RAP | RACE | IDENTITY: Race in Hip Hop’s America

Exhibition: January 31 - February 28

45 Minute Multisensory Experience - $25 (for up to 5 attendees)

RAP | RACE | IDENTITY is an immersive exhibit based on the research of Danielle Hodge, PhD that sonically and visually brings scholarly analysis to life through the art of James Roy II.

Guests and hip hop heads alike will be systematically guided through a multisensory experience that includes the hard-hitting sounds, unapologetically Black lyricism, and evocative depictions of JAY-Z, Kanye West, Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole, and Nipsey Hussle. Make no mistake, this exhibit isn’t about passively consuming Black art. Rather, it encourages intentional listening, critical viewing, and perceptive thinking. With each artist, guests will engage with how language is used to construct one's racial identity and reproduce and/or resist discourses of anti-black racism. For example, how does Kanye West's, "New Slaves" help us think through not only the mass incarceration of African Americans as a contemporary form of enslavement, but also the economic exploitation of Black labor? Or, how does Kendrick Lamar's, "The Blacker the Berry" call attention to the ways African Americans engage in cultural subversion to critique anti-black racism?

Essentially, this exhibit begs the question: How do rap artists navigate their Africanity in a white supremacist society? In other words, how do they manage being Black in White America?

-Danielle Hodge, PhD