Hip-Hop in the Middle: Overcoming Outsider Status in Midwest Rap by Matthew Joseph Yuknas A dissertation accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Musicology Dissertation Committee: Zachary Wallmark, Chair Juan Eduardo Wolf, Core Member Stephen Rodgers, Core Member Mark Whalan, Institutional Representative University of Oregon Summer 2025 2 © 2025 Matthew Joseph Yuknas 3 DISSERTATION ABSTRACT Matthew Joseph Yuknas Doctor of Philosophy in Musicology Title: Hip-Hop in the Middle: Overcoming Outsider Status in Midwest Rap The history of Midwest hip-hop reflects the region’s longstanding experience of cultural isolation, often defined in comparison to its coastal counterparts. As a result, hip-hop scholarship has largely centered on the most commercially visible artists from these three regions, often sidelining the Midwest. Yet despite this marginalization, Midwestern rappers have carved out a space within what has effectively become a “tri-coastal” tradition. Markers of location-based authenticity in hip-hop have forced rappers from areas considered less traditionally credible to align themselves with a broader regional identity to enhance their legitimacy and cultural standing within the genre. Incorporating methodologies from a wide range of disparate fields, including those traditionally associated with the humanities and social sciences, this dissertation considers the role of lyrical intertextuality (literary studies), racial identity (cultural studies), and media formatting to illuminate how Midwest rappers construct credibility and negotiate belonging within a genre shaped by both regional marginalization and racialized expectations. I focus on this marginalization in the context of three case studies wherein racially and regionally peripheral artists navigate questions of legitimacy and belonging within a genre historically defined by Black, coastal, urban experience. To explore how Midwest rappers use intertextual lyrical references to build community and credibility, I look at Minneapolis duo Atmosphere. Next, examining how Midwest artists negotiate whiteness amidst hip-hop’s historically Black ethos, I look at Detroit duo Insane Clown Posse in relation to the well-studied and popular rapper 4 Eminem. Finally, as a case study of independent label formatting strategies, I revisit Atmosphere and their label Rhymesayers Entertainment to show how the neglected, “broken” EP format was reimagined as a deliberate artistic and commercial tool. By situating Midwest hip-hop within broader conversations about authenticity, marginalization, and cultural production, this dissertation reveals how artists from racially and geographically peripheral positions challenge dominant hip-hop narratives. It argues that these artists do not merely adapt to exclusion but actively reshape the genre’s expressive possibilities through practices that blend resistance, reinvention, and community-building. Ultimately, this work contributes to a more inclusive understanding of hip-hop’s geography and cultural logic, foregrounding the creative agency of those operating from the margins. 5 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First, I wish to express sincere appreciation and gratitude to advisor and committee chair, Zachary Wallmark. His unwavering generosity, steadfast support, and profound intellectual insight have been a consistent source of guidance and inspiration throughout this journey. At every stage, his contributions have not only shaped the direction of my work but have also made the entire process deeply engaging and intellectually rewarding. It is hard to fully articulate the impact that his persistent encouragement has had over the past five years. Above all, I am profoundly grateful for the way he reminded me, through both his mentorship and example, why this work matters. I am also indebted to Juan Eduardo Wolf, Stephen Rodgers, and Mark Whalan for serving on my committee and for their generous engagement with my work. Their insightful feedback and thoughtful suggestions played a crucial role in shaping this dissertation into its final form. I feel deeply fortunate to have benefited from their invaluable collaboration throughout this process. Their intellectual generosity, critical rigor, and passion for the field have set an inspiring example that has profoundly influenced my development as a musicologist and scholar. I am also grateful to the many professors at the University of Oregon whose guidance and encouragement have supported me along the way. Lori Kruckenberg’s unwavering support and openness to ideas beyond her immediate field have been especially meaningful. Her influence on my thinking about intertextuality, as well as the collaborative lectures we delivered together, have been particularly impactful. I also want to thank Abigail Fine, whose seminar “Musical Pasts: Preservation, Revival, Memory” helped lay the conceptual groundwork for this project. And finally, André Sirois for just being a down-to-earth dude within the chaos that is academia. 6 Thank you to my fellow graduate students, whose camaraderie, insight, and good humor made this long journey not only more bearable, but genuinely joyful. In particular, I want to acknowledge Abe Landa, Nick Burton, Em Catlett, John Wood, Laura Trujillo-Sanz and Annie Liu. Your friendship, intellectual generosity, and shared sense of purpose sustained me through the highs and lows of graduate school. I feel incredibly proud and fortunate to have walked this path alongside such brilliant and thoughtful scholars. To the homies—you know who you are. But so you won’t complain, here’s a shoutout to Brian “Big Dawg” Smith, Zach “No Pants Zach” Dunaway, Chris “Fuhgeddaboudit” Sacco, Rae’Lynn “Do You Want My Leftovers” Harris, and all the other lovable degenerates I’m proud to call my friends. Thanks for keeping me grounded, entertained and (mostly) sane through it all. Finally, to my family. It’s a big one, so to cover everyone I want to sincerely thank the Heinritzi, Jenkins, Callahan, and Laluzerne clans, my grandmother Fran Yuknas, and aunt Jacque Yuknas. You have all been incredibly supportive throughout this journey, despite musical talent clearly being a selectively inherited trait. To my sister, Sarah Yuknas, for her endless (and occasionally painful) love and support. And my parents, Michael and Janet Yuknas—words could never fully express how deeply I appreciate your love and support. It is because of you both that I am where I am today, and I will always carry that gratitude with me. Last, but arguably most important, my sweet, loving, endlessly caring dog Cartman, who has been the best friend and support system I could have ever hoped for. 7 To the family members no longer with us, including my grandparents Howard and Connie Chaffee and Joseph “Pop-Pop” Yuknas and my aunt Christine Jenkins. 8 TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 13 Methodology and Literature Review ..................................................................... 21 Lyrical Intertextuality ...................................................................................... 21 Racial Identity and Rap “Authenticity” ........................................................... 26 Media Distribution ........................................................................................... 29 Chapter Overview .................................................................................................. 31 II. DEVELOPING COMMUNITY THROUGH INTERTEXTUALITY AND INTRA-GENRE QUOTATION: A CASE STUDY OF MINNESOTA HIP-HOP GROUP ATMOSPHERE ........................................................................... 33 Musical Quotation in Hip-Hop .............................................................................. 36 Towards a Theory of Hip-Hop Semiotics .............................................................. 38 Community ............................................................................................................ 43 Atmosphere ............................................................................................................ 49 Musical Examples .................................................................................................. 52 Schematic Quotation ........................................................................................ 53 Self-Signifyin’ .................................................................................................. 57 New Perspective Cover .................................................................................... 59 Sequel Cover .................................................................................................... 61 Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 64 9 Chapter Page III. NEGOTIATING WHITENESS IN 1990s HIP-HOP: A CASE STUDY OF EMINEM, INSANE CLOWN POSSE, AND DETROIT HORRORCORE .......................................................................................................... 68 Whiteness in the 1990s .......................................................................................... 72 Insane Clown Posse ............................................................................................... 78 Crazy White Boy .................................................................................................... 85 Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 96 IV. THE ATMOSPHERE EPs: FORMATTING MINNESOTA HIP-HOP ............... 99 Brief History of the EP .......................................................................................... 101 Headshots Tapes .................................................................................................... 104 Sad Clown Bad Dubs ............................................................................................. 107 The Atmosphere EPs .............................................................................................. 110 Album Teaser EP ............................................................................................. 111 Compilation EP ................................................................................................ 113 Sequel EP; or, Truly “Extended” Play ............................................................. 114 Double EP ........................................................................................................ 115 Rhymesayers EPs and Beyond ............................................................................... 117 Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 117 V. CONCLUSION ....................................................................................................... 121 APPENDICES ............................................................................................................. 124 A. ATMOSPHERE DISCOGRAPHY .................................................................. 124 B. EXPANDED DATA SET OF ATMOSPHERE’S SCHEMATIC QUOTATION AND COVER SONGS ......................................... 125 10 REFERENCES CITED ................................................................................................ 126 11 LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1. Map of United States of America highlighting the Midwestern states. ................. 15 2. Eminem onstage at Vorst National in Brussels, Belgium, May 2, 2001 ............... 69 3. Photo from The Great Milenko (1997) photoshoot ................................................ 80 4. Front image of Eminem’s flier for Slim Shady EP release party ........................... 87 5. Back image of Eminem’s flier for Slim Shady EP release party ........................... 88 12 LIST OF TABLES Table Page 1. Text comparison of “Early Mornin’ Tony” and associated hypotext .................... 56 2. Text comparison of “Young, Gifted, and Mixed” and “YGM” ............................. 60 3. Overcast! EP and LP track listing ......................................................................... 