Prophets of the Hood

Dear Imani Perry,

You wrote that “one’s epistemological framework determines one’s ability

to understand the music” (32). Thus, often white interpretations translate

this music and flatten it. I think that what is so radical about much of black

culture is its radical conception of a new mode of thought and being, and

this is also what makes it incomprehensible by the white gaze. Whereas the

world of whiteness operates in binaries and demarcations, you often

discussed the complexity and multi-dimensionality of Hip Hop. Is there even

a way that people not familiar to the very specific tones and contexts music

is situated in should attempt to consume it? Can whiteness ever operate in a

less violent way unless it reconstructs its epistemology?

In the Introduction you discussed this blurring of demarcated spaces as an

“open discourse” emerged which joined supposed opposites. This, to me, is

a genuinely democratic space. Furthermore, the idea of discourse, or call

and response, allows a type of art that is in conversation with others around

it. How do we consider the hybridity of culture while decidedly designating

something as specific to a group of people?