Bustin' Gats through Spittin' Raps!: The Rhetorics of.

On the topic of understanding and appreciating rap music within academic circles, a significant void between ¿rhyme and reason¿ exists because more attention is given to gratuitous violence than is given to ways in which members of these under- privileged communities respond to and utilize violence. As this is the case, an over-emphasis on violence and an under-emphasis on the ways in which the oppressed populations operate within these violent subcultures create a lacuna of knowledge involving communication and culture. This study fills a gap in communication and culture by advancing a thesis that oppressed populations find collective agency through the use of violent rhetoric. Rap music, being the product of the African rhetorical resistance tradition, is inherently devoted to the task of confronting hegemony. Because rap music is originally derived from society¿s most oppressed populations, and as a result, linked to the violent street code (Kubrin, 2005), a rhetoric of violence allows for the unification of rappers and audience based on a common violent ethos and a common goal of resistance and liberation (Fanon, 1963).

My academic interests involve understanding, analyzing, and interpreting the rhetoric of traditionally marginalized, disenfranchised, and subjugated populations. These interests led to my first publication entitled ¿Bridging the gap: African and African-American communication at historically Black colleges and universities.¿