112 4. Slim Shady EP and LP track listing ....................................................................... 113 13 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION If the people laugh and giggle when you tell them where you live say shhh And if you know this is where you want to raise your kids say shhh If you’re from the Midwest and it doesn’t matter where say shhh… … And if you ain’t gonna leave cause this is where you’re from say shhh —Atmosphere1 It is tough being in the middle. Psychologist Jeannie S. Kidwell’s study of family dynamics argues that the middle child “reveals a lowered sense of self-esteem as compared to firstborn and lastborn.”2 Kidwell further claims that the middle child’s insecurity or lack of confidence is driven by a “lack of uniqueness” in which “achieving status, affection, and recognition among siblings and feeling special in the eyes of one’s parents is apparently more difficult.”3 This familial dynamic offers a compelling metaphor for regional hierarchies in American culture, where geography, too, can shape perceptions of status and identity. The geographical Midwest of the United States is undoubtedly the middle child inserted between the older, responsible East Coast and the younger, cooler West Coast. Like this sibling 1 Atmosphere, “Say Shhh…,” Seven’s Travels, Rhymesayers Entertainment, 2003. 2 Jeannie S. Kidwell, “The Neglected Birth Order: Middleborns,” Journal of Marriage and Family, Vol. 44, No. 1 (Feb. 1982), 234. 3 Ibid. 14 relationship, cultural studies scholars consistently evaluate the Midwest in relation to coastal urban centers like New York City and Los Angeles: “Midwestern tropes [only] attain cultural meaning in contrast to what the Midwest is imaged not to be (i.e., global, cosmopolitan, racially diverse, Eastern, or coastal),” writes anthropologists Britt Halvorson and Joshua Reno.4 In this way, the Midwest’s perceived cultural marginality becomes both its burden and its creative engine—fueling distinct forms of expression that emerge precisely because of, and in resistance to, its outsider status. Often referred to as “America’s heartland,” the Midwest region typically includes twelve states: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin (Figure 1). Bordered by the Great Lakes to the Northeast and the Great Plains to the West, the Midwest occupies a central position in the national imagination, frequently associated with agricultural production, industrial labor, and a distinct ethos of pragmatism and modesty. Still, many Americans chronically overlook and undervalue the Midwest as “flyover states.” Its largest city, Chicago is nicknamed the “Second City” for its inferior status compared to New York. In 2019, Iowa Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Gassley voiced his concern of the national political and economic neglect the Midwest faces, writing that “members of Congress representing Middle America have been talking about the challenges facing the Midwest for years, but our warnings have largely fallen on deaf ears … without immediate action, the heart of the nation may stop beating.”5 But Midwesterners persist, 4 Britt Halvorson and Joshua Reno, “What is the Midwest Thinking? U.S. Regionalism and Nationalism,” Member Voices, Fieldsights, March 7, 2019, https://culanth.org/fieldsights/what-is-the-midwest-thinking-u-s-regionalism- and-nationalism. 5 Chuck Grassley, “America Will Suffer if Problems Plaguing Midwest Aren’t Addressed by Congress,” Chuck Grassley Official Website, October 28, 2019, https://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/commentary/america-will- suffer-if-problems-plaguing-midwest-aren-t-addressed-congress-senate. 15 grinning and bearing their underdog status masked underneath a superficially polite “Midwest nice” attitude of non-confrontational passive-aggressiveness. Figure 1: Map of United States of America highlighting the Midwestern states. The history of Midwest hip-hop reflects the region’s longstanding experience of cultural isolation, often defined in comparison to its coastal counterparts. On one end stands the older East Coast sibling—New York City, birthplace of hip-hop in the 1970s and 1980s—and on the other, its younger West Coast sibling—Los Angeles, birthplace of gangsta rap and G-Funk in the late 1980s and early 1990s.6 Adding to this coastal dominance, the American South emerged in the late 1990s with the meteoric rise of what came to be known as the “Dirty South” or “third coast,” producing thriving rap subcultures in cities like Atlanta, Houston, and New Orleans. As a 6 The rise of Chicago house and Detroit techno in the 1980s positioned the Midwest as a central force in the global evolution of electronic dance music, even as it remained peripheral in the national hip-hop landscape. While house and techno gained traction in international club circuits, Midwestern rap struggled for visibility within a genre still dominated by the coasts. This simultaneous centrality and marginalization reveal a fragmented cultural geography: the Midwest was a creative epicenter for one Black musical innovation (EDM), while its contributions to another (hip-hop) were largely overlooked. Hip-hop in the Midwest thus emerged under conditions of aesthetic and industrial peripherality, developing alternative modes of distribution, community-building, and self-legitimization in contrast to the more institutionalized EDM scenes. 16 result, hip-hop scholarship has largely centered on the most commercially visible artists from these three regions, often sidelining the Midwest. Yet despite this marginalization, Midwestern rappers have carved out a space within what has effectively become a “tri-coastal” tradition. Why, then, have musicologists and national audiences so often overlooked their contributions? Their subservient position in hip-hop studies stems from several factors, most importantly, perceived inauthenticity of their peripheral location. Authenticity in hip-hop has long functioned as a central organizing principle grounded in the articulation of lived experience, cultural knowledge, and community accountability. While the notion of authenticity is inherently fluid, it often operates through perceived alignment between an artist’s background and their lyrical content, style, and public persona. Scholars including Imani Perry and Murray Forman have emphasized that authenticity is not a fixed attribute, but a performative stance negotiated through language, geography, and social context.7 Artists signal credibility through techniques like signifyin’, regional slang, autobiographical storytelling, and allusions to local struggles. Importantly, authenticity is judged not just by commercial audiences or critics but by internal community standards in which artists are held accountable by peers and fans who share similar experiences and reference points. The value of authenticity in hip-hop lies in its capacity to confer legitimacy within a genre historically rooted in resistance and truth-telling. As a predominantly Black expressive form emerging from marginalized urban spaces, hip-hop developed as a space where voices excluded from mainstream narratives could claim authority through the credibility of their testimony. This makes authenticity not just an aesthetic or marketing device, but a form of 7 Imani Perry, Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip-Hop (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004); and Murray Forman, The ‘Hood Comes First: Race, Space, and Place in Rap and Hip-Hop (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2002). 17 epistemological currency: who gets to speak, and who gets to be believed. Yet, as the genre’s cultural geography expanded, regional affiliation became one of its most powerful markers of authenticity. Markers of location-based authenticity in hip-hop have forced “rappers who come from less traditionally credible locations [to] link themselves to a broader region in order to establish more credibility,” writes Mickey Hess.8 So, how do peripheral artists negotiate membership and articulate credibility in a genre still largely defined by New York, Los Angeles, and the South? This question becomes especially critical in understanding the rise of Midwestern hip-hop artists who had to develop alternative strategies of self-legitimization from outside the traditional cultural centers. The dynamic relationship between “authenticity” and region serves as my point of departure. In the 1990s, as hip-hop entered the mainstream and regional styles solidified into marketable brands, authenticity became increasingly tethered to geographic identity. To diffuse critiques of inauthenticity, rappers from the Midwest necessitated a means to mark credibility through an established affiliation with the national hip-hop community while simultaneously articulating a distinguishable style—an unconscious artistic construct “that the audience can ultimately identify,” as hip-hop scholar Adam Bradley defines it.9 This dual imperative—gaining national recognition while asserting local distinctiveness—shaped the lyrical content, production styles, and visual aesthetics of Midwestern hip-hop in the 1990s and beyond. Artists navigated a cultural landscape in which authenticity was not only a matter of personal narrative, but also a performance of regionality. 8 Mickey Hess, “Introduction: ‘It’s Only Right to Represent Where I’m From’: Local and Regional Hip-Hop Scenes in the United States” in Hip-Hop in America: A Regional Guide (Santa Barbara: Greenwood Press, 2010), x. 9 Adam Bradley, Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip-Hop, 2nd ed. (New York: Basic Civitas, 2017), 123. 18 In addition to the prevalent tri-coastal bias, hip-hop is also decidedly Black; “hip-hop is Black music, without question,” said rapper 50 Cent during an interview with YouTube’s Music Choice.10 Although the widely documented vital contributions of Latinos in the creation of hip- hop is acknowledged, hip-hop has been conceptually and ideologically rooted in the African- American experience since its mythologized “birth” on August 11, 1973—the date of DJ Kool Herc’s first breakbeat party in the South Bronx. The alternative identities developed within hip- hop, writes seminal hip-hop scholar Tricia Rose, “draw on Afrodiasporic approaches to sound organization, rhythm, pleasure, style and community.”11 Blackness, therefore, is another important socially recognized performance marker of “authentic” or “real” hip-hop. But Rose also states that despite while hip-hop is “a black idiom that prioritizes black culture and that articulates the problems of black urban life, [hip-hop] does not deny the pleasure and participation of others.”12 All the artists examined in this dissertation present as phenotypically white. Race-based authenticity offers an additional layer of complexity in constructions of hip- hop credibility when combined with peripheral location. Authors have long noted how marginalized communities have negotiated themselves into the larger hegemonic culture, but few have addressed how whiteness and location in hip-hop have contributed to an alternative kind of marginalization defined in contrast to a default Blackness and tri-coastal centricity. This dissertation takes a historical approach, focusing on artists during the 1990s and early 2000s to examine how whiteness and regional identify shaped 10 Curtis Jackson, “Chronicles: 50 Cent – Respect For Eminem,” Music Choice, posted August 26, 2014, YouTube video, 2:30, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKDdmRJBcrU&t=29s. 11 Tricia Rose, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (Lebanon: University Press of New England, 1994), 185. For more on Latinos and hip-hop, see Jeff Chang, Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2005). 12 Rose, Black Noise, 4-5. 