly strong, and speaks to the nuances of identity in Black biracial people. Relatedly, on page 15, the author writes, “Hence, I posit that Drake presents a muted Black identity in his music but performs a Black rap persona by patronizing these hypersexualized spaces.” This level of complexity is rare in research on biracial people and highlights the author’s unique contribution to scholarship.

The author’s incorporation of the crime statistics in each artist’s city over multiple years is an impressive touch that further demonstrates their point.

Since the author discussed Drake and Kendrick’s beef, would it be worth mentioning that Drake and J. Cole were considered “The Big Three” (with Kendrick) to highlight their success in a Black male dominated space, especially since Drake doesn’t assert a Black identity, as your research demonstrates?

I look forward to seeing this creative and important work published, and citing it.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thanks for your response and for addressing the comments I made in the review of your article. I’m glad you consider my comments to have strengthened the article. I agree that the article conceptual discussion of race and space is stronger. However, there a number of (mostly minor but several major) revisions that need to be made before the article is publishable. In my opinion these revision could be made fairly quickly, so I have provided detailed guidance to facilitate this.

MAJOR REVISIONS - MUST BE ADDRESSED

In the section Conceptions of Black and Multiracial Identity in the U.S. and Canada, the discussion of the U.S. does not address the heterogeneity of black identity in the United States. The final paragraph in this section, which brings together the discussion on race in the US and ethnicity in Canada, needs to address the contribution of Caribbean youths to the diversity within ‘American [black] youth culture’. The author could draw on Rose’s (1994) discussion of the contribution of Caribbean and African American youths to the development of hip hop culture in Black Noise or Jeff Chang’s (2007) discussion of Kool Herc in Total Chaos to support this. 

The section could benefit from stepping back from the national contexts, and engaging with conceptual work on race and ethnicity (in relation to black identity) more directly. I suggest that the wording ‘conceptions of race’ in the first sentence of the section be changed to ‘conceptions of race and ethnicity’. After this sentence the author should discuss scholarship on these two concepts before moving on to how they relate to the author’s conception of black and biracial identity. I suggest that the following sentence (beginning 'Even though the percentage of multiracial individuals’) should start a new paragraph. In the first paragraph the author may find Stuart Hall’s (1993)  What is this "black" in black popular culture? and Cornel West’s (1990) The New Cultural Politics of Difference to be useful. In particular Hall’s discussion of cultural hegemony may help to support the later discussion of why a particular idea of Black (American) identity (constructed around poverty and violence) is privileged within hip hop.

Footnote one must be reincorporated into the main text. The clause ‘as well as other racialized representations of urban life exemplified by white rap artists like Eminem’ could be removed from this, and replaced with a discussion of ethnicity (e.g. Jamaicans and Haitians in the US). Given the centrality of the question of what ‘black identity’ is, to the article, this issue cannot be relegated to a footnote. It also works well to develop the point that Forman makes earlier in the paragraph. 

Page 8 line 338: ‘gender’ must be changed to racial. As you are now defining your hypothesis, introducing gender without a substantial prior discussion of how gender and ethnicity are intertwined would require major revisions. There is little engagement with gender in the Content Analysis.

Page 9, lines 395-7 and page 10 408-423 of the methodology section. The author may consider clarifying why a reference to having a light skin tone would be coded ‘black’. The analysis of Drake codes him as referring to himself exclusively as black. The coders could have interpreted Drake’s references to race as being both black and biracial or ambiguous. This could also be addressed in a reflection on the limitations of the research methods, in the discussion. The author must include a discussion of the racial identities and cultural context of the coders and how this might have an influence on their coding. Was a US racial frame privileged in the coding? 

Page 10 lines 420-421: The main strength and original contribution of the article is the research design. It is through the content analysis that the study finds that mixed ethnicity artists do not necessarily present themselves through a black (American) persona. However, this method is limited and therefore some use of interviews to support the analysis is necessary. The wording here must acknowledge the limitation of content analysis, before going on to describe the inclusion of analysis of artists interviews. This should be done in the main text, and not the footnotes. Being clear about the strengths and weaknesses of the research design, will strengthen this article.

