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This study is concerned with the utility of violent rhetoric within the lyrics of dead prez specifically, and Hip-Hop culture generally. Rather than dismissing rappers as indecent, and therefore inconsequential, due to their violent rhetoric, I seek to determine whether their use of such rhetoric is a strategy to create and expand discursive space for a muted group that is traditionally denied such space. Using Frantz Fanon’s theory of violence found in his seminal work The Wretched of the Earth (1963), I am to gain further understanding of the ways in which violence may affect beneficial social change for oppressed and marginalized populations. This essay advances the study of communication culture by arguing that the violent rhetorical constitution of dead prez’s lyrics finds legitimacy through being used as a rhetorical tool of resistance to social oppression and social justice. |