19 participation in hip-hop’s evolving national discourse. I focus on this marginalization in the context of three case studies wherein racially and regionally peripheral artists navigate questions of legitimacy and belonging within a genre historically defined by Black, coastal, urban experience. I show how Midwest artists construct their credibility by engaging with hip-hop’s core aesthetic values while simultaneously negotiating their racial and geographic outsider status to reveal how rappers continually rearticulate authenticity in hip-hop through a dynamic interplay of signification practice, race, and distribution format. The dissertation approaches these three topics through case studies. To explore how Midwest rappers use intertextual lyrical references to build community and credibility, I look at Minneapolis duo Atmosphere. Next, examining how Midwest artists negotiate whiteness amidst hip-hop’s historically Black ethos, I look at Detroit duo Insane Clown Posse in relation to the well-studied and popular rapper Eminem. Finally, as a case study of independent label formatting strategies, I revisit Atmosphere and their label Rhymesayers Entertainment to show how the neglected, “broken” EP format was reimagined as a deliberate artistic and commercial tool.13 The dissertation builds on the work of hip-hop scholars exploring the intersection of authenticity and marginalization, and three models directly influence my broader thesis. Justin Williams’ Rhymin’ and Stealin’ (2014)—specifically his application of Benedict Anderson’s concept of “imagined communities” and Stanley Fish’s theory of “interpretive communities”— prefigures one of the main arguments in the dissertation, that musical borrowing practices (e.g., sampling) play a vital role in shaping collective identity and facilitating meaning-making within hip-hop culture.14 I use Williams’ model to investigate how these practices operate not across 13 While this study foregrounds historical and musicological concerns, I acknowledge that other crucial axes of identity, particularly gender, class, and sexuality, remain underexplored here and merit future critical attention. 20 hip-hop broadly, but within smaller, self-selecting communities of listeners—what I term imagined communities of practice—who possess the referential knowledge to decode intertextual allusions. This framework is crucial for understanding how underground Midwestern artists engage in sophisticated forms of intra-genre dialogue that mark credibility and build symbolic affiliations with hip-hop’s historical canon. Significant, too, is Loren Kajikawa’s Sounding Race in Rap Songs (2015), which analyzes how hip-hop artists articulate and audibly signify on conceptions of race through their music.15 His analysis foregrounds the interplay between musical aesthetics and racial politics, demonstrating how sound itself becomes a site of cultural identity and critique. I build upon Kajikawa’s framework by exploring how white Midwestern artists strategically employ sonic elements to negotiate their racial and regional positioning within hip-hop. Kajikawa’s attention to racial representation in sound offers a crucial methodological lens for my examination of how artists sonically navigate authenticity, whiteness, and marginality in a genre historically shaped by Black expressive culture. Finally, Christopher Vito’s book, The Values of Independent Hip-Hop in the Post-Golden Era (2019), develops an ethos for underground hip-hop that both challenges and reproduces mainstream hip-hop’s cultural ideologies through a lyrical analysis of independent artists from 2000-2013.16 Vito’s work is particularly useful for framing the ideological tensions that arise when independent artists seek both autonomy from and recognition within the dominant 14 Justin Williams, Rhymin’ and Stealin’: Musical Borrowing in Hip-Hop (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014); Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991); and Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980). 15 Loren Kajikawa, Sounding Race in Rap Song (Berkley: University of California Press, 2015). 16 Christopher Vito, The Values of Independent Hip-Hop in the Post-Golden Era: Hip-Hop’s Rebels (London: Palgrave Pivot, 2019. 21 structures of the music industry. I draw on his framework to explore how Midwestern underground artists—particularly those operating outside the tri-coastal centers—navigate this dual imperative. By examining release strategies and branding practices, I extend Vito’s model to consider how regional marginalization shapes the values and aesthetics of independent hip-hop. Methodology and Literature Review Hip-hop studies is inherently interdisciplinary. Departments throughout the university have taken up the field, including musicology, ethnomusicology, anthropology, sociology, journalism, literary studies, cultural studies, and media studies, allowing scholars to engage in a level of critical inquiry that allows both rigorous and nimble approaches to subjects of great nuance and complexity. My work synthesizes analytical and sociohistoriographical methods and perspectives to address the long acknowledged “problem” of authenticity in Midwest hip-hop. Relying on insights from a wide range of disparate fields including those traditionally associated with the humanities and social sciences, this dissertation considers the role of lyrical intertextuality (literary studies), racial identity (cultural studies), and media formatting to illuminate how artists construct credibility and negotiate belonging within a genre shaped by both regional marginalization and racialized expectations. By integrating these interdisciplinary perspectives, the dissertation offers a multifaceted framework for understanding how Midwest hip-hop artists navigate questions of authenticity, not as a fixed attribute, but as a performative and contested practice shaped by historical, cultural, and technological forces. Lyrical Intertextuality 22 Intertextuality is a complex subject of study due in no small measure to the profoundly interdisciplinary scope required to address it in all its many facets. In hip-hop, the challenge is even more pronounced as classic sample-based hip-hop is so deeply rooted in intertextual practices (e.g., sampling) that it becomes difficult to isolate elements that are not referencing something else. Defined broadly as the relationship of one text to another, intertextuality provides rappers the literary means to “link” themselves with hip-hop’s idolized predecessors through masked self-referential and intra-genre quotation in song lyrics. A distinctly African- American approach to intertextuality, signifyin(g) (hereafter signifyin’ or signifying), has been influentially theorized by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and others.17 Signifyin’ reimagines earlier texts through repetition with variation, a rhetorical strategy that reshapes meaning and subtly subverts dominant cultural norms. While previous scholarship on hip-hop intertextuality has largely focused on cross-genre references in sampling (especially to soul, funk, and jazz records), this dissertation centers instead on lyrical intertextuality within hip-hop, highlighting the nuanced ways rappers build meaning by referencing their own genre’s canon. A significant portion of the quoted lyrical material—referred to as hypotexts, or source texts—draws from hip-hop’s “Golden Age” and is recontextualized within new works, or hypertexts. Situated at the convergence of literary theory and musicology, I develop a taxonomy of signifying practices with the aim of illuminating a rhetorical strategy used by outsiders (Midwest artists on independent labels) to demonstrate their legitimacy. Classifications include what I term schematic quotation (following a specific framework); new perspective cover (alternative point of view); and sequel cover (continuation of a prior narrative). The appendix provides an expansive data set of examples, 17 Henry Louis Gates, The Signifyin’ Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988). See also Samuel A. Floyd, The Power of Black Music: Interpreting Its History from Africa to the United States (New York City: Oxford University Press, 1997); and Ronald Radano, Lying up a Nation: Race and Black Music (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). 23 which will play an integral role in the project by serving as a parallel text for readers approaching this work from outside academia. The conclusions connect with phenomenological accounts of listening and theories of authenticity and community building to develop a model for a new aesthetic theory of hip-hop. In addition to Gates’s classic The Signifying Monkey, there are several core sources that will be important for my argument about intertextuality. The first is Gerard Genette’s Palimpsests: Literature to the Second Degree (1997), which scrutinizes the use of intertextuality and categories them into several different uses.18 Building from Genette’s work, Serge Lacasse’s essay “Toward a Model of Transphonography” (2018) applies Genette’s intertextual theories to recorded popular music in what he calls “transphonographic practice.”19 Lacasse expands Genette’s categories to not only include music but focuses on how recorded music adds several new layers to both the compositional techniques and their interpretation/reception. Lacasse’s categories will be pivotal in my own categorizations of techniques. Among these include “transfictionality,” the continuation of a fictional story or characters across multiple songs, which parallels my idea of sequel covers. I differentiate simple transfictionality from sequel covers due to the hip-hop artists treatment of flow, cadence, vocal timbre, and recuperation of instrumental hypotext. To analyze the musical transformation from hypotext (source material) to hypertext (new work), Williams adapts Lacasse’s concepts to hip-hop sampling. In Williams’s terminology, autosonic quotations refer to samples that are exact digital copies of the original recording, while 18 Gates, The Signifying Monkey; and Gerard Genette, Palimpsests: Literature to the Second Degree, translated by Channa Newman and Claude Doubinsky (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997). 19 Serge Lacasse, “Hypertextuality and Intertextuality in Recorded Popular Music,” in The Musical Work: Reality or Invention?, edited by Michael Talbot (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2000). 24 allosonic quotations involve re-recorded or re-performed elements. I primarily focus on allosonic to differentiate between direct sampling practices and other forms of textual reference. Additionally, Williams characterizes the entire “imaged community” of hip-hop as a unified “interpretive community.” I contend, instead, that such a framework more accurately describes a smaller, more specialized subset of listeners—an elite community whose deep, indexical knowledge and ability to recognize and decode subtle references, samples, and intra-genre quotations embedded within the music define their cultural capital. Adam Krims’ Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity (2000) is a foundational text for the musical poetics of hip-hop.20 Krims analyzes hip-hop lyrics to understand how they signify aspects of identity for the culture, consumer, and artist. More importantly, Krims outlines new theoretical parameters for the analysis of hip-hop; his treatment of popular music as an imperative area of study has had repercussions throughout popular music and hip-hop studies. While in many ways outdated, Krims’ work was the first attempt to categorize things such as vocal technique and introduce some rhythmic-stylistic terminology for styles of flow. Although Krims identifies that tropological signification is a vital component of hip-hop, he does not expand on this idea, an omission somewhat realized by Williams. Another writer who has built off Krims is literary scholar Adam Bradley, who has written two books meaningful to my research. The first, The Poetry of Pop (2017), is an in-depth analysis of popular music lyrics, how we should interpret them on an artistic level, and the cultural significance they have when paired with the audible component of music.21 Bradley’s Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip-Hop (2017) takes the same concepts from The Poetry of 20 Adam Krims, Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 21 Adam Bradley, The Poetry of Pop (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017). 