Page 18, line 763. The author needs to remove ‘an American’ and must restore the text to ‘a Black background’. The content analysis doesn’t support the claim that Drake adopts a ‘black (American) identity’. This may be an understandable interpretation made by the author, but his collaborations outside the US could produce an alternative interpretation. The findings and conclusions should be primarily based on the content analysis.

803-807 The discussion needs to focus on the implications of these rappers (particularly Logic and Drake) not conforming to the hypothesis that these well known rappers who have had careers of over a decade would need to conform to the notion of black (American) identity, that  you originally set out to test. The author must not misquote or misrepresent Gilroy (2000: 181), who is criticising the notion that the US is the ‘centre’ of understanding of black authenticity: ‘[Luther Campbell's case and subsequent commercial activities] … ask us to consider how the transgressive qualities in hip-hop have led to its being identified not as one black culture among many but currently as the very blackest culture’ (emphasis in the original). I appreciate that the author may not have read Gilroy's book directly and is drawing on it as presented by Kelly, but the manner in which the critique is presented in the article is in direct contrast to the intended meaning. I recommend that the two sentences 803-807 are deleted. The study could actually contribute to the question that Gilroy is posing. However, to do so effectively, the author needs to deal with the finding that both Drake and Logic introduce alternative conceptions of black identity into US hip hop, that do not conform to the conventions that the author used to justify their original hypothesis. The fact that the method was sufficiently rigorous to disprove the hypothesis is, in my view, the key strength of the article. The discussion that follows really needs to build upon that and work through the implications of the alternative conceptions of black and biracial identity being articulated by Logic and Drake.

The author needs to address the terminology that they use in the paragraph (ln 791-807) around identity, mimicry and persona. The author’s cover letter states ‘I am not claiming that the artists are portraying a Black (male) identity’ but instead ‘they will perform an American Black male rap persona by identifying as a Black male (not biracial) and depicting their spaces as perilous. This distinction defines this work’. As they claim that this is the issue that defines the work, the article needs to be clear about whether (791) Drake is signalling a black identity or constructing a persona. Given that the content analysis identifies that Drake does not present space as perilous, the discussion of mimicry is odd. There is no little discussion of how identity or persona is constructed in a dialogic manner in rap lyrics, and while importing this into the analysis might be worthwhile (Hall and Gilroy could be useful here) it may be more expedient to not make the claim regarding mimicry.

786-790 Logic doesn’t explicitly reject the ‘one-drop rule’ and the author shouldn't imply he does. The article draws extensively on interviews to pivot away from addressing the hypothesis and towards other concerns like Logic’s family relations and debates within the music industry. The selective use of these interviews is weak and undermines the selection of Logic for the content analysis. Given his recent music releases, the article conveys the incorrect impression that Logic has left the music industry. The article must significantly reduce the supplementary use of interviews, and focus its analysis around the hypothesis. The use of interviews introduces potential researcher bias that has not been addressed in the methods section and undermines the relative rigour of the content analysis. Interestingly, although Logic affirms a ‘bi-racial’ identity he does refer to violence and criminality. The analysis should tease out the significance of Drake and Logic's divergence from the author's framing of rap music conventions.

As the content analysis does not engage ideas of space associated with science fiction, there is no need to address science fiction as part of Logic’s creative output or his frustrations with the music industry. However, I would welcome the inclusion of a discussion on how Logic might address ‘space’ in a radically different way to rap's generic conventions.

Conclusion

Page 21, line 880-885: The discussion of the hypothesis and the results needs to be clearer. The wording must be changed to the following or something similar, to ensure that the discussion of the findings is clear, coherent and sufficiently compelling:

I hypothesized that Drake, Logic, and J. Cole, - who have mixed-race backgrounds - will make references to their neighborhoods as dangerous while identifying as racially Black. This hypothesis was disproven. The content analysis produced more nuanced findings. 

