Gamble, Steven (2019) Empowerment in rap music listening ft. Kendrick Lamar’s “Backseat Freestyle”. In, On Popular Music and Its Unruly Entanglements. Springer Nature, 165 - 185. (doi:10.1007/978-3-030-18099-7_9).
Abstract
There is a widespread belief that rap music can be empowering for its listeners. In this chapter, I discuss conventional approaches to empowerment in hip hop studies and suggest how listening to rap affords such empowering experiences. I formulate a theoretical framework for empowerment in music listening, drawing from established theories of perception and cognition in music studies, community psychology work on empowerment, and psychological research on felt power. This model of listener empowerment is then applied to an analysis of Kendrick Lamar’s single “Backseat Freestyle” (2012). In doing so, I argue that even tracks which do not easily comply with dominant perspectives on rap’s emancipatory potential allow for empowering interpretations in the listening process.
This record has no associated files available for download.
More information
Identifiers
Catalogue record
Export record
Altmetrics
Contributors
Download statistics
Downloads from ePrints over the past year. Other digital versions may also be available to download e.g. from the publisher's website.