25 Pop and exclusively applies them to hip-hop lyrics.22 Bradley dedicates an entire chapter to the use of signifyin’ in hip-hop, yet he overlooks the musical quotation component that I explore in this dissertation. When discussing signifyin’, Bradley focuses on the veridicality of storytelling in hip-hop, examining whether the narratives are autobiographically factual or fictional and exploring the implications of that distinction. Bradley also provides some initial data on hip-hop cover songs by providing a brief list. Bradley acknowledges that hip-hop artists do not utilize covers in the same way as other popular artists and goes as far to recognize the allosonic quotation used by rappers, calling them “lyrical allusions.” I find this term limiting; there are many ways a rapper can lyrically allude to another song, as evidenced by Williams’s and my own taxonomy of intertextual techniques. Additionally, Bradley primarily discusses these lyrical allusions within the context of live performance when an artist supplants their own material with lyrical impositions from different, well-known compositions, which functions on a much different semiotic level in subverting listener expectations. Quotation is a specific form of intertextuality: while all quotations are intertextual, not all intertextual references involve quotation. Within hip-hop studies, this distinction is crucial for analyzing how artists construct meaning. Quotation allows scholars to trace direct influence or homage, whereas intertextuality enables a broader interpretation of cultural context and the ways listeners perceive connections between texts. David Metzer’s Quotation and Cultural Meaning in Twentieth Century Music (2003) offers a genre-spanning analysis of quotation across historical and cultural contexts, focusing on both composition and reception.23 Particularly relevant to my work is his chapter “Black and White: Quotations in Duke Ellington’s ‘Black and Tan Fantasy,’” 22 Bradley, Book of Rhymes. 23 David Metzer, Quotation and Cultural Meaning in Twentieth-Century Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 26 which identifies signifyin’ as a distinctive quotational strategy exclusive to African-American musical practices. Although Metzer does not clearly distinguish signifyin’ from general quotation—a gap I am to address—his study has been foundational for subsequent scholarship on musical quotation. Finally, Jeanette Bicknell’s article “The Problem of Reference in Musical Quotation” (2001) takes a philosopher’s perspective in attempting to understand the phenomenology of quotation in music.24 Bicknell argues that composers shape the listener’s perception of musical quotations by choosing whether to explicitly reference the original source (a “signaled” quote) or leave it unacknowledged (“unsignaled”), even if the listener is unaware of the hypotext. My research further expands on this concept but also includes the component of temporal dissonance based on the listeners experience initially consuming the hypotext or hypertext, when the recognition of the other happens, and the temporal implications of individualized chronologies of exposure. Racial Identity and Rap “Authenticity” Critical studies of race often treat whiteness as the societal norm—a fixed standard that underlies perceptions of sameness in American culture.25 Whiteness functions as a racialized framework for evaluating the cultural characteristics of non-white ethnic groups, positioning them in contrast to an unmarked normative standard. Examining white artists within a musical genre predominantly associated with Black culture offers a unique opportunity to challenge notions of 24 Jeanette Bicknell, “The Problem of Reference in Musical Quotation,” Journal of Aesthetics and Artic Criticism, vol. 59, no. 2 (2001). 25 For examples, see: Nell Irvin Painter, The History of White People (New York: W.W. Norton, 2010); and Mike Hill, Whiteness: A Critical Reader (New York: New York University Press, 1997). 27 whiteness as invisible and to contribute to the development of critical whiteness studies. By making whiteness (hyper)visible and subject to critique, such analysis reveals how white performers navigate cultural boundaries, adopt stylistic elements, and negotiate authenticity within a space where whiteness is not the default but the exception. I provide a case study to argue that, for rappers in the late 1990s, the performance of kind of theatrical form of terror was a prominent socio-cultural marker of whiteness that functioned as a key strategy for establishing authenticity. White rappers, however, necessitated a balance between morbidity and comedy to present an authentic self to a hip-hop audience. I label this recurring persona the crazy white boy—a figure who performs madness, terror, and unpredictable, senseless violence. Horrorcore, a hip-hop subgenre pioneered by Black Detroit teenager Esham, is characterized by shocking lyrical content and disturbing rhetoric, often engaging with mental illness and psychological horror. When horrorcore aesthetics intersect with the performance of white rappers, the crazy white boy emerges as unhinged, chaotic, and deliberately transgressive. Unlike the structured and often socially situated violence associated with gang life and the drug trade, the crazy white boy represents a thread of arbitrary, unmotivated terror. The crazy white boy established a code for what it meant to be “hardcore” as a white rapper in the 1990s amidst hip-hop’s gangsta ethos. Expressions of volatility or “craziness” by white rappers functioned as a stand-in for the cultural capital of Black “hardness.” There are several core sources pertinent to my research. First, Steve Garner’s Whiteness: An Introduction (2007) offers a comprehensive overview of whiteness as a socially constructed and historically contingent category that operations as a position of racial privilege.26 The book ultimately encourages readers to interrogate whiteness as a racial position that structures 26 Steve Garner, Whiteness: An Introduction (New York: Routledge, 2007). 28 inequality rather than treating it as an unmarked norm. His chapter “Whiteness as Terror and Supremacy,” is of specific interest as it helps position whiteness and white culture as a looming threat while grounding this notion as a central force in the reproduction of racial hierarchies. I build on a performative terror as a defining quality of the crazy white boy; however, in the context of hip-hop where white artists are in the minority, comedy becomes a necessary counterbalance. Bakari Kitwana’s Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop (2005) argues that Black popular culture—particularly through high-profile arenas like sports—had a profound impact on mainstream white American perceptions of Blackness during the 1990s.27 He highlights the global popularity of figures like Michael Jordan as emblematic of how Black culture became increasingly visible and influential in shaping public discourse. This visibility played a pivotal role in shaping how younger non-Black, mainly white, generations understood Black identity and culture. Similarly, Amy Coddington’s How Hip-Hop Became Hit-Pop (2023) identifies crossover artists like Prince and Lionel Richie as key figures in fostering a broader racial coalition in popular music during the 1980s.28 She suggests that this crossover success not only reflected shifting social dynamics but also helped lay the groundwork for a more racially hybrid pop culture landscape in the decades that followed. Both Coddington and Kitwana emphasize the significance of prominent Black public figures who challenged and redefined earlier generational understandings of race. These individuals played a crucial role in shaping the evolving politics of racial identity—whiteness included. 27 Bakari Kitwana, Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop: Wangstas, Wiggers, Wannabes, and the New Reality of Race in America (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2005). 28 Amy Coddington, How Hip-Hop Became Hit-Pop: Radio, Rap, and Race (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2023). 29 Loren Kajikawa’s Sounding Race in Rap Songs (2015) analyzes how hip-hop artists have articulated conceptions of race through their music. In his most influential example, Kajikawa examines how Eminem signified whiteness through cartoonish mockery of perceived racial stereotypes.29 Kajikawa analyzes Eminem’s portrayal of whiteness by incorporating indexical semiotics to understand his performance of whiteness (e.g., his use of nasal vocal tone, stereotypes of “trailer trash,” etc.). While Kajikawa acknowledges Eminem’s unpredictable turn towards the horrorcore aesthetic and his engagement with the cultural trope of the “cold-blooded psycho killer,” his analysis of the transition from Infinite (1996) to The Slim Shady LP (1999) largely overlooks the crucial intermediary Slim Shady EP (1997). Building on Kajikawa’s theoretical framework, I argue that Eminem’s successful articulation of whiteness hinged on his fusion of comical absurdity with the crazy white boy horrorcore model of excessive violence modeled by fellow Detroiters Insane Clown Posse. Media Distribution Major record labels incentivize mainstream hip-hop artists to produce singles and full-length “long play” albums (LPs) to access major platforms (e.g., radio, Grammys, MTV). However, due to the Midwest’s peripheral position in the music industry, rappers from this region have, out of both necessity and choice, embraced an underground or independent rap ethos. Within this context, underground artists and their independent labels often favor a smaller format—the “extended play” record, or EP—as a strategic alternative to traditional LPs. I provide a case study to argue that independent label Rhymesayers Entertainment attempted to outmaneuver the mainstream market by embracing a format essentially outside the national music industry. 29 Kajikawa, Sounding Race in Rap Songs. 30 Atmosphere and Rhymesayers strategic use of the EP reveals how artists based outside hip-hop’s dominant coastal hubs established credibility and visibility through alternative means. Their approach also reflects a conscious effort to challenge and reshape the structures of the mainstream music industry from a peripheral position. There are two primary sources I will be building from. Kwame Harrison’s book Hip-Hop Underground: The Integrity and Ethics of Racial Identification (2009) will be integral to my research because this is the first thorough study conducted on underground hip-hop.30 Providing an ethnographic lens, Harrison embeds himself in the culture of underground/independent hip- hop in the Bay Area by working at a local record store and regularly attending, and occasionally participating in, local showcases. Hip-Hop Underground is indispensable in that it offers an alternative perspective from which to view hip-hop through the independent and underground scene. Unlike its mainstream cohabitant, the imagined community of underground hip-hop views itself as more communal and nurturing of artistic talent instead of a commercial commodity; “art for the sake of art” instead of art for financial gain. Harrison’s in-depth account of underground Bay Area hip-hop is applicable to underground scenes across the nation. Christopher Vito’s book, The Values of Independent Hip-Hop in the Post-Golden Era: Hip-Hop’s Rebels (2019), expands on Harrison’s work on underground hip-hop.31 Through a close analysis of lyrics produced between 2000 and 2013, Vito interrogates whether these artists truly resist dominant industry values or, paradoxically, end up reinforcing the very ideologies they seek to oppose. His study reveals the tensions inherent in underground hip-hop’s claims to authenticity and resistance, ultimately complicating the binary between mainstream and 30 Anthony Kwame Harrison, Hip-Hop Underground: The Integrity and Ethics of Racial Identification (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009). 