Nairobi Hip Hop Flow

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Nairobi Hip Hop Flow is an interdisciplinary study that combines ethnographic methods, political history, and music and performance analysis to illustrate the richness of hip hop's embodied performance practices. RaShelle R. Peck examines underground rap culture in Nairobi to illustrate how hip hop artists engage with political seriousness in lyrics and sound and foster a creative playfulness using bodily movement. Through these artists' embodiments, a persistent diasporic blackness circulates, indigenizing the music and working alongside lyrical content to interrogate Kenya's sociopolitical landscape. Peck presents an unprecedented study of Nairobi artists' interactions with localized lyrics and globally signified performative, masculinist, and diasporic embodiments-one that is critical for understanding how hip hop espouses a globalized locality.