Dirty South Feminism

The Girlies Got Somethin' to Say Too! Southern Hip-Hop Women, Fighting Respectability, Talking Mess, and Twerking Up the Dirty South

Bibliographic Data

ID3269984
AuthorsAdeerya Johnson (University of British Columbia, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume12
Issue11
Pages1030
Publication date2021-11-22
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueReligions (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2077-1444 • E-ISSN: 2077-1444
PublisherMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/rel12111030
OpenAlexW3217618107
LanguageEN
Citations received8
References cited30

Within southern hip-hop, minimal credit has been given to the Black women who have curated sonic and performance narratives within the southern region. Many southern hip-hop scholars and journalists have centralized the accomplishments and masculinities of southern male rap performances. Here, dirty south feminism works to explore how agency, location, and Black women's rap (lyrics and rhyme) and dance (twerking) performances in southern hip-hop are established under a contemporary hip-hop womanist framework. I critique the history of southern hip-hop culture by decentralizing male-dominated and hyper-masculine southern hip-hop identities. Second, I extend hip-hop feminist/womanist scholarship that includes tangible reflections of Black womanhood that emerge out of the South to see how these narratives reshape and re-inform representations of Black women and girls within southern hip-hop culture. I use dirty south feminism to include geographical understandings of southern Black women who have grown up in the South and been sexually shamed, objectified and pushed to the margins in southern hip-hop history. I seek to explore the following questions: How does the performance of Black women's presence in hip-hop dance localize the South to help expand narratives within dirty south hip-hop? How can the "dirty south" as a geographical place within hip-hop be a guide to disrupt a conservative hip-hop South through a hip-hop womanist lens

Art · Dance · Feminism · Literature · Media studies · Narrative · Political science · Popular culture · Scholarship · Sociology · Gender Studies · Latin American and Latino Studies · Music History and Culture · Race, History, and American Society

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Open DOIOpen Access