‘Mic Power’: ‘Public’ connections through the hip hop nation in Kampala

Abstract

Hip hop culture has been celebrated in the media and scholarship as a universal youth language, part of a global hip hop nation, and a type of counter-public. This article examines the everyday meanings and practices of hip hop among hip hop activists in Kampala, Uganda, specifically within the Batuuze rap group. Rather than portraying hip hop as a counter-public of the disempowered, I argue that the Batuuze engagement is based on what I call moral economy that enables the negotiation of connections in social and cultural networks towards what is considered a good life. Here, the hip hop nation is less of an alternative public sphere and more a way of articulating and contextualizing the world in a specific locality, which produces connections and opportunities in the young rappers’ lives.