Posthuman Rap

Posthuman Rap listens for the ways contemporary rap maps an existence outside the traditional boundaries of what it means to be human. Contemporary humanity is shaped in neoliberal terms, where being human means being viable in a capitalist marketplace that favors whiteness, masculinity, heterosexuality, and fixed gender identities. But musicians from Nicki Minaj to Future to Rae Sremmurd deploy queerness and sonic blackness as they imagine different ways of being human. Building on the work of Sylvia Wynter, Alexander Weheliye, Lester Spence, LH Stallings, and a broad swath of queer and critical race theory, Posthuman Rap turns an ear especially toward hip hop that is often read as apolitical in order to hear its posthuman possibilities, its construction of a humanity that is blacker, queerer, more feminine than the norm.

Justin Adams Burton is Assistant Professor of Music at Rider University, where he works in conjunction with the Popular Music Studies program. Justin's scholarship revolves around matters of race, class, and gender as they intersect with hip hop, pop, and dance genres. Justin is also co-editor (with Jason Lee Oakes) of the Oxford Handbook of Hip Hop Music Studies.