31 Vito, The Values of Independent Hip-hop in the Post-Golden Era. 31 underground while highlighting the nuanced ways in which alternative artists both disrupt and participate in the broader cultural logic of hip-hop. Chapter Overview Chapter II examines the function of intertextuality in hip-hop as a mechanism for constructing credibility, fostering community, and engaging in self-canonization. Focusing on Minneapolis- based underground hip-hop duo Atmosphere, I argue that intra-genre references enable artists operating from marginalized racial and geographic positions to align themselves with the legacy of hip-hop’s late 1980s and early 1990s “Golden Age.” Building on theories of signifyin’ and intertextuality, this chapter demonstrates how lyrical citations initiate an imagined community of practice among informed listeners and serve as coded markers of credibility. Ultimately, the chapter contends that hip-hop has developed into a form of culturally contingent expression that privileges the historically and musically literate listener, transforming musical engagement into a hermeneutic act. Chapter III directly builds upon a theoretical framework of whiteness developed by Loren Kajikawa, who asserts that the commercial and crucial success of Detroit-based rapper Eminem was partially due to his open confrontation with his white identity through mockery and parody of common tropes and stereotypes of whiteness. Although scholars such as Kajikawa, Carleton S. Gholz, and Edward G. Armstrong have extensively studied Eminem, I argue that when situating Eminem within the history of Detroit hip-hop, his fusion of terror and comedy emerges as a crucial element in his artistic negotiation of whiteness.32 This fusion had a clear, though 32 Carleton S. Gholz, “Welcome to tha D: Making and Remaking Hip-Hop Culture in Post-Motown Detroit,” in Hip Hop in America: A Regional Guide, edited by Mickey Hess (Santa Barbara: Greenwood Press, 2010); and Edward G. Armstrong, “Eminem’s Construction of Authenticity,” Popular Music and Society 27:3 (2004). 32 undertheorized, precedent in Detroit rap. It was the lacing of comical absurdity with the horrorcore model of excessive violence, provided by fellow white Detroit hip-hop duo Insane Clown Posse (ICP), that was crucial to Eminem’s monumental success. Chapter IV returns to Minneapolis via Atmosphere and their independent label Rhymesayers Entertainment to examine how they were able to market themselves and distribute their music beyond their local scenes. This chapter examines the historical development of EPs and their intended role in music marketing, focusing on how Rhymesayers and Atmosphere strategically adapted the format to serve their unique goals of distribution and artistic expression. Much like Chapter II, where intertextual references are employed to establish legitimacy and cultural belonging, and Chapter III, which offered new perspectives of whiteness, the EP emerges as a site through which Midwest artists engaged a marginal format to simultaneously assert their distinctiveness and claim affiliation with the broader, nationally recognized rap community. 33 CHAPTER II DEVELOPING COMMUNITY THROUGH INTERTEXTUALITY AND INTRA-GENRE QUOTATION: A CASE STUDY OF MINNESOTA HIP-HOP GROUP ATMOSPHERE The Rhymesayers collective [a Minnesota independent hip-hop label] distance themselves from the majors by creating an alternative culture embodied by the moniker: “for the love of hip-hop.” — Christopher Vito33 Easter morning is full of youthful anticipation as children eagerly wake their parents at the crack of dawn, rushing downstairs to begin scouring the house or garden for hidden eggs. Finding the Easter egg is dually rewarding; locating the egg achieves a sense of accomplishment reinforced by the small candy or coins within. Now, you may be wondering why I am talking about Easter eggs in a dissertation about hip-hop. The term has returned to popular culture, particularly thanks to the unprecedented cinematic web of storytelling in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Eager to better understand the semiotic layers and references to comic book lore, new comic book enthusiasts seek out the interpretive knowledge of comic book veterans; their catalog of knowledge becomes a valuable commodity that elevates their social status, a feat thought impossible only fifteen years ago. The same can be said for self-appointed hip-hop heads, as 33 Christopher Vito, The Values of Independent Hip-Hop in the Post-Golden Era: Hip-Hop’s Rebels (London: Palgrave Pivot, 2019), 62. 34 evidenced by the immensely popular website WhoSampled.com, who are positioned as “the world’s most comprehensive, detailed and accurate database of samples, cover songs, and remixes, covering the entire history of music spanning over 1,000 years.”34 The intertextual web of hip-hop music allows for those who have consumed large amounts of popular culture including movies, television, and music to apply their knowledge towards recognizing and identifying subtle references, or Easter eggs. In this chapter I situate the process of referential identification within hip-hop lyrics to explore how rappers interpolate lyrical tropes from hip-hop’s late 1980s and early 1990s “Golden Age.” This era marked a pivotal shift in hip-hop, as MCs (or emcees) supplanted the DJ (or deejay) as the central figure of the music. Unlike earlier styles, the emcees of this period embraced increasingly complex poetic techniques (e.g., enjambment, slant rhyme, mosaic rhyme) transforming rap into a competitive art form where lyric dexterity became a measure of status. These artists were not only technically skilled but also exuded a cultural coolness that inspired emulation among youth worldwide. Iconic figures of the 1980s including Rakim, Kool Moe Dee, and Kool G Rap left a lasting imprint on the genre, shaping its aesthetic and directly influencing the next generation of emcees, particularly those within the emerging underground hip-hop movement. Soon these emcees began calling themselves rappers. Authors have long noted the signifying potential of words and samples on the past, but few have addressed how rappers intertextually signify within the closed world of hip-hop. Intertextuality, defined broadly as the relationship of one text to another, provides rappers the literary means to link themselves with hip-hop’s idolized predecessors through masked self- referential and intra-genre quotation in song lyrics. This practice resonates with prior notions of 34 “About Us,” WhoSampled, accessed January 2025, https://www.whosampled.com/about/. 35 signifyin’ (discussed later); however, in the context of Midwest rap, the outsider now transmits encrypted language to articulate their relationship toward the hip-hop canon for the insider audiences defined not by region or race, but by the depth of their “love of hip-hop”—the rap intelligentsia.35 Intra-genre signifyin’ allows marginalized artists to mark credibility and establish an affiliation with the national hip-hop community, who symbolically structure authenticity along the lines above. In the following, I taxonomize intertextual signifying techniques used by rappers to argue that intra-genre signifyin’ does three things: (1) provides an important method of practice for the artist, (2) highlights a deep knowledge of hip-hop practices that initiates an imagined community of practice among listeners, and (3) develops an insider discourse that results in self- canonization. Classifications include what I term schematic quotation (following a specific framework); new perspective cover (alternative point of view); and sequel covers (continuation of a prior narrative). Unlike projects that consider practices of musical borrowing as simple allusions, this chapter shows how the phenomenology of listening and the process of identification enrich listener understanding of the music and make it more interesting and engaging, which in turn fosters an intimate and communal form of listening. As a case study, I focus on Minneapolis underground hip-hop duo Atmosphere—whose mixed-race background and peripheral location distanced them from the rap mainstream of the late 1990s, when they launched. Employment of intra-genre intertextuality from hip-hop’s Golden Age asserts Atmosphere and similar artists membership into the broader hip-hop community and becomes coded language for the listener that, when properly deciphered, grants access to its imagined community of practice. In sum, I show how hip-hop has become, for Atmosphere, music for the 35 That is not say this technique only articulates Blackness, but “insiderness” more generally. In the context of hip- hop this insiderness has specific racial and regional components (i.e. Black and NYC/LA) 36 “learned”: a cultural practice where belonging is earned not through region, race, or class, but through a deep familiarity with a network of predecessor works. Full participation in this community is defined by shared “raplove,” where intertextual knowledge becomes the primary marker of authenticity.36 Musical Quotation in Hip-Hop Musicologist David Metzer defines musical quotation as “the placement of [brief excerpts] of a pre-existent piece in a new composition or performance.”37 This definition, while ideal for Western Classical musical analysis, is insufficient for considering hip-hop; the borrowing and manipulation of pre-existent recorded material, or sampling, has defined hip-hop music since its celebrated birth on August 11, 1973. At this mythologized “first hip-hop party” in a South Bronx apartment building rec-room, DJ Kool Herc introduced partygoers to what he called the “merry- go-round technique,” performing two-turntables with duplicate records to extend and loop the breakbeat for people to dance.38 This unique approach towards musical performance, isolating and repeating small sections of previously recorded music, became a focal point for live hip-hop performance and its subsequent transition into studio production. Because the fundamental scaffolding of hip-hop music is dependent on the borrowing of brief excerpts of pre-existent material to create a new composition, Metzer might consider hip-hop an infinite pool of musical 36 The idea of music for the learned comes from Anna Zayaruznaya, The Monstrous New Art: Divided Forms in the Late Medieval Motet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015); there, she argues that intertextual references in medieval French motets cater towards the learned—those who can readily identify the intended reference. Charlie Hankin uses the term “raplove” to describe the inward-directed poetics of rapping about rap. For more see Charlie Hankin Break and Flow: Hip-Hop Poetics in the Americas, (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2023). 37 David Joel Metzer, Quotation and Cultural Meaning in Twentieth Century Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 4. 