Sounding soul (food): The discursive interconnection of sound, food, and place in Southern hip-hop

Abstract

Abstract This essay will interrogate how hip-hop—a form whose sound is not only connected to but defined by ideas of place—uses food and place as discursive objects to construct notions Southern urban particularity. Reading soul food as both a national cuisine symbolizing Black resilience in the face of institutional racial violence and a local cuisine that can symbolize the particularity of place, I argue that Southern hip-hop melds sound, taste, and place to construct Southern urban identity. I argue that this tension is maintained on a discursive plane in which each representational object—music, place, or food—articulates locally specific identity while resonating within a broader diasporic identifications. Looking specifically at Goodie Mob’s Soul Food (Atlanta), Bun B’s Instagram series “#TrillMealz” (Houston), and Lil’ Wayne’s Tha Carter II (New Orleans) this essay explores how place, food, and hip-hop function as representational objects of identity that are dependent on one another to articulate the place-specific urban identities of Southern cities.