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This critical race discourse analysis examines how African American male rap artists construct their racial identities. Using double consciousness and critical race theory as my theoretical frameworks, I explore how five rap artists—Kanye West, JAY-Z, Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole, and Nipsey Hussle—navigate the tensions of being Black in White America. Specifically, I identify the kinds of discursive practices that are engaged in when talk about race is foregrounded and investigate how language is used to manage racial identities and reproduce and/or resist larger discourses of racism. To do so, this study used a corpus of rap lyrics from the above five artists, which included 12 albums and 160 songs, and a set of five interviews from Kanye.

Through a synthesis of African American Studies and discourse analysis, I offer the notion of racial communicative dilemma, a conceptual blend of double consciousness and communicative dilemma, to explore how dilemmas, tensions, and dualities manifest when African Americans, and particularly rap artists, navigate talk about race and their racial identity. Furthermore, I apply and expand upon Briscoe and Khalifa’s (2015) method of critical race discourse analysis to examine how race free-floats throughout the lyrics and talk of rap artists, to analyze the embeddedness of race in talk and text, and to offer up new discursive practices that begin to address how African American rap artists talk about race and anti-Black racism. Specifically, I identify and analyze four discursive practices, which fall into two categories: (1) racializing African Americans; and (2) signifyin’ Whiteness.

Using critical race theory, discourse analysis, and corpus analysis, I argue that this project answers: How can we bridge Communication and African American Studies to examine how systems of oppression impact marginalized groups and are discursively reproduced, maintained, and resisted? Consequently, this study illustrates how theories and concepts emerging out of the aforementioned fields have the potential to produce transdisciplinary contributions that examine social and communicative issues, including constructions of racial identity, discourses of anti-Black racism and Whiteness, and the embeddedness of race in our everyday talk and texts.

Chapter One: Introduction …1
Defining Hip Hop Culture and Rap Music …6
Hip Hop and Rap Music: A Commodity and Cultural Movement …9
Preview of the Dissertation …14
Chapter Two: Theoretical Framework …18
Double Consciousness …19
Critical race theory …24
Summary …28
Chapter Three: Conceptions of Identity …29
Identity and its discourse approaches …30
Identity, Race, and Interaction …36
Identity, Race, and Hip Hop …38
Summary …42
Chapter Four: Methods and Materials …43
Corpus Analysis …43
Critical Race Discourse Analysis …46
Discourse analysis …46
Critical Race Methodology …48
Data …50
Description of Corpus …51
Biographical Stories …52
Selection Process …60
Corpus Analytic Moves …62
Critical race discourse analysis of the corpus …65
The Interview Data …66
Background: Kanye West, the College Dropout …67
The Interviews …73
Summary …76
Chapter Five: Kanye West, Double Consciousness, Racial Communicative Dilemmas, and
Constructions of Identity …77
Communicative Dilemma: Taking a Discourse Analytic Approach to Communicative
Tensions …79
Racial Communicative Dilemma: Bringing together Double Consciousness and
Communicative Dilemmas …83
Constructions of African American Identity: Exploring Double Consciousness and Racial
Communicative Dilemmas …85
Discursive Practices Racializing African Americans …86
Discursive Practices Signifyin’ Whiteness …103
Conclusion …109
Chapter Six: Racializing African Americans and Constructions of Identity …112
The Racialized Rhetoric of Rap Music: Drawing on African American Communicative
Practices …114
Corpus assisted discourse analysis: Racializing African Americans …118
Invoking Anti-Black Racist Images: “Nigga” …121
Invoking Anti-Black Racist Images: “Monkey” …132
Referencing the Racialized Historical Condition of Enslavement: “Slave” …144
Conclusion …151
Chapter Seven: Signifyin’ Whiteness and Constructions of Identity …152
Whiteness: What is it and why is it desired? …154
Corpus assisted discourse analysis: Signifyin’ Whiteness …160
Signifyin’ Whiteness: Claiming White Identities and Institutions …161
Signifyin’ Whiteness: Critiquing White Folk and Institutions …166
Conclusion …189
Chapter Eight: Conclusion …191
Building Bridges: Communication and African American Studies …192
Contributions and Practical Implications: Racial communicative dilemma …193
Contributions and Practical Implications: Critical race discourse analysis …196
Limitations and Future Studies …201
Confessions of a Scholar in Love with Hip Hop …203
References …206
Appendix A …222
Appendix B …227
TABLES
1. Description of Corpora…61
2. Rap artists, albums, songs, and album release date…61
3. Concordance search of “slave” …64
4. Substantive search terms implying racialized African American identities…119
5. Substantive terms implying Whiteness…160