Afro-Samurai

Techno-Orientalism and contemporary hip hop

Bibliographic Data

ID4304236
AuthorsKen Mcleod (University of Toronto, corresponding author)
Year2013
Volume32
Issue2
Pages259-275
Publication date2013-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePopular Music (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0261-1430 • E-ISSN: 1474-0095
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0261143013000056
OpenAlexW2067830381
LanguageEN
Citations received9
References cited22

This article examines the practice and recent rise in the use of various aspects of Japanese popular culture in hip hop, particularly as manifest in the work of RZA, Kanye West and Nicki Minaj. Often these references highlight the high-tech, futuristic aesthetic of much Japanese popular culture and thus resonate with concepts and practices surrounding Afro-futurism. Drawing on various theories of hybridity, this article analyses how Japanese popular culture has informed constructions of African American identity. In contrast to the often sensational media coverage of racial tensions between African American and Asian communities, the nexus of Japanese popular culture and African American hip hop evinces a sympathetic connection based on shared notions of Afro-Asian liberation and empowerment achieved, in part, through a common aesthetic of technological mastery and appropriation. The synthesis of Asian popular culture and African American hip hop represents a globally hybridised experience of identity and racial formation in the 21st century

Aesthetics · Appropriation · Art · Cultural appropriation · Epistemology · Hybridity · Identity (music · Literature · Media studies · Nexus (standard · Orientalism · Popular culture · Sociology · Anthropology · Asian Culture and Media Studies · Engineering · Gender Studies · Hong Kong and Taiwan Politics · Music History and Culture · Philosophy

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