2PAC WAS A TRUE PAKI:

A BRIEF SURVEY OF SOUTH ASIAN PARTICIPATION IN HIP HOP

Sabina Raja

TC 660H Plan II Honors Program

The University of Texas at Austin

May 15, 2019

__________________________________________ Snehal Shingavi, Ph.D

Department of English, College of Liberal Arts Supervising Professor

__________________________________________ Martin Kevorkian, Ph.D

Department of English, College of Liberal Arts Second Reader

2

Acknowledgements

I would like to begin by thanking Dr. Snehal Shingavi and Dr. Martin Kevorkian for their guidance, expertise, support, and patience throughout the process of writing this thesis. Their supervision and critiques made me a better writer and helped me craft a robust thesis. Without them, I could not have written a project that I am now incredibly proud of. In addition, I am grateful to the Plan II Honors program for giving me the opportunity to pursue this project in fulfillment of my undergraduate degree.

I am also incredibly indebted to my friends and family for their never-ending

support, because I would not have been able to complete this thesis without their encouragement. They acted as my sounding boards and voices as reason, and they were my pillars of strength throughout this whole process. I would like to specifically thank my parents, Mona and Waheed Raja, for being my rocks and biggest cheerleaders. And I would also like to thank my dear friends Sarah Ahmed, Haven Koehler, Khalid Ahmad, Karim Zahran, Rachana Jadala, Sonia Uthuph, and Maryam Khamisha for giving me patience, encouragement, and love as I worked on this project this past year.

I would like to thank Vijay Prashad, Nitasha Sharma, and Sunaina Maira

whose works acted as guiding lights as I researched and wrote my thesis. Their contributions to the academic literature about South Asian Americans served as the basis for the work I did, and I am incredibly grateful. They are also inspirations for me, because they serve as examples for scholars that are creating work that is meant to benefit their communities and build a more nuanced and dynamic image of the South Asian American experience.

And most importantly, all praise due to the Most High. Alhamdulillah.

3

Table of Contents

Page

Acknowledgements 2

Abstract 4

Introduction 5

Chapter 1: The Desi Hip Hoppers’ Roots 14

Chapter 2: Time to Get School’d on Hip Hop 24

Chapter 3: Law Enforcement in Flow 37

Chapter 4: The Ideal Man 49

Chapter 5: Cash Rules Everything Around Desis 56

Chapter 6: Do It For the Culture 61

Conclusions 70

Bibliography 72

4

Abstract Author: Sabina Raja Title: 2pac was a true Paki: A brief survey of South Asian participation in Hip Hop Supervising Professors: Snehal Shingavi, Ph.D & Martin Kevorkian, Ph.D There is a proliferation of Desi Hip-Hoppers who are part of a new wave of South Asian Americans that are creating Hip-Hop music that is deeply influenced by their hybrid identity. My research question asks why these South Asian Americans are taking to Hip-Hop as an expressive medium. In the wake of the politicization of South Asian ethnic identity in post-9/11 America, how do South Asians find themselves within the shifting racial landscape of the US? Beginning with exclusionary immigration laws passed at the turn of the 20th century to surveillance policies enacted in 2001, South Asians’ racial and sociocultural identity has largely been constructed by American policies. Desi hip hoppers have been cast to the margins of society, so they take to Hip-Hop, a medium created to express feelings of exclusion. Through the process of social positioning, South Asian Americans craft representations of self in their participation in Hip Hop that reflect their identity. And in doing so, they command cultural citizenship to have the right of inclusion despite their difference. In this project, I will be examining their lyrics to delve into issues that they are grappling within their songs. From identity to global politics, South Asian hip hoppers are creating work that is dynamic and multifaceted; these raps are stories for these artists. I will tease apart the references, analogies, and prose of these raps in order to formulate how South Asians have constructed their own unique American identity in the United States and used culture as a site for representation.

5

Introduction

We at war We at war with terrorism, racism But most of all we at war with ourselves

- Jesus Walks by Kanye West

South Asian and American. These identity markers felt at odds with each

other when I was growing up. I did not know how to negotiate my Americanness

that taught me the values of individualism and freedom with my South Asianness

which taught me the importance of community and colored so many aspects of my

life. It was especially complicated for me after 9/11 when my Muslim identity also

fell under attack. I grew up quite confused but affirmed in the fact that I would be

able to be both of these things despite the fact that I felt in the margins of American

society and just not South Asian enough.

When I entered college, I was excited to learn more about my people. As I

browsed the course catalogue my freshman year, I only saw classes about the

histories of India. As a Pakistani American, I did not feel like that was my history

or experience to claim. While I was contending with my identity my freshman year,

Kanye West’s College Dropout played in the backdrop every day. There was

something so visceral that resonated with me as Kanye reflected on higher

education, religion, identity, and family. The angst Kanye expressed about feeling

like an outcast echoed the feelings I was experiencing. Feeling limited by

circumstance and pressured to follow a path that was expected of me, Kanye’s debut

album spoke to the things I was grappling during my first year in college.

6

Fast forward to 2016, I had dropped out of college for the year, and Donald

Trump was campaigning for President of the United States on a platform that

advocated for a “Muslim Ban”. The xenophobia and bigotry he espoused made me,

and so many around me, feel like we were on shaky ground in this country. Come

October, just one month before the presidential election, a Hip Hop duo that went

by the name Swet Shop Boys dropped their debut album Cashmere. Riz MC and

Heems, the duo behind this album, were South Asian. The album was politically

charged and centered around the difficulties of being South Asian and Muslim in

this country and more globally. When I first heard the album, I was dumbstruck. I

had never interacted with media that spoke so closely of my experiences.

When it came time to decide my thesis topic, I knew I wanted to write about

South Asian Americans as we are not a very thoroughly studied demographic in

academia. I had also wanted to write about the power of narratives and use my

academic experience as a sociology student to drive my analysis. Drawing from my

experience, I found that there was something striking about the fact that a young

Black boy’s album about the pressures of life in the Southside of Chicago resonated

with a South Asian girl from Houston. It was even more powerful that I was not the

only South Asian that seemed to relate to this album and genre of music. I found

that the resonances of Hip Hop had come full circle to the point that I was listening

to South Asian Americans rapping about their experiences. The more research I did,

I saw a clear thread between South Asians and the power of Hip Hop as an

7

expressive medium. This thesis is an exploration of that relationship and a foray

into why Hip Hop?

Historical Context The United States enacted a series of exclusionary immigration policies that

specifically targeted South Asians beginning in 1917 and extended into the 1960s1.

After the enactment of the Hart–Celler Act in 1965 which granted entrance to

South Asians without any restrictions on the basis of occupation or country of

origin2. The 1980s marked a large wave of migration of South Asians into America.

The large majority of South Asian American youth are children of those immigrants

that made the journey in the eighties. The community, despite being a burgeoning

group, only account for 1% of the population in the United States, residing in mostly

coastal urban cities. 9/11 marked a drastic shift for South Asians and their place in

the United States. Surveillance policies were enacted following the attacks in the

name of national security that codified markers of Muslimness as threats. This cast

South Asians from their outsider status to being perceived as a threat to the

integrity of the American fabric3.

Hip Hop was born out of the Bronx in the 1970s, which was an incredibly

tumultuous time in the burrough. Marked by high rates of unemployment, poverty,

1 Lowe, Lisa. Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007. 2 Timothy J. Hatton, "United States Immigration Policy: The 1965 Act and Its Consequences," The Scandinavian Journal of Economics 117, no. 2 (2014): , doi:10.1111/sjoe.12094. 3 Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims: Race and Labor in the South Asian Diaspora (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011).

8

and gang violence, the Bronx was labeled as an urban wasteland. In 1973, a young

immigrant boy that would come to be known as DJ Kool Herc hosted a back to

school jam party that marked the beginning of Hip Hop, a cultural movement that

would not only captivate young Black and Latino youth but the whole nation. Hip

Hop was born as a method of expression for African Americans and Latinos to

confront feelings associated with gang violence, police brutality, and structural

inequality. It proliferated throughout the American mainstream and is now

considered the most consumed genre of music4.

There is a subculture of South Asian American rappers that have taken to

Hip Hop as an expressive medium. Artists mainly from New York City and

California are releasing albums that incorporate aesthetic and instrumental

elements that are traditional to South Asian culture into their music. They are also

enacting specific values or themes that give insight into their social and material

conditions in America.

Research Question First and foremost, my research explores the question of why these South

Asian Americans have taken to Hip Hop as a form of expression? Culture is the site

in which identity is reflected and expressed. The suggestive power and popularity of

Hip Hop make it tangible for South Asians in America, a largely voiceless

community, to articulate their frustrations with their material and social conditions

4 Jeff Chang, Cant Stop Wont Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation (London: Ebury Digital, 2011).

9

in America and assert how they conceive of their American identity. In addition to

my primary question, I also seek to answer the question of how does the position of

South Asians in the American racial landscape and their sociocultural identity

inform their decision to participate in Hip Hop?

Sources, Theories, & Methods In researching for this project, I conducted historical surveys of South Asians

in America and how Hip Hop developed as a cultural movement in America in order

to provide a context for my research question. I then wove together these histories

to analyze the lyrical content of South Asian American Hip Hoppers' music to

answer my research question. I utilized methods of analysis used by sociologists,

historians, anthropologists, and literary critics. In my analysis of the work done by

South Asian Hip Hoppers, I rely on theories of cultural citizenship, racial formation

theory, social positioning, and related concepts. In researching for this thesis, I read

works by Sunaina Maira, Nitasha Sharma, Vijay Prashad, Jeff Chang, and others.

In addition, I read an extensive array of journal articles about Hip Hop, culture,

identity, racialization, and South Asian Americans. All of this reading distilled into

my analysis of the work done by Desi Hip Hoppers.

In addition, academia has ascribed varying meanings to the words Hip Hop

and rap and sometimes have used the words interchangeably. The popular

understanding of Hip Hop is more broadly as a cultural movement that consists of

10

four elements: 1) disk jockeying 2) graffiti 3) rapping and 4) break dancing5. Rap is

often referred to the musical style, which is a subcategory of the Hip Hop

movement. The scope of this project focuses primarily on rap music (and its lyrical

content) and will dabble in the aesthetics related to those partake in Hip Hop. For

the purposes of this thesis, I will use both words interchangeably and specify if I am

referring to a distinct definition of either term.

This thesis explores the relationship between culture and the self through the

work that these South Asian Americans are making. Understanding of this is

predicated on Beaman’s definition of citizenship as a cultural and social right which

is defined under the concept of cultural citizenship. Beaman’s definition relies on

culture being understood more broadly as “unifying values, practices and beliefs

that guide individuals”6. In addition, her argument relies on the idea of

multicultural citizenship, established by Will Kymlicka, as the demand for

recognition and inclusion in a heterogeneous society. Beaman describes cultural

citizenship as “a claim for...societal inclusion, despite one's difference from others”7.

Expanding on Beaman’s definition, Pakuski defines cultural citizenship as “the

right to symbolic presence and visibility (versus marginalization); the right to

dignifying representation (versus stigmatization); and the right to propagation of

5 Jeff Chang, Cant Stop Wont Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation (London: Ebury Digital, 2011). 6 George D. Kuh and Elizabeth J. Whitt, "The Invisible Tapestry. Culture in American Colleges and Universities," ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report 1 (1988):. 7 Jean Beaman, "Citizenship as Cultural: Towards a Theory of Cultural Citizenship," Sociology Compass 10, no. 10 (2016): , doi:10.1111/soc4.12415.

11

identity and maintenance”8. In my analysis of South Asian American Hip Hoppers,

I will argue that by using Hip Hop to articulate their sociopolitical identity, they are

constructing and calling for cultural citizenships that grants them social inclusion

despite their outsider status.

The way that these South Asian Hip Hoppers work towards commanding

cultural citizenship is by using culture as a site for social positioning. Social

positioning is the link between social identity and social representation. Social

positioning is the “dynamic through which positioning expresses identity and allows

individuals to build the space of reality in which their identity can be expressed”9.

Race is also a component to positioning as “racialization and positioning are

complementary and mutually reinforcing theoretical concepts in that racialization

can be seen as positioning in relation to race”10. More specifically, “‘race’, hereby,

can be understood as socially constructed and reproduced through narrative and

interpretive processes of social positioning, or ‘racialization’”11. This project looks at

participation in culture as a site for social positioning and how their identity borne

out of racialization processes and sociopolitical factors informs the decision for

South Asian Americans to use Hip Hop as a medium of representation and as a

narrative form. As well as how they enact three themes in their lyrics: policing,

8 Jan Pakulski, "Cultural Citizenship," Citizenship Studies 1, no. 1 (1997): , doi:10.1080/13621029708420648. 9 Fran Elejabarrieta, "Social Positioning: A Way to Link Social Identity and Social Representations," Social Science Information 33, no. 2 (1994): , doi:10.1177/053901894033002006. 10 Karim Murji and John Solomos, eds., Racialization: Studies in Theory and Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 11 Mason, Will. “‘Swagger’: Urban Youth Culture, Consumption and Social Positioning.” Sociology 52, no. 6 (December 2018): 1117–33. doi:10.1177/0038038517698638.

12

masculinity, and American success is self-enacted social positioning, because they

are crafting representations that reflect their identity.

Thesis This thesis argues South Asian Americans challenge and assert their social

positioning and carve out a pathway toward social inclusion in their participation in

Hip Hop, because Hip Hop arose as a method for social positioning and cultural

citizenship for Black and Latino youth in America. The lyrics that these Desi Hip

Hoppers are writing exhibit the process of social positioning, which is how

representation arises out of identity. By looking to American tools for social

positioning, they are carving a form of cultural citizenship in America that demands

the right of cultural difference in a heterogeneous society. Through these processes,

I find that Hip Hop, which arose out of a similar dynamic for Black and Latino

youth, is a method of expression for South Asian Americans that challenges and

asserts representations of self.