38 The breakbeat refers to an instrumental section of a song when all the instruments are at rest except for the drums and sometimes bass 37 quotation. However, J. Peter Burkholder further clarifies that musical quotation can never be “the main substance of the work, as it would be if used as a cantus firmus, refrain, fugue subject, or theme in variations.”39 When a quotation becomes endemic to the music’s architectural framework, the compositional integrity subsumes prior semiotic or nostalgic functions of musical quotation. Therefore, components of hip-hop composition such as the breakbeat is not an example of musical quotation. Sampling, that is, is not synonymous with quotation. For example, the famous breakbeat from James Brown’s “Funky Drummer” (1970) as it is used compositionally in Boogie Down Productions’ “South Bronx” (1987), Eric B. & Rakim’s “Lyrics of Fury” (1988), Big Daddy Kane’s “Mortal Kombat” (1989), and LL Cool J’s “Mama Said Knock You Out” (1990)—to name only a few—must not be considered an instance of musical quotation. This is not to say that all aspects of hip-hop instrumentals and production lack musical quotation, and there are certainly instances that remind us that the distinctions between sampling and quotation are not categorically fixed. Punch-phrasing, a DJ technique defined by André Sirois as “essentially playing a guitar lick or horn stab over another record” complicates these delineations when incorporating a brief sampled segment only once throughout a performance or composition.40 Grandmaster Flash’s punch phrase of Jackson Beck’s “The Decoys of Ming the Merciless” (1966) in “The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel” (1981) might be considered a musical quotation due to the single usage in the song, but also could be understood as too integral to the overall composition, despite its brevity. This and many other examples are entirely situational and dependent on positional perspective. 39 J. Peter Burkholder, “Quotation,” Grove Music Online, 2001. 40 André Sirois, Hip-Hop DJs and the Evolution of Technology: Cultural Exchange, Innovation and Democratization (New York: Peter Lang, 2016), 8. 38 Still, there are instances of blatant musical quotation in hip-hop instrumentals, such as Missy Elliott’s “Work It” (2003) when the beat at 4:02 suddenly shifts to a sample of Bob James’ “Take Me to the Mardi Gras” (1975) as an homage to Run-D.M.C.’s “Peter Piper” (1986), which substantially relies on this sampled breakbeat. Because of sampling ethics, which disavows the “biting” of material, defined by Joseph Schloss as “the appropriation of intellectual material from another hip-hop artist,” producers generally distance themselves from material that has been previously sampled.41 One of the few exceptions to this rule, however, is if the use of the sampled material is incorporated in a new and unique way that would, in this case, resist associations to Run-D.M.C. while being mindful of their artistic integrity.42 Therefore, because Missy Elliott (and producer Timbaland) do not include any alterations to the Bob James sample, this quotation must be understood as a nostalgic echo of Run-D.M.C. and the Golden Age of hip- hop in which they are associated. Towards a Theory of Hip-Hop Semiotics In the 1980s literary theorist Henry Louis Gates Jr. developed the concept of signifyin(g) to articulate how and why African-American’s strategically engage with the “revision and repetition” of prior texts.43 To cope with the continued white suppression of Black progress following the First World War, Gates argues that African-Americans did not retreat to the old spirituals because they no longer found them relevant to their situation. Instead, they “began to 41 Joseph Schloss, Making Beats: The Art of Sample-Based Hip-Hop (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2014), 106 42 For example, TLC’s “Ain’t 2 Proud 2 Beg” (1991), DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince’s “Hip-Hop Dancer’s Theme” (1988), and Heavy D and the Boyz’s “Nothin’ but Love” (1994). 43 Henry Louis Gates, “The ‘Blackness of Blackness’: A Critique of the Sign and the Signifying Monkey,” Critical Inquiry 9, no. 4, (1983): 685–723; and Henry Louis Gates, The Signifyin’ Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988). 39 master and to deform the minstrel mask with disingenuousness of fronting and the phonetic display of Signifyin(g)” inspired by ‘The Signifyn’ Monkey’ Toast.44 The monkey from this story, explains Gates, became a symbolic representation of the urban trickery needed to cope with diverse types of white oppression. Musicologist Samuel A. Floyd Jr. further clarifies signifyin’ as “a reinterpretation, a metaphor for the revision of previous texts and figures; it is tropological thought, repetition with difference, the obscuring of meaning—all to achieve or reverse power, to improve situations, and to achieve pleasing results for the signifier.”45 The juxtaposition of various texts allows for a dense semiotic layer of interpretation to emerge that mask the intended message and challenge the hegemonic mainstream from a safe distance. Signifyin’ permits African-Americans to say one thing and mean another or, to put it differently, say two things at once, without fear of repercussion.46 Because of this calculated ambiguity, signifyin’ refuses a single translation of meaning, thriving on the “indeterminacy of interpretation” that invites endless possibilities of perceptual and situational understanding.47 Scholars from a variety of humanistic disciplines have applied Gates’s concept of signifyin’ to various African-American art forms including literature, visual art, and music, allowing an enormous range of methods to accomplish the “revision and repetition” technique.48 Music is particularly thick with semiotic implications in this respect: engaging with the listener aurally, visually, and physically allows the artist to disguise their intentions with multiple layers 44 Samuel A. Floyd, The Power of Black Music: Interpreting Its History from Africa to the United States (New York City: Oxford University Press, 1997), 94. 45 Ibid, 95. 46 This concept of speaking two things at once has roots in the African trickster Esu, often depicted as having two mouths. 47 Gates, The Signifyin’ Monkey. 48 Ibid. 40 of interpretation through abutment of the senses. Ethnomusicologist Ronald Radano, however, criticizes the over-application of signifyin’ theory by academics, suggesting that the formalism embedded in musicological practices has subverted the doubleness engaged with African- American art through over-simplification. Equally problematic are instances where musicologists reduce the crucial potency by appropriating literary devices, or literary scholars who “play to the mystification of black music in order to reinvigorate textual criticism.”49 In short, signifyin’ can become an overused framework that tempts music and literary scholars into stretching interpretations to the point where the concept risks losing its clarity and impact. While the saturation of signifyin’ in musical criticism can be problematic more generally, its application to hip-hop is riskier than other genres. In preface for the 25th Anniversary edition of The Signifying Monkey, Gates praises hip-hop as being “signifyin’ on steroids” and credits sampling as one of the most innovative and impactful practices of signifyin’.50 Theoretically, the sampling of classic funk and soul artists of the 1970s is the epitome of signifyin’ in that DJs transform prior works through repetition and revision. But Gates inadequately accounts for the intentions of many DJs. To paraphrase hip-hop scholars Loren Kajikawa and Joseph Schloss, hip-hop artists typically select a sample because it “sounds good,” without necessarily providing a commentary on the sampled source.51 If we consider every sample within a hip-hop track to be an indication of signifyin’, then it is not clear what elements in the practice of sampling is, indeed, not signifyin’. The iconicity of sampled music does not always necessitate an interpretation, or the presumption of authorial intent. 49 Ronald Radano, Lying up a Nation: Race and Black Music (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 38. 50 Gates, The Signifyin’ Monkey, xxix. 51 Loren Kajikawa, Sounding Race in Rap Song (Berkley: University of California Press, 2015); and Joseph Schloss, Making Beats. 41 To be clear, though not all sampling practices in hip-hop are an instance of signifyin’, they are always intertextual. The repeated use of a sample may initially function as signifyin’ by invoking, critiquing, or recontextualizing the source, but once that aesthetic becomes established or conventionalized, its critical or subversive weight may diminish, shifting the function of the reference. A misleading synonymity has developed between signifyin’ and intertextuality that has perpetuated misguided applications of signifyin’. Gates notes that “intertextuality represents a process of repetition and revision, by definition” thereby perceiving intertextuality and signifyin’ as interchangeable.52 However, Julia Kristeva’s coinage of the term “intertextuality” in 1966 never mentions the subversion of power dynamics, only that “the idea invites the reader to interpret a text as a crossing of texts…. For [Kristeva] it is principally a way of introducing history into structuralism: the texts … allow us to introduce history into the laboratory of writing.”53 Musicologist Lawrence Kramer appears to agree, writing that “the aim of genuine intertextual inquiry is spirals of adjacencies,” not the deconstruction of social and cultural hierarchies.54 While intertextuality can serve as a tool for signifyin’, it is not incidental to the practice—all signifyin’ inherently involves some form of intertextual reference. Signifyin’ draws meaning from its relationship to prior texts, tropes, or cultural expressions. In this sense, intertextuality is not just a tool but a foundational mechanism through which signifyin’ produces layered and contextually rich meaning. To avoid any misapplications of signifyin’ theory while being respectful to the aesthetics of hip-hop culture, my focus is exclusively on textual, or lyric-based applications of signifyin’ as 52 Gates, The Signifyin’ Monkey, 66. 53 Julia Kristeva, Hatred and Forgiveness, translated by Jeanine Herman (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), 10. 54 Lawrence Kramer, “What is (is there) Musical Intertextuality?” in Intertextuality in Music: Dialogic Composition, edited by Violetta Kostka, Paulo F. de Castro, and William A. Everett (London: Routledge, 2021), 17. 42 intertextuality. I interpret the following examples as intentional recontextualizations of earlier texts aimed at challenging hierarchies, rather than choices driven purely by aesthetic preference. For example, when Atmosphere rapper Slug says, in the song “The Two” (2002), “I’m not a player, I throw-up a lot” he is blatantly signifyin’ the infamous Big Pun line, in “I’m Not A Player” (1997), “I’m not a player, I just fuck a lot.”55 Failing to identify this quotation does not diminish the entertainment value for the uninformed listener, but recognizing the quotation as a playful subversion of hypermasculine tropes makes the joke funnier and elicits a deeper appreciation. The informed listener discovers an Easter egg. There is a final point to make in defense of the socio-cultural context of signifyin’ and my conceptual application of the term towards the intertextual references discussed throughout this chapter. Just as early 20th century African-Americans no longer found spirituals to be less helpful to their lived reality and turned towards the past—their African heritage and ‘The Signifyin’ Toast’—for literary and social guidance, so too did independent rappers look towards their past. In the early 1990s as hip-hop skyrocketed in popularity and became a commodity for corporate exploitation, the genre bifurcated into two paths: mainstream and underground hip-hop. Governed by major record labels, mainstream hip-hop significantly relies on its commercial success and appeal to the masses with lyrics focusing on subjects of sexual prowess, financial gain, and absorbent drug use—topics that both alienate and magnetize audiences. Independent/underground artists, however, reject this philosophy and “argue for an alternative culture predicated on the love of hip-hop music” by espousing a DuBoisian ethos that art must have a social purpose.56 Because some rappers no longer found mainstream hip-hop to be helpful 55 Felt, “The Two,” Felt: A Tribute to Christina Ricci, Rhymesayers Entertainment, 2002; and Big Pun, “I’m Not a Player,” Capital Punishment, Loud Records, 1998. 