The New Masters of Eloquence: Southernness, Senegal, and Transatlantic Hip-Hop Mobilities

Abstract

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] I get it in 'til sun rise, Goin' 90 in a 65, Windows rolled down screamin' out: Hey-ey-ey, so paid. --Akon, I'm so paid, 2008 (1) With a heavy diamond stud anchoring each earlobe, hip-hop hustler Akon disembarks from his helicopter, spreads his arms to sky, and sings about his solvency from bow of a high-seas luxury yacht. For all its exuberance, gesture is a stereotypical one for any Atlanta rapper. Here, fantasy surrounding hip-hop's southern Third (2)--one represented by Akon's formidable pop presence--is crisscrossed by classic cars, fast motorcycles, and sprawling liners. With Akon and his peers at its helm, last decade has witnessed dominance of southern hip-hop in international commercial markets and neighborhood undergrounds alike. As Miami, Houston, Memphis, New Orleans, and Virginia Beach center themselves in global pop scene, this travels in unlikely vehicles, including body of this Senegalese-American singer, whose voice both represents American South's most marketable presence in global industry and Africa's most audible presence in American hip-hop. Commercial television is so saturated with trope of southern rap star on a boat that comedian Andy Samberg's hip-hop video send-up of genre--I'm on a Boat!--has come to define mainstream critical engagement with southern rap. (3) Akon's smooth, blues-keyed cadence, though, is definitive for body of genre, which infuses posture of coastal gangsta hip-hop styles with cool sung tones of Deep-South gospel and a particular attention to scenic narratives and sharp wordplay. Even as these popular forms patch together a legacy of regional sounds and styles, they are contoured by growing African and diasporic communities that line contemporary American South. In wake of economic collapse over past decade, new communities of Senegalese flea-market traders (who often have special relationships with Chinese manufacturers), IT specialists, and taxi drivers have come to thicken suburbs of Atlanta, Raleigh, Houston, Memphis, Virginia Beach, and Miami. They join a host of migrants from throughout a transnational Afrodiasporic circuit, which Black aesthetic theorist Paul Gilroy calls the Black Atlantic. (4) The new Global South incorporates populations of Caribbean immigrants from Jamaica, Haiti, and Cuba; Africans from Ivory Coast, Nigeria, and Uganda; Brazilians and East Coast African American families. These immigrants connect with established southern communities that are already textured by global genealogies and cross-cultural conversations. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Akon represents latest chapter in both southern social life and southern that upends notion that southernness must wear its history on its sleeve--that it must cast itself in frayed aesthetic of handmade and moor its imagination in farm and country. Instead, Akon and his contemporaries, poised in present tense, represent a nation they call a loose family of artists associated with urban centers and creative communities of American South and Southern diaspora, who rose to popular prominence in last decade on a wave of novel productions and dancehall hits. With its digitized production techniques and attention to high-end trend, is unapologetically super-modern; its dirt emerges in its bassy car sound systems and club speakers alike, badness in its hustler's lyricism, and depiction of Scarface-inflected imagery in its videos. The is time-stamped with unmistakable low-end rocking beats, tinny synthesizer flourishes, heavily processed vocals (often slowed down to sound vaguely sinister), and heavy lyrics with call-and-response choruses ready for instant memorization. This is of Global Dirty South: a zone based in a messy aesthetic of here-and-now that Mississippi rapper/producer David Banner describes as horror music (5) and Akon calls Konvikt Muzik. …