Roadmap In order to I begin this thesis by outlining history of South Asians in America in

Chapter 1 to provide a foundational understanding of the sociopolitical world that

these Desi Hip Hoppers are creating in. In Chapter 2, I then describe the history of

Hip Hop to give a foray into how this culture arose. Chapter 3 is where my lyrical

analysis of the Desi Hip Hoppers’ work begins with an exploration of the theme of

policing and how the Hip Hoppers critique the surveillance policies they are subject

13

to. Chapter 4 is my analysis of notions of masculinity and how our Hip Hoppers play

with ideas of manhood in their verse. Chapter 5 is an exploration of how our Hip

Hoppers display American values of success in their lyrics. Chapter 6 is where I

analyze Hip Hop as a site for social positioning for our Hip Hoppers and how their

participation in the genre is a method for commanding cultural citizenship. Finally,

I conclude by tying together all the analysis I laid out in this project to explain the

relationship between South Asian Americans and their participation in Hip Hop.

14

Chapter 1

The Desi Hip Hoppers’ Roots

South Asians comprise a mear one percent of the United States population12.

In this paper, I will be using South Asian and Desi interchangeably to refer to

individuals that hail from the countries of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan,

Maldives, Nepal, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. I will only clarify nationality or

religion (e.g., Indian or Muslim) for the purposes of making clarifications or

distinctions specific to those ethnic groups. I am making the decision to address

these Hip Hoppers as South Asian or Desi, because they are more encompassing

and inclusive terms that encapsulate a shared experience and history between

varying ethnic groups. In America, their history is connected, because they are

racialized as one group. The history of South Asians in America has been marked by

exclusionary immigration policies, otherization, and racialization. These factors are

all formative for the South Asian Hip Hoppers.

This chapter will give a brief overview of South Asians in America, beginning

with the beginning of the twentieth century working its way to modern day. After

establishing historical context, I will establish the factors that define how South

Asians fit into the American socio-political context. Defining how South Asians

12 Elizabeth M. Hoeffel et al., "The Asian Population: 2010," 2010 Census Briefs, March 2012, , https://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-11.pdf.

15

navigate through America based off of their race will help serve as a basis to

compare and contrast the ways in which their racialization differs from their Black

counterparts. This chapter is foundational to answering my thesis question, because

it now only establishes the circumstances that Desi Hip Hoppers are working in,

but it also shows how the state has positioned South Asians in American society.

Immigration Policies For the purposes of this project, I will briefly outline the modern history of

South Asians in America. I will begin in 1917, the year in which the United States

passed the Asiatic Barred Zone Act. This piece of legislation was the first expansive

immigration policy that the country had passed. The 1917 Act did not allow any

immigrants from a designated Asiatic Barred Zone13. This marked the first,

extensive act by the United States that barred entry based on country of origin. In

1923, Bhagat Singh Thind14 set forward a case to challenge the immigration and

citizenship policies. As it stood, South Asians were not afforded citizenship and the

rights that are granted with that status (land ownership, commerce, etc.)15. Mr.

Thind argued that as someone of Aryan descent, he would qualify for naturalization

under American law that used whiteness as a requirement for citizenship. He was

granted citizenship, initially in 1906. However, lawyers petitioned to rescind his

13 Erika Lee, "The “Yellow Peril” and Asian Exclusion in the Americas," Pacific Historical Review 76, no. 4 (2007): , doi:10.1525/phr.2007.76.4.537. 14 "United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind," The American Journal of International Law 17, no. 3 (1923): , doi:10.2307/2187916. 15 Erika Lee, "Legacies of the 1965 Immigration Act," South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA), October 1, 2015, , accessed February 10, 2019,

16

citizenship, and the case eventually made its way to the Supreme Court. In a

unanimous decision, the court denied Thind’s appeal, citing that he did not fall

under what the American forefathers conceived of as “white16.” This case

“illustrates well the dilemma American racists faced in trying to exclude South

Asians, and the elasticity with which they imbued the legal fabric of the United

States”17. The way that Supreme Court manipulated the way that ‘Aryan’ was

interpreted in the law signified that citizenship was a right only given to select

groups that were considered American (which under this framework was

synonymous with white or European), and South Asians were not members of that

group.

In 1952, the McCarran-Walter Act was passed. This piece of legislation

created a quota system based on profession and country of origin. It ended the

exclusion of Asians in favor of a preferential system based on a set of desired skills.

The act may have removed racial based barriers to immigration, but the quota for

South Asian countries remained low, allotting entrance to 100 Indians a year. The

1952 act also got rid of the race requirement for citizenship, which granted

naturalization status to all South Asians in the United States prior to the exclusion

act. The quota system looked at Asians as a monolith by categorizing individuals

with one or more parents from Asia as counting for the quota allocated to Asians.

16 Chanhaeng Lee, "“An Invisible Design”: Asian Americans and the Making of Whiteness in the Early Twentieth Century," Korean Journal of Urban History 11 (2014): , doi:10.22345/kjuh.2014.6.11.181. 17 David Palumbo-Liu, Asian/American: Historical Crossings of a Racial Frontier (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009).

17

This was a form of racialization, because it was a way for the state to position

Asians into the outsider status that they would occupy in society. Although Asians

were technically allowed entrance into the country, the quota did not allow for a

significant increase in immigration. The quota was then repealed by the Hart Celler

Act in 1965. This law got rid of any restrictions placed on immigration based on race

or country of origin, leading to a drastic change in the ethnic makeup of the United

States18 through an increase in immigration from previously barred or limited

countries.

Immigrating and Settling: South Asians Enter America

By the 1980s, many of the immigrants were coming from Asia, Africa, and

Latin America, which was a drastic shift from prior to 1965 when most immigrants

were coming from Europe. The 1965 Act prioritized immigrants with family ties to

the United States, so many of the immigrants coming from South Asia were

professionals with advanced degrees oftentimes in science19. This changed as time

went on, and the South Asian immigrants that began settling in the United States

became more diverse. While the diaspora was growing in size, anti-immigrant and

anti-South Asian sentiments remained strong in the American fabric. By the late

1980s, a gang called ‘Dotbusters’ committed a series of hate crimes from 1985-1993

that targeted South Asians in the New Jersey and New York area. The first serious

18 Timothy J. Hatton, "United States Immigration Policy: The 1965 Act and Its Consequences," The Scandinavian Journal of Economics 117, no. 2 (2014): , doi:10.1111/sjoe.12094. 19 Erika Lee, "Legacies of the 1965 Immigration Act," South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA), October 1, 2015, , accessed February 10, 2019, https://www.saada.org/tides/article/legacies-of-the-1965-immigration-act.

18

case of violence documented by the Dotbusters was the murder of Navroze Mody in

1987. Mody’s father sued the Hoboken police department, citing that they failed to

protect his son’s 14th amendment rights. He lost the case, and the court stated that

it was unclear whether his son’s murder was motivated by hate. The Dotbusters

continued targeting South Asians into the 1990s.

The 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers in 2001 was a pivotal event for South

Asians in America. The American diaspora went from being perceived through the

Model Minority lens (discussed in the following section) to being viewed as ‘Muslim’

or ‘terrorist’20. This new racialization resulted in an increase of hate crimes towards

Sikhs21 and detention of South Asian men22. This was a new phase for South Asians

in America, even though not all South Asians are Muslim, they were perceived as

such which impacted the way that they navigated society and self-identified. Prior

to 9/11, South Asian Americans would politicize around issues. They were propelled

into action in reaction to discriminatory policies or events. While the Dotbusters

were active, a group of students at Columbia University formed Indian Youth

Against Racism, which advocated for educational programs and changes in bias

crime laws. Following 9/11, South Asian Americans began to organize around

identity, as opposed to issues or specific causes.

20 Shiekh, Irum Ellahi. 2004. "9/11 Detentions: Racial Formation and a Hegemonic Discourse of the Muslim Terrorist." Order No. 3147002, University of California, Berkeley. 21 P. Kurien, "Immigration, Community Formation, Political Incorporation, and Why Religion Matters: Migration and Settlement Patterns of the Indian Diaspora," Sociology of Religion 75, no. 4 (2014): , doi:10.1093/socrel/sru060. 22 Sekhon, Vijay. 2003. "The Civil Rights of "Others": Antiterrorism, the Patriot Act, and Arab and South Asian American Rights in Post-9/11 American Society." Texas Journal on Civil Liberties & Civil Rights 8 (1): 117-148.

19

Due to the fact that South Asians were now being viewed as a Muslim

monolith, they began to organize behind religious and national identities. The way

that religious identities were at the forefront “in framing the group response to

racial hostility made it difficult to build broader panethnic solidarity”23. The

dominant response from non-Muslims was to distance themselves from the Muslim

community and this racialization by saying “They were not Muslim”. The attacks

on 9/11 not only changed the way that South Asians were racialized in America, but

it also deepened the divide within the community. Omi and Winant described the

process of racial formation “as the sociohistorical process through which racial

categories are created, inhabited, transformed, and destroyed”24. The racial category

that South Asians fell under went through a transformation as a result of 9/11.

While religion played a role in the way that South Asians were conceived of in the

United States (e.g., Hindoo), racialization of South Asians was now based on

physical features that would signify Muslim-ness.

The way that American policies excluded South Asians, from not only

immigrating to the country, but also from integrating into the American racial

landscape. South Asians are outsiders. That is their status, meanwhile Black

Americans are conceived as inferior. This stark contrast in social positioning creates

for an interesting dynamic between how South Asians approach their race in their

hip hop and how African Americans have expressed their racial identity in their

23 Sangay Mishra, "Race, Religion, and Political Mobilization: South Asians in the Post-9/11 United States," Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 13, no. 2 (2013): , doi:10.1111/sena.12034. 24 Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States (New York, NY: Routledge, 2015).

20

music. In the next section, I will expound on how South Asians experience their race

as a result of the history that I have outlined. In addition, I will contrast their

experience to that of Black Americans in order to place South Asians in the

American racial landscape.

A Different Kind of Racism The exclusion of Asians from the American landscape painted them as

‘foreigners’25 which put them in a precarious position in how they fit into the racial

landscape. They were not in the same position as Black Americans who were

subjugated though a brutal history of slavery, segregation, and post Jim Crow

policies. Antiblack racism is part of the foundations of the nation and systemic

violence towards Black Americans has also influenced the way that South Asians

have been positioned in American society26.

Like antiblack racism, racism towards South Asians is more complicated

than otherization, but the presence of South Asians in America has also served to

further subjugate Black Americans through the Model Minority Myth. Although the

quota system was repealed in the eighties, South Asians (specifically those from

India) that were given the opportunity to immigrate to America (through visas like

H-1B) were skilled, financially privileged, which enabled them to garner financial

25 Que-Lam Huynh, Thierry Devos, and Laura Smalarz, "Perpetual Foreigner in Ones Own Land: Potential Implications for Identity and Psychological Adjustment," Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology30, no. 2 (2011): , doi:10.1521/jscp.2011.30.2.133. 26 Vijay Prashad, The Karma of Brown Folk (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2007).

21

security much more easily than other minority groups27. They attained success in

America based on metrics of job security, socioeconomic status, etc., and this framed

how they were envisioned in American society. As a result of the ‘success’ of South

Asians in America, they are painted as docile, law abiding, and/or good minorities in

order to enforce stereotypes of African Americans and Latinos as disruptive or

violent. The model minority myth poses this contrast to argue that if certain

minority groups can ‘make it in America,’ the other groups must be making a choice

to not attain the same level of success.

However, what we know about racism makes it clear that it is much more

complicated than that. Vijay Prashad, in his book The Karma of Brown Folk, works

to undo the model minority myth by tracking a long history in which Black

Americans and South Asians have worked alongside each other in their fight for

liberation. Many civil rights leaders during the 1960s in America took note of what

freedom fighters in South Asia did in order to become autonomous from the British.

In addition, poets like Faiz Ahmed Faiz (a prolific Pakistani poet who worked

during Partition) or Langston Hughes (a Black American jazz poet that worked in

the 20th century) documented their solidary for their causes in fighting for equality

and liberation28. While there is a long, documented history of Black Americans and

South Asians working alongside each other, this does not mitigate how many

contemporary South Asian Americans engage in anti-black racism.

27 Gustavo López et al., "Key Facts about Asian Americans," Pew Research Center, September 08, 2017, , accessed 2019, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/09/08/key-facts-about-asian-americans/. 28 Prashad, Vijay. The Karma of Brown Folk. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2007.

22

Prashad argues that despite this history of solidarity, there is an

understanding among South Asian Americans that partaking in the model minority

myth is to their benefit. Racism is hegemonic, and Desis in trying to fit into that

framework often hold racist attitudes.

Conclusion

South Asians have been placed in a contradictory position in the American

framework. They have been historically excluded from this country, which has led

to the otherization and racialization they experience in the modern day. Despite

these factors, they have also been inserted into a tumultuous history of race in this

country. They have attained certain successes in their short time in this country,

which has been used to exploit and diminish Black and Latino Americans. The

community has effectively embraced this model minority status in order to fit into

the constraints of what it means to be Desi and American.

This chapter served to explain how South Asian Americans have been

positioned in society by state policies. They occupy the margins of America as

outsiders, foreigners, or threats, because the American government enacted policies

that shaped the social and material conditions of South Asians in America. This is

reflected in their Hip Hop. The state’s social positioning of South Asians is the

foundation for the raps. Their participation in Hip Hop is a method to reposition

their place in American society and challenge how they have been stereotyped or

systematically oppressed. This is all done so that they can craft cultural

representations of how they self-identify.

23

In the next chapter, I will discuss the history that led to the development of

the hip hop movement. It is hard to disentangle the cultural movement from its

socio-political context or the community that it came out of. By outlining the history

of hip hop, it will also serve to contextualize the work that South Asian hip hoppers

are creating. It is also important for the purposes of this study to understand the

foundations of a cultural movement to tease apart how it evolves when another

group begins to participate in it. As we walk through the short but rich history of

hip hop, it is important to consider that South Asian Hip Hoppers are not creating

their work in a vacuum. Just like the first grandmasters, these Desis are using this

medium of expression to communicate narratives about their distinct experiences.

What those narratives are and why they are being cultivated will become clear as

we weave together these two histories.

