Abstract Hip Hop is a genre of music that eschews many of the conventions of mainstream hip hop and instead prefers engagingly cryptic lyricism with often experimental beats. It is an increasingly popular and compelling sub-genre of rap music, and is also known as experimental hip hop or leftfield rap.
Abstracthiphop is a distinct but pervasive expression of contemporary black subjectivity rooted in black diasporic traditions of expressive performance and situated at the nexus of late modernism and postmodernism. Its polyphonic character is rooted in contradictions and complexities; it engages neoliberal modes of survival but also upholds socially marginalized youth communities; it speaks truth to power while embracing a potent counter-hegemonic spirit; it publicizes unfailingly hierarchical identity politics while being deeply concerned with the politics of race, class, and gender; it embodies unflinching fidelity to an authentic and powerful ethos that perpetually undermines and destabilizes our understandings of what is real.
Ethos is a concept that emerged within anthropology to account for divergences between groups of people in the way they observe, practice, think and speak. It reflects a density of overlapping and typically implicit observations, practices, priorities, and commitments that are not always constrained by the particular cultural context in which they arise (Swearingen 1994).
Ethos is a complex term that encompasses both observable and less observable social patterns and behaviors, as well as an array of values that shape how people understand themselves. It is also a crucial part of the development of culture as a socially constructed entity.
0 Comments