At line 888 the following sentence should be inserted before ‘Overall’: ‘Significantly Logic affirms a bi-racial identity and Drake does not represent his home town as violent and dangerous. A new paragraph should follow this sentence, so that 'Overall' begins the new paragraph.  

MINOR REVISIONS

Page 7, line 315: I suggest the section heading change to ‘Race, Ethnicity, and Hip Hop. 

Page 8 line 341: remove ‘gender and’. It is unusual to change the hypothesis of a study at this point.

Page 8 line 349: I prefer legitimacy but authority is acceptable. I think that it is legitimacy that is being debated in the later sections of the article. 

Page 9 lines 536-368: The discussion of how ‘biracial’ identity is contested in American culture should be restored. The section could be expanded to include a discussion of the hegemony of African-American identity, in relation to Jamaican, Barbadian, Puerto Rican and Haitian ethnicities,  and discussion of black identity within hip hop. Addressing the issue of a particular (African-American) conceptualisation of what black identity is will help justify your hypothesis to the journal’s international readership.

Page 14 line 557: Consider removing ‘true’.

Page 20 line 833: ‘which I refer to as Black urbanity.’ As Logic affirms a ‘bi-racial’ identity it would be useful to be clear that Black urbanity in his work is inclusive of/ or can be constructed through a ‘bi-racial persona’.

Page 20 line 862: The author should reconsider their statement ‘My research takes no side in this debate’. Given that the inclusion of Kendrick Lamar’s lyrics is outside of the scope of both the content analysis and the supplementary analysis of interviews, the author may choose to be open about their position in relation to debates within hip hop culture. Alternatively they should base their analysis and discussion more rigorously upon the content analysis. The paragraph from 847-868 should be removed.

I suggest that in addition to reintroducing the discussion of how bi-racial and fair skinned African-American’s are challenged about the legitimacy of their black identity earlier in the discussion (page 9, 356-368) the author return to how the question of black identity in the United States is constructed, prior to the conclusion. There is a tension between the idea of the persistence of ‘the one-drop rule’ and the invalidation of bi-racial identity. All three artists negotiate racial identity in different ways in their work, but not in the manner hypothesised.

I’d like to see this article published, but the analysis needs to be tightened up, any biases need to be explicitly articulated, and the discussion of the findings (of the content analysis) needs to be more clearly and coherently developed.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is a much improved article, which I am happy to recommend for publication. I have made some further comments and minor suggestions that the author may address at their discretion. The article is publishable in its current form. 

I suggest that at line 276 'dictate' be changed to 'influence'.

Lines 321-325 and 330-331: the national (UK and US) contexts of Waring and Campion's studies should be made clear. It is possible that mixed ethnicity Canadian's are not subject to the same kind of scrutiny by their peers. The author may therefore want to draw upon further research or refine how they make their point, here. 

The paragraph added to the conclusion is very compelling. 

I acknowledge the author's rebuttal to my suggestion about Logic representing space in a way that differs from rap's generic conventions. My view is that incorporating science fiction themes into hip hop is a radical transformation of how space is conceived within the genre. Given the focus of this article on the concept of black urbanity it is reasonable to think of space in 'real' geographic terms. But what happens when we reimagine urban territory through science fiction? I'm unfamiliar with the author's work, but wonder whether black urbanity could embrace Logic's Incredible True Story and its invitation to think about space? However, I appreciate that there is a legitimate disagreement here, and I respect the author's position. 

Thanks for mentioning Wallace's 2023 study. I was unfamiliar with it and look forward to reading it more deeply. Not including a full discussion of this complex area is reasonable, given the space available. The author might consider briefly mentioning this study in the Conceptions of Black and Multiracial Identity and Ethnicity in the U.S. and Canada section.