24

Chapter 2

Time to Get School’d on Hip Hop

“I am happy … that something I started … (hip hop) is something that comes from

humble beginnings … an immigrant story and it give[s] life to people … that’s my

happiness” - DJ Kool Herc

It would be misguided to talk about how a community has taken to a cultural

movement without outlining the history of that movement. In this chapter, I will be

giving a brief summary of the rich forty years of hip hop history and how it has

proliferated in the American mainstream to be the most consumed musical genre

today29. I will then describe some of the lyrical themes in rap music to set a

foundation for the lyrical content of South Asian American Hip Hoppers’ works.

This history will not only provide context for the cultural movement for Hip Hop,

but it will also outline how marginalized communities construct culture to

29 Hugh McIntyre, "Report: Hip-Hop/R&B Is The Dominant Genre In The U.S. For The First Time," Forbes, July 17, 2017, , accessed April 2019, https://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyre/2017/07/17/hip-hoprb-has-now-become-the-dominant-genre-in-the-u-s-for-the-first-time/#6f88b2f75383.

25

An Immigrant Story: The Origins Our story begins in the Bronx on August 11, 1973 at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue

in the Bronx, New York City30. A young Jamaican-American boy named Clive

Campbell, who would later become known as DJ Kool Herc, threw a back to school

jam at his younger sister’s behest. His father, a big fan of R&B, had a PA system

that Campbell souped-up to be an incredibly powerful sound system. He then went

out and bought records to play at the party. Drawing from what he saw at house

parties in Jamaica, Campbell noticed that the crowd would enjoy the break in songs

when the lyrics would stop and the percussions would come in. DJ Kool Herc

decided to focus on the ‘break’ and alternate two records looping ten to fifteen

second breaks and extending them out to twenty minutes31.

Dj Kool Herc’s parties grew32. They were a rare opportunity in the turbulent

Bronx for people to have a recreational activity outside of gangs or violence. At the

block parties, people began forming circles in which one person would dance in the

middle. It began with toe touching or leg kicks, and it grew to more sophisticated,

gymnastic dance moves. This is what inspired DJ Herc Kool to coin the term break

boy/girl or b-boy/girl to refer to the party attendees and how they would dance to the

30 Jeff Chang, Cant Stop Wont Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation (London: Ebury Digital, 2011). 31 Elizabeth Bush. "When the Beat Was Born: DJ Kool Herc and the Creation of Hip Hop by Laban Carrick Hill (review)." Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books 67, no. 2 (2013): 95-95. https://muse.jhu.edu/ (accessed April 10, 2019). 32 Jeff Chang, Cant Stop Wont Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation (London: Ebury Digital, 2011).

26

breaks33. DJ Kool Herc began inviting his friends to serve as ‘master of ceremonies,’

which later got shortened to MC or emcee34. They would introduce the DJ to the

crowd and keep the crowd hype through the event, by chanting or reciting verse

over the beats that DJ would play. This led to the development of what we know as

rapping.

DJ Kool Herc is not credited as being the Founder in Hip Hop, because he did

not commercially record his performances. However, his successors, like

Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa, built upon his innovations and

mentored a new generation of hip hop artists35. Following the 1970s, hip hop

spread. It was no longer just for block party attendees in the Bronx. Grandmaster

Flash and the Furious Five released ‘The Message’ in 1982. It featured social

commentary on life in the Bronx and was the group’s first and biggest commercial

success36. Set against a groovy, percussive beat, the chorus runs:

Don’t push me ‘cause I’m close to the edge

I’m trying not to lose my head

It’s like a jungle sometimes

33 Thomas Turner, "Joseph G. Schloss, Foundation: B-Boys, B-Girls, and Hip-Hop Culture in New York (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009, $19.95/£11.99). Pp. Ix 176. Isbn 978 0 19 533406 7.," Journal of American Studies 44, no. 02 (2010): , doi:10.1017/s0021875810000964. 34 Towns, Armond R. "Break Beats in the Bronx: Rediscovering Hip-Hop’s Early Years." (2018): 2396-2398. 35 Jeff Chang, Cant Stop Wont Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation (London: Ebury Digital, 2011). 36 Williams, H. C. "Grandmaster Flash." In Icons of Hip Hop: An Encyclopedia of the Movement, Music, and Culture, edited by Mickey Hess, 27-49. Greenwood Icons. Vol. 1. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2007. Gale Virtual Reference Library (accessed April 10, 2019). http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/CX2447400013/GVRL?u=txshracd2598&sid=GVRL&xid=15b3e5f0.

27

It makes me wonder how I keep from going under37

This marked a new beginning for hip hop’s lyricism. Along with its instrumentation,

it became more complex.

The genre was developed from the sampling of disco, funk, etc., and the

eighties marked the introduction of rock sampling. This era of hip hop music was

also characterized by the development of music technology, like the 808 drum

machines which ended carried a significant portion of the beats in the songs of this

time period. The lyrics of 1970s hip hop, or what was coined as ‘old school hip hop’,

were thematically centered around parties or clichés38. The 1980s brought more

sophisticated lyricism, and The Message ushered in the era of conscious rap.

Conscious rap is sociopolitical in its lyrical content often called from some type of

action or highlighted the injustices of American urban life39. In conjunction with the

music technological advancements, the arrangements of rap songs became more

multifaceted, and the genre began to spread throughout the United States.

The 1980s was marked by the development and diversification of subgenres

in Hip Hop. Acts like Run DMC, Public Enemy, and LL Cool J established the new

school of Hip Hop which infused rock into its music arrangement and the

instrumentation was simplified with a heavier emphasis on drums and percussion.

In 1990, Public Enemy, Hip Hop’s self-proclaimed "prophets of rage," released Fear

37 Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five Featuring Melle Mel and Duke Bootee, "The Message," Clifton "Jiggs" Chase, Sylvia Robinson, 1982, MP3. 38 David Toop and David Toop, Rap Attack: African Rap to Global Hip Hop. No. 3 (London: Serpents Tail, 2000). 39 Matthew Oware, "(Un)conscious (popular) Underground: Restricted Cultural Production and Underground Rap Music," Poetics 42 (2014): , doi:10.1016/j.poetic.2013.12.001.

28

of a Black Planet which was considered a huge commercial success. It was named

the best album of the year by critics, and it explored the complexities of the African

American experience. Later that year, Hip Hop finally entered the Billboard Top

100 with Vanilla Ice’s ‘Ice Ice Baby’40. 1990 was a monumental year for the genre as

it had reached a new level of popularity in the nation and it was legitimized by its

presence on the top charts41.

By this point, rap had infiltrated most metropolitan areas in America, and

different subgenres began to develop that were often characteristic of their area of

origin. The most prominent example of this was the rivalry between West coast and

East coast rappers. Hip Hop emerged in the West Coast in the late 1980s. With Ice

T’s release of the single ‘6 in the Mornin’,’ the gangsta rap scene in Los Angeles

grew exponentially, and from that came artists like Eazy E, Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg

who would become defining figures in hip hop42. In the East Coast, rap was revived,

after experiencing a lull in musical acts that were pushing the genre forward, by the

Wu Tang Clan. The rivalry between the coastal rap scenes reached a climax with

Tupac Shakur (or 2Pac) and The Notorious B.I.G (or Biggie Smalls). Both rappers

released songs, from 1995 to 1996, targeted at each other, their labels, and anyone

40 Sidney Madden, "Today in Hip-Hop: "Ice Ice Baby" Becomes First Rap Single to Hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 - XXL," XXL Mag, November 03, 2016, , accessed April 2019, https://www.xxlmag.com/news/2016/11/today-hip-hop-ice-ice-baby-first-rap-single-no-1-billboard-hot-100/. 41 Hilburn, Robert. "Rap--The Power and the Controversy : Success Has Validated Pop's Most Volatile Form, but Its Future Impact Could Be Shaped by the Continuing Public Enemy Uproar." Los Angeles Times. February 04, 1990. Accessed April 2019. 42 Ben Westhoff, Original Gangstas: The Untold Story of Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, Ice Cube, Tupac Shakur, and the Birth of West Coast Rap (New York: Hachette Books, 2016).

29

connected to them. The media covered the rivalry extensively, which roped fans in

and pressured them to take sides43.

The rivalry ended with Tupac’s death in 1996 when he suffered four gunshot

wounds in a drive by shooting in Las Vegas44. Biggie Smalls was later shot to death

in Los Angeles in 199745. Both rappers are lauded as powerful figures in Hip Hop

and are hailed as some of the greatest. Their influence burgeoned a new generation

of rappers that were inspired by Tupac’s ability to express political commentary and

his frustrations with the brutality and violence he faced as a result of a racist

political system and a volatile urban landscape46 and Biggie Smalls’ low, drawn out

delivery of his multilayered autobiographical prose47. Tupac and Biggie Smalls are

attributed with giving the genre of Hip Hop credibility as an expressive medium

with their poetic verse and incisive social commentary48.

A New Millenia: Hip Hop Gets Crunk Hip Hop continued its growth and diversification into the 2000s. This decade

was defined by the development of Crunk. Lil Jon, a rapper from Atlanta, invented

43 Jeff Chang, Cant Stop Wont Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation (London: Ebury Digital, 2011). 44 Jon Pareles, "Tupac Shakur, 25, Rap Performer Who Personified Violence, Dies," The New York Times, September 14, 1996, , accessed April 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/1996/09/14/arts/tupac-shakur-25-rap-performer-who-personified-violence-dies.html. 45 Todd S. Purdum, "Rapper Is Shot to Death in Echo of Killing 6 Months Ago," The New York Times, March 10, 1997, , accessed April 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/1997/03/10/us/rapper-is-shot-to-death-in-echo-of-killing-6-months-ago.html. 46 Stanford, Karin L. "Keepin' It Real in Hip Hop Politics: A Political Perspective of Tupac Shakur." Journal of Black Studies 42, no. 1 (2011): 3-22. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25780789. 47 Kishbaugh, Justin R. "The Notorious BIG: A Biography." (2009): 668-670. 48 Amanda Nell Edgar, Keven James Rudrow, “I Think of Him as an Ancestor”: Tupac Shakur Fans and the Intimacy of Pop Cultural Heritage, Communication, Culture and Critique, Volume 11, Issue 4, December 2018, Pages 642–658, https://doi.org/10.1093/ccc/tcy032

30

this subgenre in 1997 with Get Crunk and furthered its popularity with Crunk

Juice in 200449. The word ‘crunk’ comes from ‘cranked up’, which was used to refer

to parties that were wild. As crunk became popular in the American mainstream,

crunk became synonymous with being inebriated and all Hip Hop that came from

the South became categorized as crunk50. The subgenre was characterized by an

emphasis on percussions, with the beat echoing the pace of reggaeton, the lyrics are

not a focal point - as the music is for partying.

By the mid 2000s, Alternative Hip Hop was popularized by artists like Kanye

West (with College Dropout and Graduation), MIA, Jay-Z, and OutKast. The

subgenre is notable for its nonconformity to stereotypical notions of Hip Hop51. It is

centered around lyricism and draws inspiration from the instrumentation of Indie

Music that was gaining popularity during the 2000s as well. Alt Hip Hop’s ability to

gain momentum in the general public was not from radio play, but rather a product

of the digital age of music. The growth of streaming and free mixtape platforms

marked a new era for music, but more importantly Hip Hop52. Artists like B.o.B.,

Lupe Fiasco, and Wale were also prominent figures during this time.

49 Kelefa Sanneh, "Lil John Crunks Up the Volume," The New York Times, November 28, 2004, , accessed April 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/28/arts/music/lil-john-crunks-up-the-volume.html. 50 Darren E. Grem, ""The South Got Something to Say": Atlantas Dirty South and the Southernization of Hip-Hop America," Southern Cultures 12, no. 4 (2006): , doi:10.1353/scu.2006.0045. 51 ""Can't Tell Me Nothing": Symbolic Violence, Education, and Kanye West," Taylor & Francis, , accessed April 2019, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03007766.2011.539831. 52 Bonsu Thompson, "How Streaming Revolutionized Rap's Album Rollouts On The Road To No. 1," NPR, September 28, 2017, , accessed April 2019, https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2017/09/28/554220367/how-streaming-revolutionized-raps-album-rollouts-on-the-road-to-no-1.

31

Poetic Justice: Rap Reaches New Heights in the 2010s Kanye West dropped My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy at the end of 2010,

which is critically acclaimed as one of the greatest albums of all time53. It featured

artists from Elton John to Jame Blake, and it centered around the excess that came

with fame and celebrity. Its rich production established a type of maximalism in

Hip Hop and set the groundwork for later works that were just as lush. Kanye West

continued his exploration of celebrity in his collaborative album with Jay Z, Watch

the Throne, in 2011. They also contributed to the development of trap music in their

song H•A•M which became a predominant form of Hip Hop in the 2010s. The

formation of trap brought about the rise of artists like Migos, Waka Flocka Flame,

Gucci Mane, etc. It originated in Atlanta, where the term ‘trap’ was first used, and

it was used to refer to the dealing of drugs which is a predominant topic in the

subgenre. The 2010s marked a new level of success for Hip Hop artists, and it was

also the point that Hip Hop became the most consumed genre of music in America54

and the most represented genre on Billboard55. As a result, the genres and styles of

Hip Hop that was represented in the music charts was more varied than past

decades.

53 Ryan Dombal and Ryan Dombal, "Kanye West: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy," Pitchfork, November 22, 2010, , accessed April 2019, https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14880-my-beautiful-dark-twisted-fantasy/. 54 McIntyre, Hugh. "Report: Hip-Hop/R&B Is The Dominant Genre In The US For The First Time." Forbes, July 17 (2017). 55 Keith Caulfield, "U.S. Music Consumption Up 12.5% in 2017, R&B/Hip-Hop Is Year's Most Popular Genre," Billboard, January 03, 2018, , accessed April 2019, https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/chart-beat/8085975/us-music-consumption-up-2017-rb-hip-hop-most-popular-genre.

