HIST 491C / LAS 450/ AMS 490 / Africana 406: Race and Racism in the Americas (Spring 2024)

Hip hop studies have historically centered on issues of the "street", associated with virtuosic lyricism and flow, foregrounded as evidence of the "seriousness" of the genre. While these have been valuable theoretical approaches, the prominence of social networking in the 2010s (with its implications for communication and identity politics) has sculpted a generation of rappers whose vocal style and self-representation disintegrate prior assumptions about hip hop identity. These artists, flourishing in tandem with the rise of streaming services, have been disparagingly dubbed "mumble rap" by traditionalists owing to the apparent indecipherability of their vocals, and a lack of emphasis on observational or poetic lyricism. I argue that this myopic label undervalues the groundbreakingly post-verbal nature of the music being created by these rappers—highlighting the innovations of mumble rap, exploring the centrality of social media, memes, and streaming to its existence, while critically examining its protagonists’ unconventionally stylized vocals. After analyzing the impact of streaming, information overload, and audience participation (through social media hype and memes) on contemporary hip hop, I survey the growth of melodic Auto-Tuned vocals and repetitive lyricism in the work of pioneering mumble rappers such as Future, before turning to an extended examination of Atlanta's Young Thug, whose controversially malleable vocal style, which prioritizes experimentation with vocal textures while confounding the rules of hip hop flow, is mirrored by his impulsive exploitation of social media and androgynous fashion sense, establishing him as the most revolutionary archetype of so-called mumble rap.