Hip Hop Desis

Hip Hop Desisexplores the worldviews of young Americans of South Asian descent (desi) who create hip hop music. Nitasha Tamar Sharma argues that through their lives and lyrics, "hip hop desis" express a global race consciousness reflecting both their sense of connection with Blacks as racialized minorities in the United States and their diasporic sensiblity as part of a global community of South Asians. Sharma emphasizes the role of appropriation and sampling in the ways that hip hop desis craft their identities, create art, and pursue social activism. Some of the desi artists at the center of her ethnography produce what she calls "ethnic hip hop," incorporating South Asian languages, instruments, and immigrant themes. Through ethnic hip hop, desi artists such as KB, Sammy, and Bella Deejay express "alternative desiness," challenging assumptions about their identities as South Asians, children of immigrants, minorities, and Americans. Desi artists also contest and seek to bridge perceived divisions between Black and South Asian Americans through "racialized hip hop." Sharma describes how they uncover connections between South Asians and Blacks, highlighting in their lyrics links such as the relationship between Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Mahatma Gandhi. By taking up themes considered irrelevant to many Asian Americans, desi performers including Drs"Lo, Chee Malabar of Himalayan Project and Rawj of Feenom Circle create a multiracial form of black popular culture to fight racism and enact social change.

Nitasha Tamar Sharma is an Assistant Professor of African American Studies and Asian American Studies at Northwestern University.