32

What Is All This Rap About: Themes & Prose Now that I have outlined how Hip Hop has been received and evolved in

America and the different styles that have developed. I will now delve into the

lyrical content of Hip Hop, what themes are being explored in the music, and what

sociopolitical factors are informing the Hip Hoppers’ work. The main themes of Hip

Hop are:

● Social Injustice including anti-Black racism, police brutality, poverty or

economic hardship, and mass incarceration56,

● Calling for social action or community organization,

● Expressing feelings of isolation, frustration, or any emotions related to the

Hip Hoppers’ experience,

● Notions of masculinity57,

● Drugs and the violence associated with dealing drugs or gangs,

● Celebrity, fame, or wealth that comes along with succeeding as a Hip Hop

artist.

In this section, I will briefly describe these themes in Hip Hop and citing examples

of them in songs to highlight how they function within the prose of the music.

The Bronx in 1970s was referred to as ‘burning’58, because it was a period in

which the borough experienced a series of arson that burned down a large portion of

56 Kamau Rashid, "“Start the Revolution”: Hip Hop Music and Social Justice Education," Journal of Pan African Studies 9, no. 4 (July 1, 2016). 57 Crystal Belle, "From Jay-Z to Dead Prez: Examining Representations of Black Masculinity in Mainstream Versus Underground Hip-Hop Music," Journal of Black Studies 45, no. 4 (2014): , doi:10.1177/0021934714528953. 58 Liz Ronk and Lily Rothman, "The Get Down: See Photos of the Bronx in the 1970s," Time, , accessed April 12, 2019, http://time.com/4431300/see-the-bronx-in-the-days-of-the-get-down/.

33

tracts. The majority of the fires occurred in South Bronx, the poorest area. In

addition, the Bronx was also characterized by high rates of poverty and

unemployment during this time. The gangs of the Bronx also began to grow and

increase in influence, and the Bronx was described as the ‘poster child for urban

decay’59. The Bronx was in a volatile state, and Hip Hop is credited as bringing

about some relief to the violence by turning some gangs nonviolent, most notably

Afrika Bambaataa’s Zulu Nation60. This informed the content of hip hop lyrics,

because that was the material conditions that these Hip Hoppers were coming up

in. Therefore, artists like Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa put a central

focus on the struggles of urban life.

Hip Hop came from the tradition of jazz poetry, which was the blending of

poetry and jazz. It relied on the flow of improvisation61, like that of freestyle rap.

Jazz poetry’s content began with poems that were based on the rhythm of Jazz

music, and Langston Hughes championed the medium of expression by crafting

lyrical prose that centered around the Black community experience62. The jazz

poetry movement evolved into the Beats Generation following World War II, and it

laid the groundwork for how Hip Hop would become an expressive form for African

Americans in the 1970s. The evolution of culture for the Black community was

59 Aprahamian, Serouj. “Hip-Hop, Gangs, and the Criminalization of African American Culture: A Critical Appraisal of Yes Yes Y’all.” Journal of Black Studies 50, no. 3 (April 2019): 298–315. doi:10.1177/0021934719833396. 60 Lamotte, Martin. "Rebels without a pause: Hip-Hop and resistance in the city." International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 38, no. 2 (2014): 686-694. 61 Barry Wallenstein et al., "JazzPoetry/Jazz-Poetry/"JazzPoetry"???" African American Review 27, no. 4 (1993): , doi:10.2307/3041904. 62 Andrew Donnelly, "Langston Hughes on the DL," College Literature 44, no. 1 (2017): , doi:10.1353/lit.2017.0001.

34

cultivated as a result of their socio-political circumstances, and these forms of

cultural expression became mediums of social critique to reflect the conditions and

realities for African Americans63.

As I have outlined through this chapter, Hip Hop developed into various

subgenres, and artists began to create their own renditions of the genre. As it grew

and became a more lucrative endeavor, the lyrical content began to reflect the

changing material conditions for these rappers. In Kanye West’s Can’t Tell Me

Nothing, he contemplates the effects fame has had on his psyche and faith,

I feel the pressure, under more scrutiny

And what I do? Act more stupidly

Bought more jewelry, more Louis V

My Momma couldn't get through to me64

Despite Kanye’s ascension in fame and celebrity, he feels pressure to uphold

community values which he finds to be debilitating and at odds with his impulse to

relish in his newfound success. There is a tension that these famous rappers are

contending with that reflect the paradox of the individualism of American values

and the collectivism of the Black American experience65.

The cultural movement of Hip Hop arose as a method of social positioning for

African American and Latino youth. Due to the systematic inequality and racism

63 Kamau Rashid, "“Start the Revolution”: Hip Hop Music and Social Justice Education," Journal of Pan African Studies 9, no. 4 (July 1, 2016). 64 Kanye West, writer, "Can't Tell Me Nothing," in Can't Tell Me Nothing, Kanye West, Kanye West; DJ Toomp, 2008. 65 Rhonda Wells-Wilbon, Nigel D. Jackson, and Jerome H. Schiele, "Lessons From the Maafa: Rethinking the Legacy of Slain Hip-Hop Icon Tupac Amaru Shakur," Journal of Black Studies 40, no. 4 (2008): , doi:10.1177/0021934708315441.

35

that positioned them in inferior positions in society, Hip Hop served as a method of

expression and representation for these communities to assert and challenge

notions of self that was informed by their social and political circumstances. The

slew of subgenres that developed as Hip Hop grew across the nation illustrates how

the music was a reflection of the social and material conditions of those specific

cities or regions. There is a richness and diversity in thought and expression that

Hip Hop demonstrates through its lyricism, and there are threads that can be

brought together to tell illustrate how Hip Hop functions as a narrative form. Rap

music gives insight into their community experience through prose that are semi-

autobiographical.

Hip Hop is considered to have given voice to those that felt like outsiders in

society66. Through partaking in the process of social position, rappers are

commanding cultural citizenship, which is the right to social inclusion despite

difference. Hip Hop is often used as a method of social critique, and so their goals of

social belonging or acceptance do not necessarily require them to assimilate or

aspire to hegemony. There is a sociohistorical framework that guides their

performance of masculinity, their critique of policing, and their enactment of

success in their music. It is motivated by a desire to claim or command cultural

citizenship.

As we delve into the content of South Asian Hip Hoppers’ work, it is

important to consider the prominent themes within the traditional actors in Hip

66 Jeff Chang, Cant Stop Wont Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation (London: Ebury Digital, 2011).

36

Hop and how South Asian Americans apply them to their experience to weave

together their American immigrant story. For the purposes of this project, it is

appropriate to consider South Asian American participation in Hip Hop as a

subgenre of the broader cultural movement. In my study of their lyrics, I will look at

how our South Asian rappers use the lyrics of their raps to reposition how they have

been placed in society by the state. And in doing so, they challenge and assert

notions of self to command a right to social inclusion in America despite their

outsider status.

37

Chapter 3

Law Enforcement in Flow

In this section, I will analyze lyrics from South Asian hip hoppers that

discuss law enforcement, specifically due to post 9/11 policing. I will then compare

how their experience differs from Hip Hoppers before them, specifically Black

artists in the 80s. I will then conclude this section by explaining how documenting

their experiences with law enforcement in their music is a way for these South

Asian hip hoppers to self-identify as a racialized minority in the United States and

how they use Hip Hop as a method of critique to challenge how they have been

positioned in society by the state.

The song “T5,” by Swet Shop Boys, a rap duo consisting of Heems and Riz

MC, opens with the lyrics “Inshallah, mashallah. Hopefully no martial law.” Heems,

who is from Queens in New York, is referring to the policing that South Asians

experienced as a result of post-9/11 policies. The USA Patriot Act, short for Uniting

and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept

and Obstruct Terrorism, passed forty-five days after the 2001 attack on the Twin

Towers, was the first in a slew of surveillance laws that America passed for the

purpose of “deter[ing] and punish[ing] terrorist acts.”67. What made the Patriot Act

67 "The USA PATRIOT Act: Preserving Life and Liberty," The United States Department of Justice, , https://www.justice.gov/archive/ll/what_is_the_patriot_act.pdf.

38

especially relevant for South Asian hip-hop artists was how the law indirectly

singled out South Asians, namely those in New York City.68 Vijay Sekhon, in an

essay outlining how the Patriot Act impacted the civil rights of South Asians and

Arabs in America, writes that “Arab and South Asian Americans have been

targeted by the Patriot Act, and that many of their constitutional rights have been

subverted in post-September 11th America as a result”69.

The line is also likely a reference to Ustad Daman, a Punjabi poet during the

Partition of British India in 194770, who wrote a poem titled “Martial Law.” The

poem opens with, “Two gods hold my country in their sway. Martial law and La

Illaha have here their heyday”71. Heems, who is also Punjabi, is likely drawing a

line between his experience in America under scrutinous surveillance laws and

General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq’s imposition of martial in Pakistan in 197772.

However, the contexts severely contrast from one another. The “martial law” that

Heems refers to would be grounded in Islamophobia and criminalization of South

Asian communities, whereas the martial law enacted during Ustad Daman’s time

was a result of political instability in Pakistan.73

68 Louise Cainkar and Sunaina Maira (2005) Targeting Arab/Muslim/South Asian Americans: Criminalization and Cultural Citizenship. Amerasia Journal: 2005, Vol. 31, No. 3, pp. 1-28. 69 Sekhon, Vijay. 2003. "The Civil Rights of "Others": Antiterrorism, the Patriot Act, and Arab and South Asian American Rights in Post-9/11 American Society." Texas Journal on Civil Liberties & Civil Rights 8 (1): 117-148. 70 "Ustad Daman," Punjabi Kavita, , accessed December 17, 2018, https://www.punjabi-kavita.com/Ustad-Daman.php. 71 "Ustad Daman: The Poet Laureate of the Twentieth Century Punjab," Revolutionary Democracy, , accessed December 17, 2018, http://revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv11n2/daman.htm. 72 Burki, Shahid Javed. "Pakistan under Zia, 1977-1988." Asian Survey 28, no. 10 (1988): 1082-100. doi:10.2307/2644708. 73 https://www.jstor.org/stable/2644708#metadata_info_tab_contents

39

Trouble With TSA As the chorus of “T5” kicks in, Heems, in his raspy tone, sings,

Oh no, we’re in trouble, TSA always wanna burst my bubble

Always get a random check when I rock the stubble74.

TSA, the Transportation Security Administration, was established as a result of the

attacks on 9/11. TSA are responsible for implementing many of the regulations that

were enacted in the post-9/11 era, which has resulted in an increase in racial

profiling for South Asian travelers,75 who end up being subject to more inspection.

The “bubble” that Heems refers to may allude to the personal space that he feels is

being violated when TSA agents pat him down or order him to stand in a body

scanner during security checks. It can also be an allusion to how disillusioning

interactions with TSA can be, because they serve as reminders for how the state

views South Asians/Muslims.

As a result of the racialization of Islamophobia, stubble, or facial hair, is

largely associated with terrorists76, which is why Heems says he is guaranteed to be

randomly checked when he goes through airport security. The racial profiling of

Muslims can be understood as, “Physical markers, such as religious clothing

(women), and a Muslim name (men), result in Muslims being viewed as permanent

foreigners and un-American. Headscarves are … signs of oppression, a fact which

74 Riz Ahmed and Himanshu Suri, perfs., "T5," in Cashmere, Swet Shop Boys, Redinho, 2016, MP3. 75 "Practice of Profiling: Traveling While Brown," SAALT, March 2010, , http://saalt.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/SAALT-Issue-Briefs-on-Impact-of-Racial-and-Religious-Profinling-_Travel.pdf. 76 Considine, Craig. 2017. "The Racialization of Islam in the United States: Islamophobia, Hate Crimes, and “Flying while Brown”." Religions 8, no. 9: 165.

40

serves to underscore the civilizational border between American-ness and Muslim-

ness” (Garner and Selod).77 By using physical markers to identify who is considered

Muslim is a way of racializing the religion, because race is derived from physical

appearance and cultural traits78. It should be noted that the criminalization and

profiling that Heems and Riz MC are referencing is pointed to very specific

circumstances, like air travel.

The song ends with Riz MC and Heems rifting off of each other and reciting

the lines, “Terminal 5, Terminal One. Think we're termites, wanna terminate us”

(2016).79 They refer to themselves as termites, which indicates that these policies

dehumanize the hip hoppers and those in their communities. As aforementioned,

the expansions in airport security were part of nationwide measures intended to

circumvent national and international terrorist acts. What resulted was the racial

profiling of South Asian men, specifically those that fit into the racialized caricature

of “Muslim.” The reason why these policies targeted those who fit the image of a

Muslim is because Muslims were viewed as a threat to national security following

9/11. Therefore, the hip hoppers and their communities were treated as such.

Riz MC and Heems wrote and produced their album in New York City, which

was the site from which many of the 1,200 individuals detained after 9/11 hailed.

The legal grounds for the detention by the United States government was based on

77 Garner, Steve, and Saher Selod. “The Racialization of Muslims: Empirical Studies of Islamophobia.” Critical Sociology 41, no. 1 (January 2015): 9–19. doi:10.1177/0896920514531606. 78 JOHNSON, B. D. and KING, R. D. (2017), FACIAL PROFILING: RACE, PHYSICAL APPEARANCE, AND PUNISHMENT*. Criminology, 55: 520-547. doi:10.1111/1745-9125.12143 79 Riz Ahmed and Himanshu Suri, perfs., "T5," in Cashmere, Swet Shop Boys, Redinho, 2016, MP3.

41

a profile of those who partook in the hijacking of the planes on 9/11. 33% of those

detained were Pakistani, even though none of the people responsible for the attacks

were from Pakistan. The mass detention of these individuals was a violation of their

civil liberties, and it marked the institutionalization of racial profiling of South

Asian men by the federal government80. By detaining these individuals and

profiling them at security checkpoints, agents of the U.S government are trying to

“terminate” the hip hoppers, and their community.

