Detroit, MIchigan, has long been recognized as a center of musical innovation and social change. Rebekah Farrugia and Kellie D. Hay draw on seven years of fieldwork to illuminate the important role that women have played in mobilizing a grassroots response to political and social pressures at the heart of Detroit’s ongoing renewal and development project. Focusing on the Foundation, a women-centered hip hop collective, Women Rapping Revolution argues that the hip hop underground is a crucial site where Black women shape subjectivity and claim self-care as a principle of community organizing. Through interviews and sustained critical engagement with artists and activists, this study also articulates the substantial role of cultural production in social, racial, and economic justice efforts.
Rebekah Farrugia is Professor of Media Studies in the Department of Communication, Journalism, and Public Relations at Oakland University. She is the author of Beyond the Dance Floor: Female DJs, Technology, and Electronic Dance Music Culture.
Kellie D. Hay is Professor of Cultural Studies in the Department of Communication, Journalism, and Public Relations at Oakland University. She has authored many articles about music, politics, and cultural identity, and specializes in critical qualitative methodologies.
“A rigorous and much-needed explication of black women’s subjectivity in underground hip hop and a model for studying how women navigate and alter terrains of cultural production.”—Stephen M. Ward, author of In Love and Struggle: The Revolutionary Lives of James and Grace Lee Boggs
“Women Rapping Revolution centers the collaborative work of women hip hop artists as culture producers, political actors, and community revitalizers. This book charts new territory and makes a significant contribution to hip hop scholarship.”—Anthony Kwame Harrison, author of Hip Hop Underground: The Integrity and Ethics of Racial Identification
“This book is a vibrant portrait of an evolving, emergent collective of women responsible for a crucial thread of contemporary Detroit hip hop. Rebekah Farrugia and Kellie Hay show us that there is no movement toward racial, environmental, or any kind of justice today that is not led by women and powered by hip hop.”—Emery Petchauer, author of Hip Hop Culture in College Students'’ Lives
“Women Rapping Revolution is a thorough dissection of how the streets of Detroit were calling for a hip hop revolution and women rose to the occasion. Farrugia and Hay craft a lively history of just how the socioeconomics of this Midwestern hub inspired a movement of sound and places women at the forefront in this much-needed lesson in Detroit hip hop.”––Kathy Iandoli, author of God Save the Queens: The Essential History of Women in Hip-Hop
248 pp.6 x 9Illus: 12 b/w photographs
9780520305328$29.95|£25.00Paper
May 2020