In 1988, rap group Public Enemy's front man Chuck D declared that hip-hop was the "black CNN." His assertion was that hip-hop music could be used as a tool to disseminate information amongst communities that traditionally have been underserved by mainstream media outlets. In the years since, several explicitly political and activist groups have formed within hip-hop communities. Most hip-hop audience members are not, however, directly involved in such groups. My dissertation investigates the links between hip-hop music and culture and politics in the lives of audience members, exploring audience member's definitions of politics and community and examining the influence of hip-hop on these definitions. This is an ethnographic project that includes participant observation as well as in-depth interviews with self-identified hip-hop fans. Participant observation took place at two National Hip-Hop Political Convention conferences, in Austin at concerts, panel discussions, and other hip-hop oriented events, and online in an email listserv devoted to hip-hop and politics. Interviews address listening and other practices that serve to connect individual members to hip-hop communities. In addition, I asked participants to explore their definitions of "politics" and to comment on connections between music and politics from their individual perspectives. Finally, participants were asked to list issues of particular concern to them. This is an interdisciplinary project that combines aspects of sociology, cultural studies, and popular music studies. I also rely upon Patricia Hill Collins' concept of intersectionality, assuming that race, class, and gender each work together to contribute to audience members' experience with hip-hop music and culture and their sense of belonging to the hip-hop community. This project contributes to understandings of music reception as well as to understanding political affiliation and practice by exploring and describing the ways in which people register and experience music and politics in the hip-hop generation. / text

Since the Civil Rights era, African Americans have come a long way. In the years since the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, there have been dramatic increases in education, political representation, business ownership, and occupational position. Yet, for all of the economic, social and political advances made in the African American community, many young people are still subjected to inferior schools, housing and depressed communities where crime, drugs, police brutality and HIV/AIDS run rampant. As a result, there is a growing tension among the community over the root causes of their predicament and the most adequate way of dealing with them. Based on the generational political theory, this dissertation examines generational effects within the African American community since 1964. From this period, three distinct cohorts are analyzed: the Civil Rights, Integration, and Hip Hop generations. The objective is to determine if different experiences over this period have modified political values, attitudes, and behaviors from one generation to the next. Using data from the 1996 National Black Elections Study (NBES), I examine public policy preferences and political attitudes of African Americans. I use bivariate and multivariate analysis to show generational gaps in attitudes about issues related to major party performance. I draw three major conclusions from this analysis. First, racial group interests remain powerfully important across all cohorts. Next, the Hip Hop generation tends to hold more conservative attitudes than either the Civil Rights or the Integration generations. Finally, I conclude that at the very core of black politics, political values have not changed. However, there is a tension among the Hip Hop cohort between the impending attitudinal changes and the more traditional values of the Civil Rights cohort. The proposed dissertation contributes to the body of research by analyzing generational politics and behavior to better understand the future of black politics in the 21st century.