Surveillance and Trapping In the song, “Phone Tap,” Riz MC raps “I know they’re tapping up my camera

phone, I hear weird noises when mans at home.”81 One of the expansions of power

enacted in the Patriot Act was “under sections 206 and 207… the CIA and FBI

[were] ... allowed to conduct wiretaps in a wide range of jurisdictions” (Sekhon

2003)82. In the outro, Riz MC and Heems harmonize the lines,

Yo they infiltrate the mosque

Tap the phones the boys in blue

And the FBI sting trying to poison up the youth

The youth? It's entrapment

80 Shiekh, Irum Ellahi. 2004. "9/11 Detentions: Racial Formation and a Hegemonic Discourse of the Muslim Terrorist." Order No. 3147002, University of California, Berkeley. http://ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/docview/305213113?accountid=7118. 81 Riz Ahmed and Himanshu Suri, perfs., "Phone Tap," in Cashmere, Swet Shop Boys, Redinho, 2016, MP3. 82 Sekhon, Vijay. 2003. "The Civil Rights of "Others": Antiterrorism, the Patriot Act, and Arab and South Asian American Rights in Post-9/11 American Society." Texas Journal on Civil Liberties & Civil Rights 8 (1): 117-148.

42

They tap us like we're trapping83

The hip hoppers are confronting another form of criminalization and surveillance

they experience due to their racial identity. Riz MC and Heems claim that law

enforcement is partaking in the illegal activity of entrapment84, when the police

induce someone into committing a crime that they would not otherwise commit. One

of those crimes mentioned is trapping, which is a slang term for selling drugs.

Both rappers recite in the outro of the song, “They put the alphabet boys on

our case, NSA, CIA, want to put us in our place, Pull up in a Wraith in the mirror

it's the jakes, No new friends in case they're undercover snakes, Stares on the

plane, guess it's just another day.”85 The alphabet boys is a slang term for different

government agencies, like FBI. These law enforcement agencies are using methods

like entrapment or building criminal cases against the hip hoppers and their

communities to control them, and they are being tailed. The hip hoppers are unable

to make new friends in suspicion that they be undercover for these government

agencies.

The hip hoppers are used to being stared at on the plane by their own peers,

which means that the criminalization has extended beyond government agents and

into their interactions with others. The lyrics are set over a very simple beat that

consists of a tabla (drum) and a repeating flute melody. The repetition of the six

83 Riz Ahmed and Himanshu Suri, perfs., "Phone Tap," in Cashmere, Swet Shop Boys, Redinho, 2016, MP3. 84 "How the USA-Patriot Act Expands Law Enforcement "Sneak and Peek" Warrants," American Civil Liberties Union, , accessed December 17, 2018, https://www.aclu.org/other/how-usa-patriot-act-expands-law-enforcement-sneak-and-peek-warrants. 85 Riz Ahmed and Himanshu Suri, perfs., "Phone Tap," in Cashmere, Swet Shop Boys, Redinho, 2016, MP3.

43

beats from the flute are almost percussive in nature and help drive home the

suspicion and anxiety the hip hoppers are experiencing in their lines. The

surveillance impacts their psychology and their interpersonal conduct.

The Police Go to War From the inception of hip hop in the 1970s, selling drugs and the tenuous

relationship between hip hop artists and law enforcement have not only been major

themes in the lyricism, but also contributing factors to the development of the

genre.86 However the way in which South Asian hip hoppers document their

relationship with law enforcement is vastly different from the tradition of songs like

F*** tha Police by 1980s hip hop group N.W.A.87 In this song, N.W.A rap, “A young

n**** got it bad ‘cause I’m brown, And not the other color, so police think They have

the authority to kill a minority” and “Searchin’ my car, lookin’ for the product,

Thinkin’ every n**** is sellin’ narcotics”88. These lines echo many of the concerns

that our South Asian hip hoppers express in their songs - racial profiling, overreach

by law enforcement, and unwarranted search and seizure.

N.W.A released “F*** tha Police” in 1988, a time during which the War on

Drugs, started by Ronald Reagan in the 1970’s, took on a new life under the Bush

86 Jeff Chang, Cant Stop Wont Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation (London: Ebury Digital, 2011). 87 Amanda Nell Edgar (2016) Commenting Straight from the Underground: N.W.A., Police Brutality, and YouTube as a Space for Neoliberal Resistance, Southern Communication Journal, 81:4, 223-236, DOI: 10.1080/1041794X.2016.1200123 88 Ice Cube and MC Ren, writers, "F*** Da Police," recorded 1988, in Straight Outta Compton, N.W.A, Dr. Dre & DJ Yella, 1988, MP3.

44

administration.89 In 1968, Nixon stated that, “Doubling the conviction rate in this

country would do far more to cure crime in America than quadrupling the funds for

[the] War on Poverty.”90 In 1984, the Sentencing Reform Act91 was passed, requiring

mandatory minimum sentencing for drug possession and trafficking charges. This

led to increased incarceration rates for petty drug crimes. Nixon and Reagan

expanded the power of law enforcement to search and seize individuals and allowed

the American court system to inflict harsher sentencing92. The song was written to

protest the abuse that resulted from War on Drug policies.

South Asian Hip Hoppers Make Rhymes and Race Natasha Sharma, in Hip Hop Desis, writes that rappers feel that self-

identifying as South Asian is important because of the racialization of this

panethnic identity93. In this case, the racialization that these South Asian hip

hoppers are experiencing is due to post 9/11 policies that led to increased policing

and profiling of the artists and their communities. This concept can also be

understood through the theory of Racial Formation formulated by Michael Omi and

Howard Winant, which states that “Races do not emerge full-blown. They are the

results of diverse historical practices and are continually subject to challenge over

89 "War on Drugs," Encyclopædia Britannica, December 05, 2018, , accessed December 17, 2018, https://www.britannica.com/topic/war-on-drugs. 90 Ta-Nehisi Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy (London: Penguin Books, 2018), 250-255. 91 Robert Howell, Sentencing Reform Lessons: From the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 to the Feeney Amendment, 94 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 1069 (2003-2004) 92 William R. Kelly, Future of Crime and Punishment: Smart Policies for Reducing Crime and Saving Money (S.l.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016). 93 Nitasha Tamar. Sharma, Hip Hop Desis: South Asian Americans, Blackness, and a Global Race Consciousness (Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press, 2010).

45

their definition and meaning” (2014)94. What Sharma, Omi, and Winant have

articulated is a driving factor for South Asians taking to hip hop as an expressive

medium. The racialization of South Asians and Muslim-ness is an intentional move

by the state to justify surveillance and policing practices, which is why their racial

identity is integral to their performance in Hip Hop.

The term South Asian was constructed as an ethnic identity in the 1980s by

second generation immigrants from the subcontinent as a way to build community

around their shared panethnic lineage. However, what resulted was an erasure of

the varying experiences of being South Asian in America, and it “cast Indians as the

dominant ethnic group but also promote[d] middle- and upper-middle-class

experiences as representative of South Asian culture...so the conceptualization of

South Asian identity in the United States paradoxically encompasses...a desire for

ethnic solidarity and an erasure of those South Asians who do not embrace a

panethnic identity” (Bhalla 2016)95.

Our hip hoppers do not fall under the criterion of Hindu, middle or upper

class, and Indian, which is what the majority of individuals in ‘South Asian’

organizations or groups are. While “[a] shared identity is often thought to be the

bond that unites members of a community. But...communities are constituted not

solely through celebratory notions of shared identity but through various acts of

94 Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States (New York, NY: Routledge, 2015), 3-13. 95 BHALLA, TAMARA. "THE GLUE THAT KEEPS US TOGETHER: Constructing Ethnic Community in the NetSAP Book Club." In Reading Together, Reading Apart: Identity, Belonging, and South Asian American Community, 27-53. Urbana; Chicago; Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2016. http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/stable/10.5406/j.ctt1hfr09v.5.

46

production and consumption” (Bhalla)96. Due to the fact that hip hoppers do not fall

under the umbrella of mainstream desi-ness and they do not consume or reproduce

cultural markers of their ethnic heritage. They also do not want to go down the

pathways of the Model Minority for cultural representation. As a result, they look to

Hip Hop for cultural consumption and production.

South Asian hip hoppers, in their flows discussing surveillance policies, are

concerned with how they have been categorized racially as a result of American

policies. Sharma writes that

Instead of imagining ethnicity as a chosen and malleable self-expression and

race as a ‘problem’ fixed and imposed by others, they find that race provides a

sense of self-efficacy and empowerment. By claiming their non-White status,

the artists reconcile their racialization by others with the affiliations and

politics that they themselves have elected. They engage in making race:

changing the nature and meaning of existing racial categories by producing

their own versions”97.

By crafting lines about how South Asian hip hoppers feel targeted by law

enforcement, they are engaging in what Sharma calls making race. They are

performing their racial identity by crafting raps that focus on their racialized

experiences, which is in this case interactions with institutions of policing. It is

96 BHALLA, TAMARA. "THE GLUE THAT KEEPS US TOGETHER: Constructing Ethnic Community in the NetSAP Book Club." In Reading Together, Reading Apart: Identity, Belonging, and South Asian American Community, 27-53. Urbana; Chicago; Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2016. http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/stable/10.5406/j.ctt1hfr09v.5. 97 Nitasha Tamar. Sharma, Hip Hop Desis: South Asian Americans, Blackness, and a Global Race Consciousness (Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press, 2010).

47

clear in the raps that how law enforcement treats the hip hoppers and their

community is imposed onto them. But they are using those experiences that I had

noted were contained to specific circumstances to do accomplish two things:

1. Using the prominent theme of policing in Hip Hop to challenge the way

that the state has imposed surveillance policies upon their

communities;

2. Commanding cultural citizenship, or the right to social inclusion in

order to envision a future where South Asians can exist in American

society without the state surveilling them.

While policies like the Patriot Act are grounded in the view that South

Asians are other or a threat, the hip hoppers are choosing to use their experiences

as a result of these policies as a way to claim social inclusion. They are looking, not

at their parents’ country of origin, for social location, but their standing in the U.S.

They are also drawing from the tradition in hip hop of expressing frustration with

law enforcement for abuse and overreach98 to weave together how the American

state surveils communities of color at an institutional and individual level. Their

minority status would leave them largely voiceless, if it were not for hip hop99.

Which is why their participation in Hip Hop is an incredibly powerful tool to

reframe how they have been positioned by the state and craft a narrative that is

reflective of their experiences and identity. In addition, their participation in Hip

98 Karvelis, Noah. “Race, Class, Gender, and Rhymes: Hip-Hop as Critical Pedagogy.” Music Educators Journal 105, no. 1 (September 2018): 46–50. doi:10.1177/0027432118788138. 99 Nitasha Tamar. Sharma, Hip Hop Desis: South Asian Americans, Blackness, and a Global Race Consciousness (Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press, 2010).

48

Hop as a method of social and political critique is a way to challenge how they have

been represented and placed by the state and a call for cultural citizenship to exist

without scrutiny.

49

Chapter 4

The Ideal Man

South Asian American men have been cast as docile or asexual under the

Model Minority Myth. And Hip Hop music poses a stark contrast for that expression

of masculinity. The stereotypical expression of masculinity in rap music is focused

on hypermasculinity, violence, and an inflated sex drive. The way that South Asian

American hip hoppers enact these stereotypical performances of masculinity in

their lyrics is a method used to combat how they have been understood in American

society. Instead of being painted in the way American society conceives of South

Asian men, they are re-writing their narrative through their raps under a different

framework of masculinity. In this chapter, I will explore the ways that South Asian

Hip Hoppers utilize their raps to craft a new identity that rejects their outsider

status in favor of one that is more expansive.

Stanley Thangaraj, in “Ballin’ Indo-Pak style”, uses another marker of Black

culture, basketball, to explore the way that South Asian American men formulate

their gender identity100. Thangaraj concludes that their participation in b-ball is

way for South Asian American men to “utilize aspects of African American

aesthetics, such as slang, particular clothing and stylized body movements, to

100 Stanley Thangaraj, "Ballin’ Indo-Pak Style: Pleasures, Desires, and Expressive Practices of ‘South Asian American’ Masculinity," International Review for the Sociology of Sport 45, no. 3 (2010): , doi:10.1177/1012690210371047.

50

manufacture a relation between South Asian Americans’ sense of ‘cool’, masculinity,

and urbanity.” He argues that South Asian American masculinity is stereotypically

represented as the “brains”, African American masculinity is stereotypically

represented as “brawn”, and that white masculinity is the perfect embodiment of

both101. By enacting components of Blackness, South Asian men are bridging the

gap in their masculinity to also strike some balance between brains and brawns102.

Post 9/11 policies have created another image of masculinity for Desi men

which is a stark foil to what has been previously described103. Due to the

surveillance policies and increased policing of South Asian men (which will be more

extensively discussed in the next chapter), Desi men are also looked at as religious

fanatics that have an affinity for violence and hypermasculinity. They are vilified

and perceived as threats to the state, which makes their existence at odds or in

contradiction to the American state104. While the same factors are not informing the

way that Black men are conceived of in American society, there are similarities in

how both masculinities are at odds with the accepted norms. African American

men’s assertion of hypermasculinity has its own historical reasons, and Hip Hop

serves as a mechanism to challenge and critique these established hegemonies.

101 Vijay Prashad, The Karma of Brown Folk (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2007). 102 Stanley Thangaraj, "Competing Masculinities: South Asian American Identity Formation in Asian American Basketball Leagues," South Asian Popular Culture 11, no. 3 (2013): , doi:10.1080/14746689.2013.820482. 103 Ahmad, Muneer. "Homeland Insecurities: Racial Violence the Day after September 11." Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts 4, no. 3 (2011): 337-50. doi:10.2979/racethmulglocon.4.3.337. 104 Maira, Sunaina. ""Good" and "Bad" Muslim Citizens: Feminists, Terrorists, and U.S. Orientalisms." Feminist Studies 35, no. 3 (Fall, 2009): 631-656,664. http://ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/89246407?accountid=7118.

51

South Asian men are faced with opposing perspectives of masculinity, and Hip Hop

is way for them to explore and establish their gender identity, while also critiquing

the ways in which they are perceived.

