Access the full text.
Sign up today, get DeepDyve free for 14 days.
Steven Shaviro (2005)
Supa Dupa Fly: Black Women As Cyborgs in Hiphop VideosQuarterly Review of Film and Video, 22
B. Rampton (1997)
Crossing: Language and Ethnicity Among AdolescentsInternational Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 3
Marc Perry (2008)
GLOBAL BLACK SELF-FASHIONINGS: HIP HOP AS DIASPORIC SPACEIdentities, 15
T. Omoniyi (2006)
Hip‐hop through the world Englishes lens: a response to globalizationWorld Englishes, 25
W. Akpan (2016)
And the Beat Goes On? Message Music, Political Repression and the Power of Hip-Hop in Nigeria
O. Liadi (2012)
Multilingualism and Hip Hop Consumption in Nigeria: Accounting for the Local Acceptance of a Global PhenomenonAfrica Spectrum, 47
H. Alim (2002)
Street-Conscious Copula Variation in the Hip Hop NationAmerican Speech, 77
Mela Sarkar, L. Winer (2006)
Multilingual Codeswitching in Quebec Rap: Poetry, Pragmatics and PerformativityInternational Journal of Multilingualism, 3
S. Dare (2005)
SEXUAL DISCOURSE IN NIYI OSUNDARE'S POETRY: A SOCIOLINGUISTIC READINGAfrican Study Monographs, 26
H. Alim (2006)
Roc the Mic Right: The Language of Hip Hop Culture
Elinor Ochs (1993)
Constructing Social Identity: A Language Socialization PerspectiveResearch on Language and Social Interaction, 26
Mary Bucholtz (1999)
“Why be normal?”: Language and identity practices in a community of nerd girlsLanguage in Society, 28
H. Alim (2009)
Translocal style communities: Hip hop youth as cultural theorists of style, language, and globalizationPragmatics, 19
J. Kramer (1996)
Postmodern Concepts of Musical Time
B. Rampton (1999)
Styling the Other: IntroductionJournal of Sociolinguistics, 3
A. Akande (2013)
Code-switching in Nigerian hip-hop lyricsLanguage Matters, 44
Recent years have seen an explosion in the production and consumption of hip hop music in Nigeria. From the MTV Africa Music Awards to the BET Awards, Nigerian hip hop heads have continued to push the boundaries of their music on the international front, linking it, in the process, to a sort of global Hip Wide Web. Yet, despite these breakthroughs, the general perception of the discursive landscape of this music is not altogether positive in Nigeria itself. In particular, the message(s) of the music’s lyrics has been severally described as a venture that has no meaning beyond its noisy character. This is especially the case when the music is being evaluated by older generations of Nigerian critics who do not share in, and are almost averse to, the hip hop culture that has newly ascended as the dominant youth culture. Problematizing these evaluations under five paradigms—crossing, multilingualism, and styling, repetition, inversion of order, meaninglessness, and pornography—this essay contends that what appears as meaninglessness in Nigerian hip hop music inscribes a masked matrix of meanings in the postmodern age. It argues that the elements of the lyrical gamut that are often perceived as meaningless are in fact meaningful and valuable resources that the artists, and by extension their audience members, harness to perform their generational ingroupness and multiplex postmodern identities.
Matatu – Brill
Published: Jan 1, 2016
Read and print from thousands of top scholarly journals.
Already have an account? Log in
Bookmark this article. You can see your Bookmarks on your DeepDyve Library.
To save an article, log in first, or sign up for a DeepDyve account if you don’t already have one.
Copy and paste the desired citation format or use the link below to download a file formatted for EndNote
Access the full text.
Sign up today, get DeepDyve free for 14 days.
All DeepDyve websites use cookies to improve your online experience. They were placed on your computer when you launched this website. You can change your cookie settings through your browser.