Views from the Bricks: Notes on Reading and Protest

In reflecting on the African American protest tradition and the outsized role of storytelling as one of its most profound tools for reasoning through social unrest and social injustice, I believe our ability to understand Hip Hop music’s complicated messaging will be essential to examining critical responses to legal and social victimization. For me, Hip Hop remains vital to discussions of the African American protest tradition and to the critical work of reflection, healing, and organizing. The recent rise of Hip Hop songs, such as Kendrick Lamar’s “We Gon Be Alright,” as popular protest songs are testament to Hip Hop music’s function with the lives of marginalized people (Limbong). Moreover, Hip Hop artists’ skillful manipulation of multimedia resources across several digital and print platforms represents a bridge between tradition and social change. The podcasts, music videos, film clips, memoirs, interviews, and even tweets from these artists represent textual compositions that move seamlessly across genres, reading communities, and institutions. Thus, Hip Hop protest songs produce a type of literature designed for careful rereading, yet the processes of reading and method provide new and rich entanglements between texts, authors, genres, and platforms.