The nature of Hip Hop’s expressive power is derived from the fact that “Hip

Hop started out by giving a voice to the voiceless. It was an expression of rage that

poor African Americans and Latinos felt about their dire situation and about the

political issues in America.” Since the South Asian American diaspora is a young

community, there are little established tools or cultural lexicon that they can utilize

to express their own critiques or grievances with American politics or their social

circumstances105. This is part of what makes rap music appealing for our Desi Hip

Hoppers. They can take an already established medium of expression to articulate

their experiences, or in this case, their enactments of masculinity. Like Black men

in America, South Asian men “feel ostracized from institutions and local

communities would not have an academic space to express themselves”106 without

Hip Hop. The Model Minority Myth and post 9/11 islamophobia alienate South

Asian men and cast them outside of normative masculinity107.

105 Nitasha Tamar. Sharma, Hip Hop Desis: South Asian Americans, Blackness, and a Global Race Consciousness (Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press, 2010). 106 Jasmin S. Greene, Beyond Money, Cars and Women: Examining Black Masculinity in Hip Hop Culture (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009). 107 Maira, Sunaina. ""Good" and "Bad" Muslim Citizens: Feminists, Terrorists, and U.S. Orientalisms." Feminist Studies 35, no. 3 (Fall, 2009): 631-656,664. http://ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/89246407?accountid=7118.

52

The paradox that these Desi Hip Hoppers find themselves under is well

expressed by Kaly, a rapper from New Jersey, in the song “Jungle Book,” which

flows:

Now you threatened by a brown boy

Same one you would clown boy

It's funny how it go round boy

Now don't you make a fucking sound boy, let me rock

I rap tight like a turban

I ain't Muslim but I’ll take all them virgins

That shit you thinking, you won't say it in person108

Kaly draws upon the contradiction of being diminished and also being perceived as

threat. He uses imagery that is stereotypical of Muslimness: virgins and turbans.

He plays off of those associations to assert a masculinity that is built off of the

denigration of markers of Muslimness.

Greene, in an essay about the role of masculinity in Hip Hop, writes that

“Hip Hop is a microcosm of patriarchal and hegemonic ideals promoting male

domination physically, financially, and lyrically.”109 While Hip Hop perpetuates a

hegemony that exists more broadly in America, Green expands and adds that Hip

Hop also grants men a form of freedom in giving them a method of expression where

they can challenge traditional notions of masculinity. The dual nature of Hip Hop in

108 Kaly, Jungle Book, Kaly, 2016, https://kalymusic.bandcamp.com/album/the-hatchback-chronicles. 109 Jasmin S. Greene, Beyond Money, Cars and Women: Examining Black Masculinity in Hip Hop Culture (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009).

53

perpetuating and challenging hegemony is what makes it appealing for South Asian

men. On one hand, they are diminished and emasculated by the Model Minority

Myth and then on the other, they are looked as hypermasculine through the lens of

Islamophobia. Thangaraj describes this dynamic as “[a] threatening masculinity

positioned in opposition to the US cultural fabric coexists alongside an asexual

masculinity through the ‘model minority’ discourse.”110 This dichotomy plays out in

an interesting way in the Desi Hip Hoppers’ lyrics. They uphold certain components

of their conceived masculinity and reject other parts in order to formulate a new

vision of masculinity that represents how they identify.

Additionally, the rejection of the Model Minority Myth occurs when the Hip

Hoppers’ express hypermasculinity through lyrics that are derogatory towards

women. By demeaning women, the male Desi Hip Hoppers are able to uplift

themselves and play into hegemonic gender dynamics that grant men more power

for their ability to be physically, sexually, and intellectually dominant. In Abhi the

Nomad’s song, “Dogs”, we see how this plays out:

Hope you fuck somebody with a mad disease

And then your pee-pee soft

And your bitch is ugly

She going out like every night

She got a serious problem, you should talk about it

110 Stanley Thangaraj, "Ballin’ Indo-Pak Style: Pleasures, Desires, and Expressive Practices of ‘South Asian American’ Masculinity," International Review for the Sociology of Sport 45, no. 3 (2010): , doi:10.1177/1012690210371047.

54

Walk around, just sober for a change, you could start without it

All these groupie hoes and jealous ex connections

I have I axed ‘em without hesitation111

Abhi, in the song, is trying to demean another person. The methods that he employs

is to attack the man’s significant other and the man’s ability to keep his partner in

check. Beyond that, Abhi also paints women as disposable, which is a method of

boasting about his sexual prowess. By diminishing the other man and his sexual

conquests, Abhi the Nomad is constructing a new masculinity that is far removed

from the asexuality of the Model Minority.

However, the problem of misogyny and homophobia that can be critiqued of

traditional hip hop can also apply to how South Asian Americans enact the genre.

As I stated before, they often integrate stereotypical conceptions of gender into their

music to combat the stereotypes that they are subject to. But this comes at the cost

of other marginalized communities, in particular women and queer folk. Lyrics like,

“You’re sucking on dick like lipstick”112 or “But I still bag ya bitch, fill her mouth up

with cum”113 perpetuate abuses against women and normalize them under the

framework of hegemonic masculinity.,

Gender performance in Hip Hop is not only a way for South Asian Americans

to reframe the way that their masculinity is perceived, but it also what makes the

genre so appealing for our Hip Hoppers. The freedom granted to these Hip Hoppers

111 Sherm and Dani Rae, Dogs, Abhi The Nomad, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wEvRgqGFDc. 112 Jandu, Deep. "Black Money." Recorded 2017. Karan Aujla. MP3. 113 Springer, Haji, and SHEZ. "Out of Control." Recorded 2009. Haji Springer. MP3.

55

in how they express their gender that is more in line with what the dominant and

accepted narrative of masculinity also liberates them from being confined to the

outskirts of what is accepted. In being cast as outsiders, South Asian men have also

been painted as being outside what is normal, which is what makes our Hip

Hoppers’ performance so impactful. In trying to perpetuate hegemonic masculinity

through their lyrics, they are also writing themselves into the American fabric.

They are constructing a specific culture that reflects the social and political

circumstances of their American life. In embodying the ideal man, they are also

embodying the ideal American. South Asian Hip Hoppers do not want to exist in the

margins of society, so they place themselves in a new position with how they self-

represent. Although it is still removed from what may be considered normative, our

Desi Hip Hoppers are not striving for normalcy, but rather acceptance despite

difference (cultural citizenship).

56

Chapter 5

Cash Rules Everything Around Desis This chapter will explore how the theme of success in rap is enacted by our

Desi Hip Hoppers. The idea of being self-made is an integral component to the

lyricism of Hip Hop. In conversations of authenticity, more credit is given to those

that have ‘come up’ stories in which rappers pull themselves out of trials and

tribulations through their own sheer will and determination. There is also a value

ascribed to hard work and success in America that influences why “rappers often

highlight their status in the entertainment industry to assert the merit of their

productions”114. As I have discussed previously in this project, the Model Minority

proclaims that Asians in America “have a cultural predisposition for social,

economic, and education success”115. The cultural explanation for Asian Americans’

success is that it is “a logical outcome of traditional Asian values that stress hard

work, discipline, and respect for authority”116. This chapter explores how South

Asians articulate visions of success that are outside of the framework of the Model

Minority Myth to assert a new definition of what it means to be a successful South

Asian in American. In doing so, they are broadening representations of self outside

114 Gonzalez, Éric. "« Cash Still Rules »: La Représentation Du Succès Dans Le Rap." Revue Française D'études Américaines, no. 104 (2005): 31-49. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20875622. 115 Kim, Henry H. 2014. “How the Model Minority Thesis Became a Transcendent Meaning.” Christian Scholar’s Review43 (2): 109–29. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=93881463&site=ehost-live. 116 Nagasawa, R., & Espinosa, D. J. (1992). Educational achievement and the adaptive strategy of Asian American college students: Facts, theory, and hypotheses. Journal of College Student Development, 33(2), 137-142.

57

of stereotypical notions and also carving out avenues of success that do not

necessitate assimilating to the Model Minority Myth.

Raja Kumari, a Los Angeles born rapper117, makes a perfect distillation for

how success is enacted by Desi Hip Hoppers in her song, “I Did It”. In the music

video, Kumari is adorned in gold jewelry, henna, and a bindi, and she is

accompanied with dancers dancing in the styles of Hip Hop and classical Indian

dance (Kuchipudi, Bharatnatyam and Odissi). This blending of aesthetics is set as

the backdrop, as she raps the lines:

I did it all by myself

I remember what they said, ah

Tried to tell me that it can't be done

Can't take it from me when it's self-made, ah

So raise a glass for the chosen one

And I been workin' on it all day

You see me risin' up just like the sun

I pay my dues so I won't fade out118

The juxtaposition of culture that she inherited as tradition from her South Asian

ancestry with the Hip Hop aesthetics and lyrics about being self-made poses an

interesting contrast. The South Asian Hip Hoppers are cultivating a culture that is

117 Ananya Ghosh, ""My Parents Poured All Their Indianness in Me!" Raja Kumari Talks about What Makes Her the Bridge between the East and the West," Https://www.hindustantimes.com/, January 27, 2019, , accessed March 2019, https://www.hindustantimes.com/brunch/my-parents-poured-all-their-indianness-in-me-raja-kumari-makes-a-case-for-being-the-only-woman-rapper-from-mumbai-s-underbelly/story-B3UQ75rtXcCCdq0JGuvb7M.html. 118 Rao, Svetha. "I Did It." Raja Kumari. 2018, MP3.

58

reflective of their American identity that is still informed by their ethnic lineage.

But more precisely, these lyrics are an embodiment of success that is far removed

from the Model Minority. It is more in line with how success is boasted by rappers

in subgenres like trap and gangsta rap. It is also a performance of an individualistic

success rather than a communal conception of success ascribed under the Model

Minority Myth.

Anik Khan, a rapper from the Bronx and asylum seeker in the United

States119, sets forward a similar vision of success in his single, “Big Fax”. The MC

brags about his accomplishments:

I'm the one who put it on my back though

I'm the one who's showing off the ankles

Came up off of nada so I'm thankful

You know I got to get it 'til the bank close

Facts bro

Facts bro these is all facts

Big tunes, big checks, big racks bro120

Anik Khan is enacting attitudes of the American Dream, which is in line with the

Model Minority, because

[t]he model minority myth wholly endorses the American Dream of

meritocracy and democracy with the notion that anyone regardless of race,

119 Lisa Brown, "Meet Anik Khan: Rapping for Immigrant Visibility and Queens Pride," Billboard, August 29, 2017, , accessed March 2019, https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/hip-hop/7942015/anik-khan-interview-kites-bengali-heritage. 120 Khan, Anik. "Big Fax." Anik Khan. 2018, MP3.

59

class, or gender has an equal opportunity to work hard and consequently is

justly rewarded for their labor though economic upward mobility121

However, the Model Minority sets limited avenues of success that are confined to

science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) sectors of labor122. It

also sets the expectations of Asian Americans to justify their presence in America

and combat outsider status by embodying the American Dream. While this is in line

with Anik Khan’s enactment of success in his raps, it is powerful that he is enacting

this success through cultural participation. Through his representation in music, he

is broadening the definition of success for South Asian Americans.

Success is an incredibly integral theme to Hip Hop as a method of

legitimization and authentication for rappers. Success is also an integral part to

how South Asians have been placed in American society. The performance of

success by South Asian Americans may be seen as a reinforcement of the

stereotypes of the Model Minority Myth, however the success granted to South

Asians under this model is limited to academic and professional spaces. Cultural

representation through their participation in Hip Hop is an expansion on the

avenues of success for South Asian Americans. This is why their expression of the

American Dream in their raps is an assertion of a new representation of being. This

performance of success is also a command for inclusion into cultural spaces that

121 Park, Lisa Sun-Hee. "Continuing Significance of the Model Minority Myth: The Second Generation." Social Justice 35, no. 2 (112) (2008): 134-44. http://www.jstor.org/stable/29768492. 122 McGee, Ebony O., Bhoomi K. Thakore, and Sandra S. LaBlance. 2017. “The Burden of Being ‘Model’: Racialized Experiences of Asian STEM College Students.” Journal of Diversity in Higher Education 10 (3): 253–70. doi:10.1037/dhe0000022.

60

they have previously been excluded from (as they are perpetual outsiders), because

South Asian Americans do not have to be in STEM to be successful. They can also

be successful as rappers which is why their enactment of success is an envisionment

of a broader success for South Asian Americans.

61

Chapter 6

Do It For The Culture

Culture is “unifying values, practices and beliefs that guide individuals”123. In

this project, I hone in on Hip Hop as a cultural movement and how it unifies our

Desi Hip Hoppers around their shared experience and identity. Culture is a site

that individuals often use to reflect their identity and form representations of self.

Our South Asian Americans are cultivating a Hip Hop that reflects their socio-

political circumstances and their social experiences. In their music, they do not look

back to their origin country for social location, but rather America and Hip Hop124.

South Asian Americans can exclusively look to their caste, religion, or region of

origin for references for their identity, but they don’t. Instead they shape their

identity around American factors, which grounds how they decide to self-represent

in their Hip Hop.

In Chapters 3, 4, and 5, I analyzed the Hip Hoppers’ lyrics and how they

challenged and asserted notions of self in their music under three categories:

gender, policing, and American values of success. Our Hip Hoppers’ raps challenge

how American socio-political factors have cast them in society, in doing so they

assert a new vision of self that reflects a multiplicity of identity. In my section about

123 George D. Kuh and Elizabeth J. Whitt, "The Invisible Tapestry. Culture in American Colleges and Universities," ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report 1 (1988):. 124 Nitasha Tamar. Sharma, Hip Hop Desis: South Asian Americans, Blackness, and a Global Race Consciousness (Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press, 2010).

62

masculinity, our South Asian Hip Hoppers’ challenge and critique conceptions of

their masculinity that are a result of how they have been posited in society through

American policies. In their disputation of South Asian American archetypes of

manhood, they assert a new definition of their masculinity. In my section about

policing, our Desi Hip Hoppers take to a popular topic in Hip Hop for social

commentary, and they critique how the state has imposed surveillance and policing

onto their communities. They frame their encounters with the state around the

same framework that African American and Latino Hip Hoppers in order to draw a

thread between their experiences that are uniquely American. In the last section of

thematic analysis, our Hip Hoppers enact values of success seen throughout the

history of Hip Hop to redefine what it means to be a successful South Asian

American outside of the scope of the Model Minority Myth.

