“I Am Not Just From Here:” The Roots of Hip Hop's Cosmopolitanism: A Reflection on Isoke's “Women, Hip Hop and Cultural Resistance in Dubai”

Abstract

This response paper considers the gender realities of the subjects in Isoke's Women, Hip Hop, and Cultural Resistance in Dubai in relation to U.S. based hip hop artists who have recently begun to situate their work and image in larger international contexts. Neal argues that the while recent and publicized acts have begun to mark US hip hop artists as “citizens of the world,” in fact hip hop artist have always been cosmopolitian.

Keywords:

• cosmopolitanism
• gender
• hip hop
• Zenzele Isoke

Notes

Richard Iton, In Search of the Black Fantastic: Politics and Popular Culture in the Post-Civil Rights Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).

See an extended examination of hip hop cosmopolitanism in “My Passport Says Shawn: Towards a hip hop Cosmopolitanism,” in Mark Anthony Neal, Looking for Leroy: Illegible Black Masculinities (New York: NYU Press, 2013).

Sarah Nuttal and Achille Mbembe, “Afropolis: From Johannesburg,” PMLA 122, no. 1 (2007): 281–288.