56 Vito, The Values of Independent Hip-Hop in the Post-Golden Era, 58. 43 or relevant to their lived experience, they looked back to hip-hop’s Golden Age for direction. Golden Age hip-hop, then, functions as ‘The Signifying Monkey’ toast does in realigning cultural ideologies within a community. Community Recognizing intertextual relationships becomes analogous to an archeological dig, uncovering textual references that inform our past. These webs of references generate frequent topics of discussion among hip-hop heads, who share and compare their knowledge.57 Deciphering the postmodern, double-coded language of intra-genre quotation becomes privileged information that signals fluency in a hip-hop vernacular. More importantly, a language developed for and by the hip-hop community invites entrance into what I call an imagined community of practice. Thomas Turino’s concept of “cultural cohorts” is helpful here: rather than being organized by ethnic, regional, or generational commonalities, this community coalesces around shared symbolic competencies and modes of engagement within the genre.58 In this sense, the imagined community of practice I theorize resembles a cultural cohort bound by interpretive fluency and aesthetic alignment rather than by geography or social background. This reframing aligns with, but also refines, earlier scholarly treatments of hip-hop as an imagined community. Justin Williams’ and Joseph Schloss’ arguments on musical borrowing and sampling practices rely on their acknowledgment of the Hip-Hop Nation as an “imagined community,” a large, united group with overwhelming individual anonymity.59 But a driving factor in Benedict 57 For more on knowledge as the fifth element of hip-hop, see Travis Gosa, “The Fifth Element: Knowledge,” in Cambridge Companion to Hip-Hop (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 58 Thomas Turino, Music as Social Life: The Politics of Participation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008). 59 Schloss, Making Beats; and Justin Williams, Rhymin’ and Stealin’: Musical Borrowing in Hip-Hop (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014). 44 Anderson’s influential conceptualization of the nation as an “imagined community” was the fall of Latin and the rise of individualized vernacular: “language became less of a continuity between an outside power and the human speaker than an internal field created and accomplished by language users among themselves.”60 In the case of the nation, shared vernaculars helped populations see themselves as part of a broader collective with shared interests and symbolic reference points, even if they never met. I apply this principle to cultural production by reframing the imagined community not around geographic nationhood, but around shared semiotic fluency within hip-hop. What binds this community is not territorial boundaries or political institutions, but a common understanding of genre-specific language—coded allusions, sampled motifs, lyrical references, and aesthetic conventions. Although Williams and Schloss do not explicitly discuss a hip-hop language, Williams does acknowledge that “the self-referential nature of this imagined community is crucial to understanding the intramusical and extramusical discourses in the genre.”61 This intramusical discourse is precisely the vernacular that I aim to illuminate, a language developed through quotation in rap lyrics that allows artists to signal belonging, assert authority, and engage in dialogue with the genre’s living archive. By decoding this intertextual vernacular, we can begin to understand how imagined communities in hip-hop are built not on shared borders, but on shared knowledge. The Hip-Hop Nation is also a “community of practice.” Drawing on anthropologist Jean Lave and educational theorist Étienne Wenger’s theory of learning as a social and participatory process, a community of practice is a “group of people who share a concern or a passion for 60 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991), 70. 61 Williams, Rhymin’ and Stealin’, 12. 45 something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.”62 In the context of hip-hop, this community comprises individuals who are fluent in the genre’s evolving language, those who can recognize stylistic conventions, decode lyrical allusions, and participate in its cultural rituals. Learning in hip-hop occurs not through formal instruction but through immersion, interaction, and gradual mastery of shared aesthetic values and practices. Intra-genre intertextuality become key forms of apprenticeship, signaling one’s legitimacy and embeddedness within the broader imagined community of hip-hop. To be a practitioner in this space is not only to consume the culture but to contribute to it, demonstrating a deep understanding of its history, codes, and collective memory. My goal in combining the concepts of “imagined community” and “community of practice” into an imagined community of practice is to theorize a more narrowly defined, elite subgroup with the broader imagined community of hip-hop; listeners who possess a deeper more intimate familiarity with the genre’s history. This hybrid concept focuses specifically on those who have developed advanced fluency in hip-hop’s referential language. These members do more than just enjoy hip-hop, they participate in it at a scholarly or insider level, able to decode lyrical allusions, recognize sampled or interpolated material, and situate new works within a long, ongoing dialogue of musical borrowing and cultural commentary. Their knowledge is both cultural and performative, positioning them as an interpretive intelligentsia within hip-hop’s imagined community—one that defines belonging not simply through shared identification, but through demonstrated expertise and symbolic literacy. 62 Étienne Wenger, “Communities of Practice: A Brief Introduction,” National Science Foundation, 2011, https://hdl.handle.net/1794/11736. See also Jean Lave and Étienne Wenger, Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 46 Still, how does one enter hip-hop’s imagined community of practice? How listeners access this community, and their associated temporal dissonance, has remained largely unexamined. Scholars tend to view the experience of intertextuality as timeless, where “the past and present coexist in a medium that is neither past nor present.”63 However, this assumes a specific unbiased intertextual encounter where the listener has no relationship with the hypotext (original work) or hypertext (new work). But what about the biased listener? How does their connection with the hypotext or hypertext distort a linear perception of history? Let me fictionalize a scenario. In 2004 a father is driving his teenage son to school, during which the kid plays the song “Clay” (1997) by his favorite artist Atmosphere, rhyming along word for word with the chorus: “what would you say as the earth gets further and further away / planets as small as balls of clay.”64 “I love that line!” says the kid. The father chuckles. “What’s so funny?” the kid asks. “He didn’t write that line; it was taken from Rakim’s “Follow the Leader” (1988).65 “Nuh uh, Slug (of Atmosphere) wrote that line” “No, it was Rakim: planets as small as balls of clay / astray into the Milky Way / world’s outta sight / far as the eye could see not even a satellite…” In this scenario, we witness two separate entry points into hip-hop’s imagined community of practice that indicate our experience as either a hypotextual or hypertextual listener. The father is a hypotextual listener; he was first aware of the original Rakim lyric (hypotext) before learning 63 Kramer, “What is (is there) Musical Intertextuality?,” 18. 64 Atmosphere, “Clay,” Overcast!, Rhymesayers Entertainment, 1997. 65 Eric B. and Rakim, “Follow the Leader,” Follow the Leader, Uni Records, 1988. 47 how Atmosphere interpolated the lyric in their song (hypertext). The child is a hypertextual listener; they discovered Atmosphere’s quote of Rakim only in retrospect. This dichotomy of the biased listener engenders two distinct experiences of historicity. When encountering intertextual references as a hypotextual listener, initially familiar with the original work, time retains a relatively linear trajectory punctuated by small retrograde loops of nostalgia. Visually, this experience might resemble a loop-de-loop, with each loop marking a moment in which the listener is pulled back into their personal archive to reinhabit the affective and aesthetic dimensions of the past. At the point where past and present briefly intersect, time flattens: the listener simultaneously occupies both moments before being propelled forward again. In contrast, the hypertextual listener, initially familiar with the newer work, experiences time more fluidly, in a pattern closer to a lemniscate or infinity symbol, living not outside of time or in pithy reverberations of the past, but in a constant flux between the past and present. This ongoing, recursive movement between past and present obfuscates the listener’s own sense of temporal positioning. This rupture not only distorts chronology, but it also short-circuits the listener’s ability to locate themselves within a coherent sense of historicity. If historicity refers not just to an awareness of the past but to one’s orientation in historical time and participation in historical processes, then the hypertextual experience compromises that anchor. Intertextuality, particularly when consumed in the absence of contextual cues, simulates historical experience and fabricates emotional familiarity, developing a false sense of nostalgia. This pseudo-nostalgia, or what psychologists call the “Mandela Effect,” conflates our own memory with that of the collective into believing we incorrectly experienced a prior event, time, or era.66 The effect is not 66 Deeparsi Prasad and Wilma A. Bainbridge, “The Visual Mandela Effect as Evidence for Shared and Specific False Memories Across People,” Psychological Science, vol. 33, no. 12, 2022, 1971-88. Coined by paranormal researcher Fiona Broome in 2009, the Mandela Effect is a theory to explain why large groups of people remember Nelson Mandela dying in prison during the 1980s, despite being released in 1990. 48 only psychological but epistemological: the listener begins to confuse mediated reference with direct experience, blurring the line between remembrance and reconstruction. These moments of reference become surrogates for history itself, experiential anchors that carry affective weight. As a result, intertextuality in hip-hop not only reflects history, but actively reshapes how history is felt, known, and circulated within the genre’s imagined community of practice. By connecting the psychodynamics of listening to the interpretive work of decoding allusion, this theoretical framework positions intertextuality as a central mechanism through which memory is produced and historicity is destabilized. There is a final point to make about memory regarding community, specifically Maurice Halbwach’s notion of “collective memory,” a socially constructed notion that defines a group of individuals that share a collective experience of a time in their lives and “binds our most intimate remembrances to each other.”67 While hypotextual listeners are able to elicit their collective memory to identify quotational references, the hypertextual listener artificially buys their way into the collective memory through extensive listening.68 For either the hypotextual or hypertextual listener, “nostalgia [or pseudo-nostalgia] becomes an authenticating device” that alerts the imagined community of practice to subconsciously or consciously contextualize an underground artist like Atmosphere within the broader imagined hip-hop community.69 Crucially, the imagined community of practice I outline is not driven by a desire for mainstream recognition or assimilation into dominant cultural hierarchies. Rather, its members 67 Maurice Halbwach, On Collective Memory, translated by Lewis A. Coser (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992 [1950]), 53. 