Browsing by Subject "Rap"
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Item Der Unterricht für die Unterschicht: Voices from the Margins in German Gangster Rap(2013-05) Smith, Alexa; McChesney, Anita; Borst, Stefanie; Grair, Charles A.The past decade has witnessed a dramatic increase in the popularity of gangster rap in Germany. This unique form of artistic expression is characterized by aggression, violence, and the rejection of established authority, which at first glance seems to advance a destructive message. Yet many rap artists use this form for constructive social criticism and to provide a voice for the marginalized against mainstream German society. My analysis will examine the use and effect of rap as a medium of social criticism. Through a detailed analysis of texts by contemporary rap artists, I show how they use social critical elements to point out the failures of a multicultural German society. Their message unites fans in an inclusive community based on the shared experience of marginalization and mobilizes this audience to become active proponents of a functioning multicultural society. I show how these German rappers use their music and artistic personas to re-imagine the status of multiethnic identity in the lives of their listeners and in German society as a whole. Research on rap affirms its social-critical penchant, but scholars generally view German rap predominately through the lens of the Turkish immigrant experience. Most current research therefore focuses on the genre’s diasporic qualities and asserts that rappers act as the mouthpiece for young, second- and third-generation Turkish immigrants caught between their native and adopted cultures. While early German rap was noticeably Turkish oriented, this restrictive label no longer fits the genre as it has evolved. Popular contemporary rappers represent a variety of ethnicities, including Turkish, Arab, North African, Romani, and even native German. These multi-ethnic rappers reach out to all young people experiencing marginalization and exclusion, even beyond the German immigrant community. My research shows how contemporary German rap focuses on multiethnic experience. In contrast to prevalent analyses limited to the German-Turkish duality, I show how contemporary German gangster rap provides insight into the minority experience as a whole. The music combats oppressive fixtures of mainstream society and suggests an alternative model for a more integrated, multiethnic German society.Item "I can turn karaoke into open mic night" : an exploration of Asian American men in hip hop(2013-05) Jackson, Tamela Teara; Tang, EricThe purpose of this report is to explore the ways in which Asian American men participate in hip hop culture, and what this participation says about their politics and representation in United States media and popular culture. This is done through an analysis of Freestyle Friday All Star, MC Jin, a Chinese American emcee from Queens, New York, as well as DJ Soko, a Korean American DJ from Detroit, Michigan. I argue that their participation is a desire for political power and creative visibility rendered on their own terms.Item Poetic organization and poetic license in the lyrics of Hank Williams, Sr. and Snoop Dogg(2010-12) Horn, Elizabeth Alena; Crowhurst, Megan Jane; Hancock, Ian F.; Epps, Patience L.; Mooney, Kevin E.; Fitzgerald, Colleen M.This dissertation addresses the way a linguistic grammar can yield to poetic organization in a poetic text. To this end, two corpora are studied: the sung lyrics of country music singer Hank Williams, Sr. and the rapped lyrics of gansgta rap artist Snoop Dogg. Following a review of relevant literature, an account of the poetic grammar for each corpus is provided, including the manifestation of musical meter and grouping in the linguistic text, the reflection of metrical grouping in systematic rhyme, and rhyme fellow correspondence. In the Williams corpus, final cadences pattern much as in the English folk verse studied in Hayes and MacEachern (1998), but differ in that there are more, and therefore more degrees of saliency. Rhyme patterns reflect grouping structure and correlate to patterns in final cadences, and imperfect rhyme is limited to phonologically similar codas. In the Snoop Dogg corpus syllables do not always align with the metrical grid, metrical mapping and rhyme patterning often challenge grouping structure, and imperfect rhyme is more diverse, as has been shown to be the case for contemporary rap generally (Krims 2000, Katz 2008). Following Rice (1997), Golston (1998), Reindl and Franks (2001), Michael (2003), and Fitzgerald (2003, 2007), meter, grouping and rhyme are modeled as driving phonological, morphological and syntactic deviation in Optimality Theoretic terms. In the Hank Williams corpus, metrical mapping and grouping constraints are shown to drive a number of linguistically deviatory phenomena including stress shift, syllabic variation and allomorphy, while rhyme patterning constraints govern syntactic inversion. In the Snoop Dogg corpus, rhyme fellow correspondence and rhyme patterning constraints play a more significant role, driving enjambment, syllabic variation, and allomorphy. Some linguistically deviatory phenomena derive from ordinary language variation, e.g. (flawr)~(flaw.