In this chapter, I will be distilling all of the work I have done in this project

to explain how our South Asian Hip Hoppers are partaking in a process of social

positioning that commands cultural citizenship. Social positioning is how

representation arises from identity, which can be state imposed or self-enacted. For

our Hip Hoppers, it is happening on two fronts: from the state with the history that

I described in Chapter 1 and self-enacted through the lyrics of their raps. In

challenging and asserting components of their identity in their music, they are

crafting a new representation of how South Asians are in America. The process of

crafting new narratives of being is self-enacted social positioning. Through their

participation in Hip Hop, they are working towards cultural citizenship, the right to

63

exist as different in a heterogeneous society. After outlining how South Asian

Americans are working toward social inclusion in their music, I will describe how

Hip Hop arose from similar circumstances which is what makes the narrative

medium so compelling for South Asian Americans.

The Process of Social Positioning As I had briefly described in my introduction, social positioning is how social

representation arises from social identity. Social positioning is the “dynamic

through which positioning expresses identity and allows individuals to build the

space of reality in which their identity can be expressed”125. South Asian Americans

partake in this process of social positioning in the lyrical work they do in their

participation in Hip Hop to carve out a new vision of how South Asians are

represented. The following section will build upon the thematic analysis of the Desi

Hip Hop lyrics to describe how social positioning is what makes Hip Hop an

appealing narrative form for South Asian Americans.

Racialization is a form of social positioning126 as “racialization and

positioning are complementary and mutually reinforcing theoretical concepts in

that racialization can be seen as positioning in relation to race”127. And “‘race’,

hereby, can be understood as socially constructed and reproduced through narrative

125 Fran Elejabarrieta, "Social Positioning: A Way to Link Social Identity and Social Representations," Social Science Information 33, no. 2 (1994): , doi:10.1177/053901894033002006. 126 Mallon, R. Philos Stud (2018) 175: 1039. https://doi-org.ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/10.1007/s11098-018-1069-8 127 Karim Murji and John Solomos, eds., Racialization: Studies in Theory and Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

64

and interpretive processes of social positioning, or ‘racialization’”128. As I outlined in

Chapter 1, South Asians were racialized in two specific ways which are described as

Racial Peril and Racial Panic by Junaid Mara. Racial peril is a result of

exclusionary immigration policies that cast South Asian migrants as a racialized

‘other’, and racial panic occurred post 9/11 as South Asians were also racialized as a

threat129. This racialization is reflected in our Desi Hip Hoppers’ work in how they

respond to the policing policies imposed upon them, how they are cast as docile and

asexual under the Model Minority Myth, and how their success in America is

defined. Their choice to represent themselves through the lens of how they have

been racialized in America illustrates social positioning, but social positioning can

also be self-enacted.

In response to social policies that placed South Asian Americans in the

margins of society and flattened images of them to stereotypes, South Asian

Americans partake in a self-enacted process of social positioning. Extending beyond

how they have been placed, their participation in Hip Hop is way for them to create

representations that reflect the way in which they self-identify. As I described in

chapters 3, 4, and 5, South Asians are relying on themes already established in the

genre of Hip Hop to reframe how they are depicted. Those themes were established

within Hip Hop as ways to also reframe the way that African American and Latino

youth were placed in society by the state. The process of social positioning by South

128 Mason, Will. “‘Swagger’: Urban Youth Culture, Consumption and Social Positioning.” Sociology 52, no. 6 (December 2018): 1117–33. doi:10.1177/0038038517698638. 129 Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims: Race and Labor in the South Asian Diaspora (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011).

65

Asian Americans echoes the same processes that led to the very development of Hip

Hop.

(Multi)Cultural Citizenship Citizenship, like most things, is socially and politically constructed. Certain

groups are accepted as in group versus out is a result of social and political factors.

In America, “the idea of the nation and who can be legitimately included in the

nation is intimately bounded up with race and gender, among other statuses”130.

With exclusionary immigration policies, South Asians were denied political

citizenship in America. While the Civil Rights Movement brought about equitable

political rights under the legal framework of the United States, that does not

guarantee social acceptance. Cultural citizenship is the framework of social

inclusion and encompasses “the right to symbolic presence, dignifying

representation, propagation of identity and maintenance of lifestyles”131. Beaman

frames citizenship around a belonging in society rather than a set of rights.

South Asians were not granted citizenship rights until the end of the

twentieth century. However, the foundation for political citizenship was racialized

long before South Asians entered the picture. During the era of slavery, Black folk

were not granted formal citizenship, and this was codified in the Dred Scott decision

in 1857 when the Supreme Court established that Black Americans were not to

130 Jean Beaman, "Citizenship as Cultural: Towards a Theory of Cultural Citizenship," Sociology Compass 10, no. 10 (2016): , doi:10.1111/soc4.12415. 131 Jan Pakulski, "Cultural Citizenship," Citizenship Studies 1, no. 1 (1997): , doi:10.1080/13621029708420648.

66

apply for citizenry132. The historical and legal foundation of this country established

that the concept of citizenry was only granted to Whites, it was racialized. In the

era we live in following a long history of civil rights legislation where the coda of the

law no longer can discriminate citizenship on racial grounds as it had previously

done, the social standing for many people of color still remains tenuous. Belonging

in society is still not granted to all. Belonging is racialized, and it is something

South Asians have to contend with because of the sociopolitical factors that have

cast them into the margins of society as outsiders133.

The way that South Asians have been excluded politically has also denied

them cultural citizenship in American society. South Asians’ identity as ‘outsiders’

and ‘foreigners’ has denied them acceptance into American society and right to the

identity of American. Historically, Asian has been posed as a contrast to America,

they are fundamentally at odds under the hegemony. The way that American laws

alienated South Asians affected their social conditions, barring them from being

accepted in society134. In order to contend with this, South Asian Americans must

look for pathways to cultural citizenship.

The established path for acceptance in society for South Asian Americans is

through striving to become a Model Minority. By embodying the ideal for what a

minority should be in America, South Asians are granted certain rights in society.

132 Melvin I. Urofsky, "Dred Scott Decision," Encyclopædia Britannica, February 27, 2019, , accessed March 17, 2019, https://www.britannica.com/event/Dred-Scott-decision. 133 Mallapragada, Madhavi. “Rethinking Desi: Race, Class, and Online Activism of South Asian Immigrants in the United States.” Television & New Media 15, no. 7 (November 2014): 664–78. doi:10.1177/1527476413487225. 134 Sunaina Maira, "Citizenship and Dissent: South Asian Muslim Youth in the US after 9/11," South Asian Popular Culture 8, no. 1 (2010): , doi:10.1080/14746681003633135.

67

However, this is not a path that all South Asians in American can or want to go

down for cultural citizenship. It is based on an expectation of assimilation and

obedience. In addition, it is also a largely classed avenue of inclusion, because it

funnels South Asian Americans into sectors of labor that require higher education

and middle class standing. With how limiting the standard of the Model Minority

Myth can be, South Asians in America must carve out new methods and spaces of

inclusion in society that do not rely on compliance with the American state’s

positioning of South Asians.

Hip Hop & Cultural Citizenship Lack of cultural citizenship is a factor in the development of Hip Hop in the

1970s. The African American and Latino youth in the Bronx did not have any social

or cultural capital that would grant them inclusion into American society. The

feeling of marginalization and not having the expressive tools to talk about how

poverty, violence, and structural inequality was impacting their social and material

conditions developed the lyrical content for rap music. Hip Hop was not only a mode

of resistance to counter the social and material conditions for the poor Black and

Latino youth in New York City, but it developed a sense of community and inclusion

over their shared experiences.

Culture and cultural movements are often used as methods of self-enacted

social positioning. Hip Hop arose in reaction to the way that African American and

Latino communities had been placed by the state through discriminatory policies

and institutionalized racism. In order to have representations in culture that

68

reflected their identity and experience, African Americans and Latinos developed

Hip Hop as a form of narrative. For them, Hip Hop is a cultural site “where [they]

discover and play with the identifications of [them]selves, where [they] are

imagined, where [they] are represented, not only to the audiences out there who do

not get the message, but to [them]selves for the first time”135. Social positioning is

incredibly powerful as it allows communities, that are historically marginalized, to

have cultural sites that mirror experiences and imagine new futures. And as Hip

Hop disseminated across America, new subgenres began to develop that expressed

the unique social circumstances of the regions in which they were coming out of.

These subgenres, like gangsta rap from the West Coast, were calling for cultural

citizenship by reframing the way that these communities (specifically African

Americans) had been positioned by the state136.

Through Hip Hop, an incredibly popular and widely consumed cultural

phenomena, South Asian Americans are able to create a sense of belonging in

America that does not require them to assimilate to the avenues of social acceptance

granted to them through the Model Minority Myth. In participating in Hip Hop,

South Asians are creating a sociocultural representation around American socio-

political factors. In doing so, they are becoming American. Hip Hop gives a voice to

these South Asians that they would not have otherwise137. And whether these South

135 Hall, Stuart. "What Is This "Black" in Black Popular Culture?" Social Justice 20, no. 1/2 (51-52) (1993): 104-14. http://www.jstor.org/stable/29766735. 136 V. Thandi Sulé. "Hip-Hop is the Healer: Sense of Belonging and Diversity Among Hip-Hop Collegians." Journal of College Student Development 57, no. 2 (2016): 181-196. https://muse.jhu.edu/ (accessed April 5, 2019). 137 Mohamed Nasir, Kamaludeen. “The September 11 Generation, Hip-Hop and Human Rights.” Journal of Sociology 51, no. 4 (December 2015): 1039–51. doi:10.1177/1440783313493029.

69

Asian Americans are ‘successful’ in commanding cultural citizenship through their

Hip Hop lyrics is not a concern of this project.

Hip Hop arose out of a complex personhood, or “the stories people tell about

themselves, about their troubles, about their social worlds, and about their society's

problems are entangled and weave between what is immediately available as a

story and what their imaginations are reaching toward”138. For South Asian

Americans, Hip Hop is a site for telling stories about how they navigate the world

and imagining a different one by calling for cultural citizenship. The blend of the

contradictions of the immigrant experience, the values of the American dream, and

extensive critiques of the state are the complexities that South Asian Americans are

articulating in their lyrics. By finally having cultural representations that vocalize

their self-identity, they are able to command their right to be included as different

and be accepted as American.

138 Avery Gordon, Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011).

70

Conclusions

But my DNA wonder where my home should be Brown steps under the black panthers Like Bagheera on Mowgli? My only heroes were black rappers So to me 2Pac was a true Paki

- Half Moghul Half Mowgli by Swet Shop Boys

At the beginning of this project, I set out to answer two questions: 1. why

have these South Asian Americans taken to Hip Hop as a form of expression? 2.

how does the position of South Asians in the American racial landscape and their

sociocultural identity inform their decision to participate in Hip Hop? I established

in this project that how South Asian Americans were racialized cast them to the

margins of society. The answer of these two questions are intertwined, in that, the

sociocultural and racial identity of South Asian Americans is a large part of why

South Asian Americans participate in Hip Hop and is reflected in the bulk of the

lyrical content.

Hip Hop, as a musical genre, is “a powerful artifact as such for reflecting on,

negotiating, and acting out one's identity and sense of belonging”139. For South

Asian Americans, they are using their participation in Hip Hop to carve out a space

in American society by demanding cultural citizenship. The reason Hip Hop is such

an appealing method for them is because Hip Hop arose as a method of social

positioning to work towards the goal of societal inclusion for African American and

139 Ingeborg Lunde Vestad. "Musical Roots and Routes and Senses of Belonging." The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 11, no. 1 (2018): 94-101. https://muse.jhu.edu/ (accessed April 5, 2019).

71

Latino youth. And with this precedence and the immense popularity of the genre,

Hip Hop becomes a site for South Asian Americans to have their identity reflected

in their music and forge new paths towards social inclusion.

This study in South Asian American participation not only gives insight into

how South Asian Americans are depicting their sociocultural identity in cultural

representation, but it also illustrates how culture is cultivated. Culture is often

understood under the framework of being passed down or inherited as a tradition in

communities, but it also something that arises from social circumstances to reflect

upon, challenge, or represent how communities self-identify or how communities are

positioned by the state. Through this study, we are able to glean insight into how

culture can be created to carve pathways towards social inclusion in heterogeneous

societies, like that of the United States. Culture is malleable, and it is difficult to

demarcate boundaries for how communities participate in it. Analyzing culture from

a sociohistorical framework gives insights into why certain communities begin to

participate in cultural movements and why a rapper would call 2Pac a true Paki.

72

Bibliography Ahmad, Muneer. "Homeland Insecurities: Racial Violence the Day after September

11." Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts 4, no. 3 (2011): 337-50. doi:10.2979/racethmulglocon.4.3.337.

Beaman, Jean. "Citizenship as Cultural: Towards a Theory of Cultural Citizenship."

Sociology Compass10, no. 10 (2016): 849-57. doi:10.1111/soc4.12415. Belle, Crystal. "From Jay-Z to Dead Prez: Examining Representations of Black

Masculinity in Mainstream Versus Underground Hip-Hop Music." Journal of Black Studies 45, no. 4 (2014): 287-300. doi:10.1177/0021934714528953.

Brown, Lisa. "Meet Anik Khan: Rapping for Immigrant Visibility and Queens Pride." Billboard. August 29, 2017. Accessed March 2019. https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/hip-hop/7942015/anik-khan-interview-kites-bengali-heritage.

""Can't Tell Me Nothing": Symbolic Violence, Education, and Kanye West." Taylor &

Francis. Accessed April 2019. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03007766.2011.539831.

Caramanica, Jon. "Hip-Hop's Raiders of the Lost Archives." The New York Times.

June 26, 2005. Accessed April 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/26/arts/music/hiphops-raiders-of-the-lost-archives.html.

Caulfield, Keith. "U.S. Music Consumption Up 12.5% in 2017, R&B/Hip-Hop Is

Year's Most Popular Genre." Billboard. January 03, 2018. Accessed April 2019. https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/chart-beat/8085975/us-music-consumption-up-2017-rb-hip-hop-most-popular-genre.

