As I work on this PhD, it has become noticeably apparent that the field of global Hip Hop studies (the expanded version of Hip Hop studies, itself a subfield of Popular Music studies, itself a branch of Musicology) has developed rather simultaneously with Hip Hop studies, albeit forming its own chronology and canonical works. Although works like Rose (1994) and Toop (1984, 1991) are regarded as some of the first of their kind to academically investigate the (then) developing culture of Hip Hop, around the mid-90s it can be also stated the study of global Hip Hop culture simultaneously emerged onto the academic scene, Italy one of the first countries under scrutiny (Adinolfi 1989). Thus, by the early 2000s, a host of sources were then available which signaled an appreciable interest in the dimensions of Hip Hop outside the American context. In this post, I’ll laconically go through the chronological development of global Hip Hop studies and reflect on the avenues by which the field could venture and develop. Most recently, a flurry of books have been published which have been focused on methodological concerns around Hip Hop (Alim et al 2023). Perhaps we are bearing witness to a radical rearticulation of what it means to study Hip Hop on a global dimension? I have my beliefs but let us now turn to the field’s chronology. Of course, I am not done synthesizing sources and finding the ‘state of the art,’ but I can make some basic observations with what I have now.
For the purposes of this chronology, I will refrain from using the terms ‘waves’ used by Harris et al. (2019) in his evaluation of global Hip Hop studies.
Scholarship Before 2000
Although it’s tempting to argue that global Hip Hop studies is a relatively ‘new’ subfield of Hip Hop studies (even the term subfield is contentious and rejected on my part), this is woefully incorrect. In fact, scholarship on the global dimensions of Hip Hop began as early as the mid-1980s, Toop (1984) spotlighting Hip Hop’s Africanist origins. Later, work on regional variations of Hip Hop emerged (Espadalé 1990, Kopytko 1986, Wermuth 1990), signaling the growing focus on non-American Hip Hop culture by non-American scholars. Countries as disparate as Spain, The Netherlands, and New Zealand were having their Hip Hop cultures critically analyzed. Soon, by the 1990s the beginning of the field began. Thanks to Toop’s second edition of “Rap Attack,” Hip Hop’s African origins and global applicability were increasing in attention, some of the first works to reflect on Hip Hop’s diasporic and globalized dimensions being Gilroy (1991) and Robinson et al (1991). Soon after, the study of Hip Hop within German academia really began taking off (Jacob 1993). But the first concrete evaluation of European Hip Hop was Beau (1996), followed soon after by Tony Mitchell’s seminal book, “Popular Music and Local Identity” and continued emphasis on Hip Hop’s African roots (Keyes 1996). Several more regional studies emerged like Australia (White 1999) and France (Hargreaves and McKinney 1998) but it would be during the 2000s when things would pick up, giving rise to Global Hip Hop Studies.
An Establishment of Themes (2000-2009)
Beginning in 2000 with seminal works like Born and Hesmondhalgh (2000), a critical look at Western music through multiple vectors like Exoticism, appropriation, and cultural hybridity, global Hip Hop studies began cementing itself as a credible field outside the American purview. Some of the first works began focusing on topics like identity (Watkins 2000, Auzanneau 2001, Huq 2006), the dynamics of globalization and localization (Condry 2001, Androutsopoulos 2003, Basu and Lemelle 2006), as well as linguistic dimensions (Pennycook 2007). Of course, within the spaces of these pillars including the growing focus on country-specific Hip Hop scenes like Japan (Condry 2006) under the larger topic of globalization and glocalization, the leading concept in more Hip Hop studies discussions of authenticity and what it means to be authentic in Hip Hop, the topic of recent book on the subject (Speers 2017). Moreover, the integration of global Hip Hop communities and American-focused studies began growing in amount, Wermuth (2002) one significant example while Hip Hop on the global stage was being used to study larger cultural dynamics (Cook and Lawerence 2006) and tumultuous political concerns (Khiun 2006). By the second-half of the 2000s, a more concrete understanding of global Hip Hop had been achieved thanks to the work of scholars like Jeff Chang (2006), Halifu Osumare (2008), and highly sourced works like Alim et al. (2009).
A Decade of Achievement (2010-2019)
To say that this period was fruitful for global Hip Hop studies is a phenomenal understatement. In short, the work which was achieved during the previous decade concerning themes like globalization, diasporic movements, politics, cultural politics, linguistics, and cultural hybridity under the larger purview of postcolonial theory, exploded in diversity. During the first-half of the decade, some highly canonical texts of global Hip Hop studies were written during this time including but not limited to Terkourafi (2010), Morgon and Bennett (2011), Nietzsche and Grünzweig (2013), and (Helbig 2014). Further, following James Spady’s publication of his 2013 book, “Mapping and Re-Membering Hip Hop History, Hiphopography and African Diasporic History,” one of the foundations upon which recent books like Williams and Singh (2023) are based, diasporia became an appreciable topic of study. Moreover, deeper analysis of Hip Hop’s African origins paralleled expanded interest into European and non-American Hip Hop scenes including recently begun work in the Scandinavian and Nordic regions (Krogh and Pederson 2008, Holt and Karja 2017) and Cold War Germany (Schmieding 2015). The second-half brought considerable breakthroughs, racialized investigations (Kajikawa 2015) offering new insight into rap on a global scale within the purview of postcolonial theory (Rollefson 2017), while Hip Hop in Europe was now being studied on its own (Miłosz and Helbig 2018) and in short, 2019 was a HUGE year for the field (Shepherd 2019).
The Last Few Years (2020-2023)
What’s rather strange is that I have not come across any studies or books released during 2020, most likely because of the COVID-19 pandemic. I concede, however, that my research isn’t complete and this is not reflective of the reality. Nevertheless, in 2021 the ‘thaw’ broke and studies on global Hip Hop culture resumed, most particularly with Backspin (2021) on the non-academic rung and academically with Young (2022) and Johnson (2022). Most exciting was the growth in research from lesser-known regions of the world like Bishkek (Coppenrath 2022) and non-canonical places in Africa (Lipena Jr. 2023). Moreover, projects like the CIPHER Project began publishing their work, reflecting a systematic evaluation and synthesis of global Hip Hop cultures for their “gems,” or those elements which define the thematic core of Hip Hop itself (Roleffson et al. 2023). Special editions of topical journals have begun reflecting the normalization of global Hip Hop studies as a recognized field of itself (Nietzche and Schick 2022), while recent books from global Hip Hop scholar heavyweights (Alim 2023) are furthering the field with renewed interested on globalization. The second edition of “That’s The Joint” includes a section on global Hip Hop (Forman et al. 2024), the first release of the new year.
If there’s anything that can be said in conclusion, it’s that my PhD focusing on rap in Russia and the aesthetics of Russianness and the Russian identity come from both the vein of Russian Hip Hop studies (the subject of a literature review on its own) and the larger field of global Hip Hop studies. Without the last forty years, my project would have never had to chance to exist.