Travel / Escape: Hip Hop’s Transatlantic Mobilities

Abstract

Upscale travel to Europe has become a frequent status symbol in mainstream hip hop. Given their emphasis on money and pleasure, these travel accounts have been criticized for glossing over, and thus upholding, racial and economic hierarchies. Yet the very figure of the Black upscale traveler presents a challenge to these hierarchies. This article examines how rappers deploy the tropes of European travel to negotiate the complicated history of Black transatlantic mobility and assert a Black presence often missing from accounts (and imaginaries) of Americans in Europe. These rappers may fulfill stereotypes of individualist leisure tourism, but the impulse behind their work is revisionist. Drawing on works by Jay Z, Kanye West, Rick Ross, and Beyoncé, the article examines how this revisionist impulse plays out in the words, imagery, and iconography of American hip hop about Europe.