Dombal, Ryan, and Ryan Dombal. "Kanye West: My Beautiful Dark Twisted

Fantasy." Pitchfork. November 22, 2010. Accessed April 2019. https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14880-my-beautiful-dark-twisted-fantasy/.

73

Donnelly, Andrew. "Langston Hughes on the DL." College Literature 44, no. 1 (2017): 30-57. doi:10.1353/lit.2017.0001.

Eisenberg, Andrew J. "HIP-HOP AND CULTURAL CITIZENSHIP ON KENYA'S

'SWAHILI COAST'." Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 82, no. 4 (2012): 556-78. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23356105.

Elejabarrieta, Fran. "Social Positioning: A Way to Link Social Identity and Social

Representations." Social Science Information33, no. 2 (1994): 241-53. doi:10.1177/053901894033002006.

Ghosh, Ananya. ""My Parents Poured All Their Indianness in Me!" Raja Kumari Talks about What Makes Her the Bridge between the East and the West." Https://www.hindustantimes.com/. January 27, 2019. Accessed March 2019. https://www.hindustantimes.com/brunch/my-parents-poured-all-their-indianness-in-me-raja-kumari-makes-a-case-for-being-the-only-woman-rapper-from-mumbai-s-underbelly/story-B3UQ75rtXcCCdq0JGuvb7M.html.

Gonzalez, Éric. "« Cash Still Rules »: La Représentation Du Succès Dans Le Rap." Revue Française D'études Américaines, no. 104 (2005): 31-49. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20875622.

Gordon, Avery. Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination.

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011. Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five Featuring Melle Mel and Duke Bootee.

"The Message." Clifton "Jiggs" Chase, Sylvia Robinson, 1982, MP3. Greene, Jasmin S. Beyond Money, Cars and Women: Examining Black Masculinity

in Hip Hop Culture. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009.

Grem, Darren E. ""The South Got Something to Say": Atlantas Dirty South and the

Southernization of Hip-Hop America." Southern Cultures 12, no. 4 (2006): 55-73. doi:10.1353/scu.2006.0045.

Hall, Stuart. "What Is This "Black" in Black Popular Culture?" Social Justice 20, no.

1/2 (51-52) (1993): 104-14. http://www.jstor.org/stable/29766735.

74

Hatton, Timothy J. "United States Immigration Policy: The 1965 Act and Its Consequences." The Scandinavian Journal of Economics 117, no. 2 (2014): 347-68. doi:10.1111/sjoe.12094.

Hilburn, Robert. "Is Anyone Out There Really Listening?" Los Angeles Times. July

05, 1998. Accessed April 2019. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-jul-05-ca-788-story.html.

Hilburn, Robert. "Rap--The Power and the Controversy : Success Has Validated

Pop's Most Volatile Form, but Its Future Impact Could Be Shaped by the Continuing Public Enemy Uproar." Los Angeles Times. February 04, 1990. Accessed April 2019. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-02-04-ca-470-story.html.

Hoeffel, Elizabeth M., Sonya Rastogi, Myoung Ouk Kim, and Hasan Shahid. "The

Asian Population: 2010." 2010 Census Briefs. March 2012. https://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-11.pdf.

Huynh, Que-Lam, Thierry Devos, and Laura Smalarz. "Perpetual Foreigner in Ones

Own Land: Potential Implications for Identity and Psychological Adjustment." Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology30, no. 2 (2011): 133-62. doi:10.1521/jscp.2011.30.2.133.

Ingeborg Lunde Vestad. "Musical Roots and Routes and Senses of Belonging." The

Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 11, no. 1 (2018): 94-101. https://muse.jhu.edu/ (accessed April 5, 2019).

Iwamoto, Derek. "Tupac Shakur: Understanding the Identity Formation of Hyper-

Masculinity of a Popular Hip-Hop Artist." The Black Scholar 33, no. 2 (2003): 44-49. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41069025.

Jandu, Deep. "Black Money." Recorded 2017. Karan Aujla. MP3. Jeff Chang, Cant Stop Wont Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation (London:

Ebury Digital, 2011). Kim, Henry H. 2014. “How the Model Minority Thesis Became a Transcendent

Meaning.” Christian Scholar’s Review43 (2): 109–29. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=93881463&site=ehost-live.

75

Kaly. Jungle Book. Kaly. 2016.

https://kalymusic.bandcamp.com/album/the-hatchback-chronicles.

Khan, Anik. "Big Fax." Anik Khan. 2018, MP3. Kuh, George D., and Elizabeth J. Whitt. "The Invisible Tapestry. Culture in

American Colleges and Universities." ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report1 (1988).

Kurien, P. "Immigration, Community Formation, Political Incorporation, and Why

Religion Matters: Migration and Settlement Patterns of the Indian Diaspora." Sociology of Religion 75, no. 4 (2014): 524-36. doi:10.1093/socrel/sru060.

Lee, Chanhaeng. "“An Invisible Design”: Asian Americans and the Making of

Whiteness in the Early Twentieth Century." Korean Journal of Urban History 11 (2014): 181-216. doi:10.22345/kjuh.2014.6.11.181.

Lee, Erika. "Legacies of the 1965 Immigration Act." South Asian American Digital

Archive (SAADA). October 1, 2015. Accessed February 10, 2019. https://www.saada.org/tides/article/legacies-of-the-1965-immigration-act.

Lee, Erika. "The “Yellow Peril” and Asian Exclusion in the Americas." Pacific

Historical Review 76, no. 4 (2007): 537-62. doi:10.1525/phr.2007.76.4.537. López, Gustavo, Neil G. Ruiz, Eileen Patten, Gustavo López, Neil G. Ruiz, and

Eileen Patten. "Key Facts about Asian Americans." Pew Research Center. September 08, 2017. Accessed 2019. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/09/08/key-facts-about-asian-americans/.

Love, Bettina L. "Complex Personhood of Hip Hop & the Sensibilities of the Culture

That Fosters Knowledge of Self & Self-Determination." Equity & Excellence in Education49, no. 4 (2016): 414-27. doi:10.1080/10665684.2016.1227223.

Lowe, Lisa. Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics. Durham: Duke

University Press, 2007.

76

Madden, Sidney. "Today in Hip-Hop: "Ice Ice Baby" Becomes First Rap Single to Hit

No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 - XXL." XXL Mag. November 03, 2016. Accessed April 2019. https://www.xxlmag.com/news/2016/11/today-hip-hop-ice-ice-baby-first-rap-single-no-1-billboard-hot-100/.

Maira, Sunaina. ""Good" and "Bad" Muslim Citizens: Feminists, Terrorists, and

U.S. Orientalisms." Feminist Studies 35, no. 3 (Fall, 2009): 631-656,664. http://ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/89246407?accountid=7118.

Maira, Sunaina. "Citizenship and Dissent: South Asian Muslim Youth in the US

after 9/11." South Asian Popular Culture 8, no. 1 (2010): 31-45. doi:10.1080/14746681003633135.Mallapragada, Madhavi. “Rethinking Desi: Race, Class, and Online Activism of South Asian Immigrants in the United States.” Television & New Media 15, no. 7 (November 2014): 664–78. doi:10.1177/1527476413487225.

Mallon, R. Philos Stud (2018) 175: 1039.

https://doi-org.ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/10.1007/s11098-018-1069-8 Mason, Will. “‘Swagger’: Urban Youth Culture, Consumption and Social

Positioning.” Sociology 52, no. 6 (December 2018): 1117–33. doi:10.1177/0038038517698638.

McGee, Ebony O., Bhoomi K. Thakore, and Sandra S. LaBlance. 2017. “The Burden of Being ‘Model’: Racialized Experiences of Asian STEM College Students.” Journal of Diversity in Higher Education 10 (3): 253–70. doi:10.1037/dhe0000022.

Mishra, Sangay. "Race, Religion, and Political Mobilization: South Asians in the

Post-9/11 United States." Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 13, no. 2 (2013): 115-37. doi:10.1111/sena.12034.

Mohamed Nasir, Kamaludeen. “The September 11 Generation, Hip-Hop and

Human Rights.” Journal of Sociology 51, no. 4 (December 2015): 1039–51. doi:10.1177/1440783313493029.

77

Murji, Karim, and John Solomos, eds. Racialization: Studies in Theory and Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Nagasawa, R., & Espinosa, D. J. (1992). Educational achievement and the adaptive strategy of Asian American college students: Facts, theory, and hypotheses. Journal of College Student Development, 33(2), 137-142.

Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant. Racial Formation in the United States. New

York, NY: Routledge, 2015. Oware, Matthew. "(Un)conscious (popular) Underground: Restricted Cultural

Production and Underground Rap Music." Poetics 42 (2014): 60-81. doi:10.1016/j.poetic.2013.12.001.

Pakulski, Jan. "Cultural Citizenship." Citizenship Studies 1, no. 1 (1997): 73-86.

doi:10.1080/13621029708420648. Palumbo-Liu, David. Asian/American: Historical Crossings of a Racial Frontier.

Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009. Pareles, Jon. "Tupac Shakur, 25, Rap Performer Who Personified Violence, Dies."

The New York Times. September 14, 1996. Accessed April 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/1996/09/14/arts/tupac-shakur-25-rap-performer-who-personified-violence-dies.html.

Park, Lisa Sun-Hee. "Continuing Significance of the Model Minority Myth: The

Second Generation." Social Justice 35, no. 2 (112) (2008): 134-44. http://www.jstor.org/stable/29768492.

Prashad, Vijay. The Karma of Brown Folk. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press,

2007. Purdum, Todd S. "Rapper Is Shot to Death in Echo of Killing 6 Months Ago." The

New York Times. March 10, 1997. Accessed April 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/1997/03/10/us/rapper-is-shot-to-death-in-echo-of-killing-6-months-ago.html.

Rana, J. (2011). Terrifying muslims: Race and labor in the South Asian diaspora.

Durham: Duke University Press.

78

Rao, Svetha. "I Did It." Raja Kumari. 2018, MP3. Rashid, Kamau. "“Start the Revolution”: Hip Hop Music and Social Justice

Education." Journal of Pan African Studies 9, no. 4 (July 1, 2016). Ronk, Liz, and Lily Rothman. "The Get Down: See Photos of the Bronx in the

1970s." Time. Accessed April 12, 2019. http://time.com/4431300/see-the-bronx-in-the-days-of-the-get-down/.

Sanneh, Kelefa. "Lil John Crunks Up the Volume." The New York Times. November

28, 2004. Accessed April 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/28/arts/music/lil-john-crunks-up-the-volume.html.

Sherm, and Dani Rae. Dogs. Abhi The Nomad. 2018.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wEvRgqGFDc. Springer, Haji, and SHEZ. "Out of Control." Recorded 2009. Haji Springer. MP3. Thangaraj, Stanley. "Ballin’ Indo-Pak Style: Pleasures, Desires, and Expressive

Practices of ‘South Asian American’ Masculinity." International Review for the Sociology of Sport45, no. 3 (2010): 372-89. doi:10.1177/1012690210371047.

Thangaraj, Stanley. "Competing Masculinities: South Asian American Identity

Formation in Asian American Basketball Leagues." South Asian Popular Culture11, no. 3 (2013): 243-55. doi:10.1080/14746689.2013.820482.

Thompson, Bonsu. "How Streaming Revolutionized Rap's Album Rollouts On The

Road To No. 1." NPR. September 28, 2017. Accessed April 2019. https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2017/09/28/554220367/how-streaming-revolutionized-raps-album-rollouts-on-the-road-to-no-1.

Toop, David, and David Toop. Rap Attack: African Rap to Global Hip Hop. No. 3.

London: Serpents Tail, 2000.

79

Turner, Thomas. "Joseph G. Schloss, Foundation: B-Boys, B-Girls, and Hip-Hop Culture in New York (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009, $19.95/£11.99). Pp. Ix 176. Isbn 978 0 19 533406 7." Journal of American Studies 44, no. 02 (2010). doi:10.1017/s0021875810000964.

"United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind." The American Journal of International Law

17, no. 3 (1923): 572-78. doi:10.2307/2187916. Urofsky, Melvin I. "Dred Scott Decision." Encyclopædia Britannica. February 27,

2019. Accessed March 17, 2019. https://www.britannica.com/event/Dred-Scott-decision.

V. Thandi Sulé. "Hip-Hop is the Healer: Sense of Belonging and Diversity Among

Hip-Hop Collegians." Journal of College Student Development 57, no. 2 (2016): 181-196. https://muse.jhu.edu/ (accessed March 29, 2019).

Wallenstein, Barry, Sascha Feinstein, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Charles O.

Hartman. "JazzPoetry/Jazz-Poetry/"JazzPoetry"???" African American Review 27, no. 4 (1993): 665. doi:10.2307/3041904.

Wells-Wilbon, Rhonda, Nigel D. Jackson, and Jerome H. Schiele. "Lessons From the

Maafa: Rethinking the Legacy of Slain Hip-Hop Icon Tupac Amaru Shakur." Journal of Black Studies 40, no. 4 (2008): 509-26. doi:10.1177/0021934708315441.

West, Kanye, writer. "Can't Tell Me Nothing." In Can't Tell Me Nothing. Kanye

West. Kanye West; DJ Toomp, 2008. Westhoff, Ben. Original Gangstas: The Untold Story of Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, Ice Cube,

Tupac Shakur, and the Birth of West Coast Rap. New York: Hachette Books, 2016.

80

Sabina Raja was born in Houston, Texas on January 10, 1996 and resided there with her family until 2014. She enrolled in the Plan II Honors program at the University of Texas at Austin in 2014. Sabina took a gap year between her sophomore and junior year, and she backpacked Europe and Asia Pacific during her time off. She was involved in Model United Nations and community organizing through organizations like the Palestine Solidarity Community and The Citizens’ Foundation. She graduated in 2019 with a Bachelor of Arts in Plan II Honors and Sociology with a minor in History and plans to pursue a graduate degree in the upcoming years. Until then, she will be working in marketing in her hometown, Houston.