68 It is important to note that hypertextual listeners do not necessarily aspire to become hypotextual listeners. Cultural currency lies in their ability to recognize and interpret the relationship between the hypertext and the hypotext. For these listeners, the value is not rooted in chronological primacy, but in the capacity to trace and decode intertextual connections. 69 Imani Perry, Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip-Hop (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), 55. 49 participate in a parallel interpretive culture that defines value through intertextual literacy, historical fluency, and deep semiotic engagement with hip-hop’s archival repertoire. This is not a subculture seeking upward mobility into the commercial mainstream, but a self-sustaining ecosystem that produces and polices its own standards of legitimacy. For artists like Atmosphere, engaging in quotations of canonical Golden Age lyrics becomes a strategy to inscribe themselves into the broader national narrative of hip-hop. These lyrical gestures not only signal insider fluency to listeners, but also function as acts of cultural positioning, aligning local or regional artists with a lineage of respected predecessors. The imagined community of practice, then, enables peripheral artists to transcend geographic marginality by demonstrating symbolic proximity to hip-hop’s core discourses. The aesthetic priorities of this community are governed less by Billboard charts, streaming metrics, or corporate validation and more by an artist’s capacity to engage meaningfully with hip-hop’s dense referential network. In this way, hip-hop’s imagined community of practice operates like an underground guild of archivists, practitioners, and connoisseurs, bound not by shared taste alone but by shared modes of interpretation. Its members traffic in coded citations and lyrical allusions that often go unnoticed by casual listeners but signal deep expertise to fellow insiders. By decoding these texts, members reinforce their position in a cultural economy that prizes knowledge over popularity. The power of this community lies in its refusal to collapse into the logic of the mainstream. Instead, it constructs an alternative space where credibility is not externally conferred but internally earned. Atmosphere The most critical markers of authenticity for rappers in the 1990s centered on race (explored in the next chapter) and location. Hip-hop turf wars began before the genre left New York City. Bronx-based Boogie Down Productions and the Juice Crew in Queens released a series of diss 50 tracks and answer recordings, known as the “Bridge Wars,” disputing their authenticity and right to practice hip-hop. “During this same era,” writes hip-hop scholar Mickey Hess, “Philadelphia artists stepped into the ring, with MC Breeze’s “It Ain’t New York” (1986), and Cool C’s “Juice Crew Dis” (1988), both records aimed at New York crews who saw their city as the center of the rap universe.”70 Shortly thereafter, West Coast hip-hop developed their own harder, gangsta edge and popularity seriously challenged New York’s supremacy with the rise of supergroup N.W.A. Unlike the previous territorial dispute, East Coast vs. West Coast turned physical and violent, culminating with the murders of hip-hop legends Tupac Shakur in 1996 and The Notorious B.I.G. in 1997. As the “Coastal War” was waning, southern hip-hop artists began voicing their take on hip-hop, most notably Atlanta’s Outkast, who while accepting the award for Best New Artist at the 1995 Source Awards declared to the New York crowd: “The South got somethin’ to say.” By the turn of the century, hip-hop had become tri-coastal while ignoring everything in the middle, the Midwest. As regional and ethnic outsiders in the 1990s, this negotiation was all important for the mixed-race Minneapolis duo Atmosphere, who have since become not only the most recognizable figure in Minnesota hip-hop but also one of the most prominent leaders in the national underground scene. Self-described as “a few types of white, Native American, and Black,” Sean “Slug” Daley and producer Anthony “Ant” Davis released their first record, Overcast!, in 1997.71 After receiving national attention following their 2002 album GodLovesUgly, the group rejected offers from major labels to build a stable, local hip-hop 70 Mickey Hess, “Introduction: ‘It’s Only Right to Represent Where I’m From’: Local and Regional Hip-Hop Scenes in the United States” in Hip-Hop in America: A Regional Guide (Santa Barbara: Greenwood Press, 2010), xx. 71 Sean Daley and Anthony Davis, “Atmosphere’s Paint it Gold- Episode 6,” Rhymesayers Entertainment, posted March 30, 2008, YouTube video, 12:22, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON0Ql-8JyNQ. 51 community and nurture their growing independent label Rhymesayers Entertainment, founded in 1996. In a career that has spanned four decades, Atmosphere has steadily released over a dozen albums, over a dozen EPs, and various side projects, making them one of the most prolific artists in hip-hop. Pertinent to my lyrical analysis, I must briefly highlight Slug’s earliest writing process. While sitting in junior high in-school suspension, Slug and a fellow “incarcerate” began writing their own set of lyrics to Eddie Murphy’s comedic 1982 song “Boogie in Your Butt.”72 Slug continued writing songs in this fashion, imitating rappers such as Run-D.M.C. or Slick Rick and later iconic Golden Age rappers KRS-ONE, Rakim, and Big Daddy Kane. Although this early stage involved mimetic imitation, it served as a foundational exercise not to replicate these artists, but to internalize their techniques and eventually recontextualize them in his own voice. This embodied, imitative process helped Slug understand the rhythmic and poetic structures of hip-hop’s most innovative emcees, but it is in the reworking of those structures, reframing familiar styles within new lyrical contexts, where the true pedagogical value emerges for rapper. In this way, signifyin’ functions as a mode of learning not through repetition alone, but through the creative adaptation and transformation of prior texts. This process in turn nurtures a personalized rhythmic voice or flow, functioning as a how-to guide for the rapping novice.73 Embodiment of these stock phrases are audibly present in future recordings and become building blocks for both freestyle improvisation and original composition. 72 Sean Daley, interview, “Microphone Mathematics: Slug of Atmosphere Part 1 of 3,” Microphone Mathematics, FETV, posted September 7, 2010, YouTube video, 12:56, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=. 73 For more on the role of embodiment in musical experience, what Arnie Cox calls the “mimetic hypothesis,” see Arnie Cox, Music and Embodied Cognition: Listening, Moving, Feeling, and Thinking (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016). 52 Musical Examples Richard Dyer’s study of pastiche identifies two types of musical borrowing: “textually signaled” and “unsignaled” borrowing or explicitly called-out references versus masked references.74 The type of quotation I am interested in for this chapter is strictly unsignaled, but what does that mean in the context of a lyrical analysis? To distinguish musical borrowing practices in hip-hop as either sampled or non-sampled, Justin Williams uses the terms autosonic and allosonic, respectively.75 “Autosonic quotation is quotation of a recording by digitally sampling a prior work (digital or analogue), as opposed to allosonic quotation, which quotes the previous material by way of rerecording or performing it live (like a quote in jazz performance), rather than sampling from the original recording.”76 I am concerned only with rerecorded, or textually unsignaled allosonic quotations. Signaled allosonic quotations, typically, are blatant declamations of a given reference and are often not as exciting;77 there is less thrill in the hunt when the artist literally tells you the quotes derivation. For example, in Atmosphere’s “Sunshine” (2007), Slug twice signals whom he is about quote before doing so: … Hopped on and felt the summertime It reminds me of one of them Musab lines like “Sunshine, Sunshine it’s fine” I feel it in my skin, warmin’ up my mind… And later: … Feelin’ alright stopped at a stop-sign A car pulled up bumpin’ Fresh Prince’s “Summertime” “Summer, summertime” 74 Richard Dyer, Pastiche (London: Routledge, 2007). 75 These terms derive from Serge Lacasse, who expanded Gerard Genette’s theory of autographic and allographic quotation to include recorded music. 76 Williams, Rhymin’ and Stealin’, 3. 77 Although outside of this projects scope, signaled allosonic quotations might also include strong timbral indicators that recall a specific artist. 53 I feel it in my skin, warmin’ up my mind…78 Preceding the allosonic quotation, Slug names the quoted artists, Musab and The Fresh Prince, to signal purposeful intent to recall the prior works, “Sunny Days” (1996) and “Summertime” (1991) before continuing the chorus with his own written lyrics.79 Unsignaled allosonic quotations, often found in the chorus or woven into a verse, are harder to discern—even for attentive, hypertextually-aware listeners to recognize. The previous illustration recognized Atmosphere’s allosonic quotation and repetition of two lines from Rakim’s “Follow the Leader” (1988) for the chorus of “Clay” (1997). When Slug employs this strategy to use quotations for his chorus, he does not simply repeat the lines but builds the energy and intensity with every repetition.80 For example, in “Round and Round” (2005) there is again a notable difference in tone and veracity from chorus to chorus as Slug repeats “round and round, upside down / living my life underneath the ground,” taken from a verse of “Beyond this World” (1989) by Jungle Brothers.81 Still, there are more nuanced capacities to implement an unsignaled allosonic quotation. Schematic Quotation I now return to the previous Slug and Big Pun example, which I am calling a schematic quotation: a lyrical structure that replicates and reworks both content and cadence from an earlier 78 Atmosphere, “Sunshine,” Sad Clown Bad Summer, Rhymesayers Entertainment, 2007. 79 During the recording release of “Summertime,” Musab went by the stage name Beyond. 80 This repetition most likely causes the listener to disregard any timbral associations they may have with the quoted artist. 81 Atmosphere, “Round and Round,” Headshots: Se7en, Rhymesayers Entertainment, 2005; and Jungle Brothers, “Beyond this World,” Done By the Forces of Nature, Warner Bros, 1989. 54 work. This schema operates as a bipartite structure: “I’m not a player” and “I throw-up a lot.” The first part is an allosonic quotation, but the second part is a contrafactum of the hypotext, substituting Big Pun’s lyrics (“I just fuck a lot”) with Slug’s more self-effacing variation without a substantial change to the music. Through the lens of Afrodiasporic musical and literary tropes, it would be apt to describe this schema as a common call-and-response, but my perception leans towards an antecedent-consequent relationship. The hypertext develops a sense of tension missing in the hypotext causing the antecedent “I’m not a player” to feel unresolved until the consequent “I throw-up a lot” ameliorates the tension. Slug employs similar schematic quotations throughout his discography. In “Guns and Cigarettes” (2001), for example, he raps: “rappers stepping to me, they wanna get some / but most of them should go and try to boost their monthly income,” signifying Big Daddy Kane’s boast in “Ain’t No Half Steppin’” (1988): “rappers steppin’ to me, they wanna get some / but I’m the Kane, so, yo, you know the