[schwa]r), and some do not, e.g. syllable insertion in insista. The latter is more common in the Snoop Dogg corpus.Item Role of local electrostatic fields in protein-protein and protein-solvent interactions determined by vibrational Stark effect spectroscopy(2014-05) Ragain, Christina Marie; Webb, Lauren J.This examines the interplay of structure and local electrostatic fields in protein-protein and protein-solvent interactions. The partial charges of the protein amino acids and the polarization of the surrounding solvent create a complex system of electrostatic fields at protein-protein and protein-solvent interfaces. An approach incorporating vibrational Stark effect (VSE) spectroscopy, dissociation constant measurements, and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations was used to investigate the electrostatic interactions in these interfaces. Proteins p21Ras (Ras) and Rap1A (Rap) have nearly identical amino acid sequences and structures along the effector-binding region but bind with different affinities to Ral guanine nucleotide dissociation stimulator (RalGDS). A charge reversion mutation at position 31 alters the binding affinity of Ras and Rap with RalGDS from 0.1 [mu]M and 1 [mu]M, to 1 [mu]M and 0.5 [mu]M, respectively. A spectral probe was placed at various locations along the binding interface on the surface of RalGDS as it was docked with Ras and Rap single (position 30 or 31) and double mutants (both positions). By comparing the probes' absorption energies with the respective wild-type (WT) analogs, VSE spectroscopy was able to measure molecular-level electrostatic events across the protein-protein interface. MD simulations provided a basis for deconvoluting the structural and electrostatic changes observed by the probes. The mutation at position 31 was found to be responsible for both structural and electrostatic changes compared to the WT analogs. Furthermore, previous identification of positions N27 and N29 on RalGDS as "hot spots" that help discriminate between structurally similar GTPases was supported. The RalGDS probe-containing variants and three model compounds were placed in aqueous solvents with varying dielectric constants to measure changes in absorption energy. We investigated the ability of the Onsager solvent model to describe the solvent induced changes in absorption energy, while MD simulations were employed to determine the location and solvation of the probes at the protein-solvent interface. The solvent accessible-surface area, a measure of hydration, was determined to correlate well with the change in magnitude of the probe's absorption energy and the displaced solvent by the probe.Item The Emcee's Site of Enunciation: Exploring the Dialectic Between Authorship and Readership in Hip Hop(2013-07-22) Del Hierro, Victor JThe relationship between authors and readers has been heavily studied in western literatures since the shift between the spoken-subject lost its privileged position to the written author. The struggle for who determines truth has formed a specific dialect that requires either the author or the reader to be silent. Since the acceptance of literary theories like the ?death of the author? and ?author-function,? we continue to map these concepts on to similar relationships and discourses. Hip-hop culture defies this dialect, instead, based around the concept of the cipher, hip-hop insists on a constant inclusive discourse. Based in African-American traditions of call-and-response, hip-hop is always looking for voices to speak to each other and push the conversation further. In my thesis, I open up an exploration of the role of an author in hip-hop. Paying specific attention to the rapper, I flesh out the ways western ideas of reading conflate and disrupt the structures of a cipher in hip-hop. Imposing an ?author-function? on rappers, displaces the call-and-response relationship that hip-hop thrives on. While hip-hop becomes more prevalent in popular culture, rappers have to learn to navigate within and outside of the immediate hip-hop community. As a case study, I examine the career trajectory of Jay Z. Sean Carter employs the site of enunciation that Jay Z creates to transcend and transform his experiences into a platform for creative expressions as well as lucrative business ventures. Finally, this thesis serves as an initial inquiry into future research plans to explore rappers as nepantler@s and listeners as ?digital griots.? Both of these designations represents important rhetorical spaces that allow hip-hop culture to continue to work within a cipher and promote inclusivity. These future plans build towards creating a possible model for more productive collaboration, education, and activism.