Contemporary approaches to music criticism tend to operate at and fluctuate between two poles‐the micro‐level analysis of song lyrics and music textures and/or the broad‐brushed interrogation of macro‐level historical and political contexts and currents. What is missing, this essay argues, is a treatment of musical and performative processes that pays careful attention to the historical evolution of concrete contexts of production and consumption. Drawing on (among others) de Certeau's notion of practices as “enunciations” imbricated in “contexts of use,” I attempt to develop such an approach by interrogating one defining historical transition in hip hop history (circa 1983)‐the moment when the popular imperatives of commodity culture largely eclipsed the art's roots in localized performance.