‘We demand justice. We just getting started’: the constitutive rhetoric of 1Hood Media's hip-hop activism

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lsquoWe demand justice We just getting startedrsquo theconstitutive rhetoric of 1Hood Medias hip-hop activism

Chenjerai Kumanyika

Popular Music Volume 34 Issue 03 October 2015 pp 432 - 451DOI 101017S0261143015000355 Published online 08 September 2015

Link to this article httpjournalscambridgeorgabstract_S0261143015000355

How to cite this articleChenjerai Kumanyika (2015) lsquoWe demand justice We just getting startedrsquo the constitutive rhetoricof 1Hood Medias hip-hop activism Popular Music 34 pp 432-451 doi101017S0261143015000355

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lsquoWe demand justice We justgetting startedrsquo the constitutiverhetoric of 1Hood Mediarsquoship-hop activism

CH EN J E RA I KUMANY I KADepartment of Communication Studies Clemson University 401 Strode Tower Clemson South Carolina 29634USA

E-mail chenjeraikumanyikagmailcom

AbstractThe hip-hop activism of Pittsburghrsquos 1Hood Media has been a key element of the success of severalcontemporary social justice campaigns such as the 2010 Justice For Jordan Miles police brutalitycase After offering some background on 1Hood Media and a discussion of constitutive rhetoricthis study offers a close reading of 1Hoodrsquos rhetorical appeal focusing on the ways in which the audi-ence is constituted as both collective and individual subjects whose participation in the narrative isessential to its closure 1Hood Mediarsquos texts focus on a diverse range of victims of injustice who sufferat the hands of police brutality and murder and other forms of systemic oppression The villains inthese narratives are institutional forces such as racist police forces or corrupt Wall Street banks Byfocusing on music lyrical and visual features of 1Hoodrsquos cultural products this study contributes tostudies of popular music hip-hop rhetoric and cultural politics

Once the federal government decided not to investigate then they [the family of Jordan Miles]was like lsquoyarsquoll do yarsquoll thingrsquo So thatrsquos when we do the video and put Zappalarsquos name on thereWe shut down Zappalarsquos phone line We shut Zappalarsquos phone line down when we put thevideo out literally

(Jasiri X personal communication 2012)

In the epigraph above hip-hop artistactivist Jasiri X is referring to his 2011 musicvideo lsquoJordan Milesrsquowhich provides a narrative of a 2010 police brutality case The dra-matic video ends by urging the audience to call Pittsburgh District Attorney StephenA Zappala with the following text lsquoCall Stephen A Zappala Allegheny CountyDistrict Attorney 4123504400 Demand he press charges on the three officers who bru-tally beat Jordan Milesrsquo (Jasiri X 2011c) The incident occurred nearly three years earl-ier and the first civil trial resulted in a hung jury on accusations that the police ndashPittsburgh police officers Saldutte Sisak and Ewing ndash beat and falsely arrested MrMiles This decision sparked three years of cultural and artistic protest and legal man-oeuvres Central to these efforts was a grassroots media production organisation called1Hood Media whose two-man team consisted of Jasiri X and Paradise Gray

In this respect the beginning of the second civil trial in the case of 11 March2014 was an important mini-victory for the hip-hop fuelled Justice for Jordan

Popular Music (2015) Volume 343 copy Cambridge University Press 2015 pp 432ndash451

doi101017S0261143015000355

Miles campaign On 10 January 2013 Gary L Lancaster US District Chief Judge forthe City of Pittsburgh announced that three police officers charged in the beatingand unwarranted arrest of Jordan Miles would face a new civil trial (Lord 2013)1Hood Media and the broader 1Hood coalition from which it came were instrumen-tal in creating and supporting the Alliance for Police Accountability (APA) formedto address this incident and for supporting the efforts of the APA and Milesrsquos familyin a variety of ways Their work included organising marches and rallies via socialmedia blogging about the campaign and other strategies of raising awareness

1Hood Mediarsquos use of lsquohip-hop activismrsquo as cultural politics was an importantcomponent of the campaign (Tucker 2005)1 Jasiri X wrote the song and 1HoodMedia worked with youth in Pittsburgh to write shoot and distribute the videoUploaded to YouTube in July 2011 the video became a central text of the campaignand was reposted on blogs throughout the USA X performed the song at a variety ofnational events2 ensuring that the casersquos visibility lived beyond the short time frameof a typical news cycle No one would argue that hip-hop was solely responsible forthe decision to reopen the trial but there is little question that the Justice for JordanMiles campaign and similar campaigns such as the George Zimmerman trial pro-vide examples of the ways in which hip-hop activism may affect social justice effortsLocal artists used hip-hop culture to draw in the attention of global lsquonetworked pub-licsrsquo (Boyd) to issues of police brutality in their community and to pressure the cityinto enacting democratic judicial practices

The success of 1Hoodrsquos tactics and similar approaches operate concurrentlywith the emergence of hip-hop philanthropic efforts such as lsquoThe Water Projectrsquoled by Jay-Z and celebrated by Oprah Winfrey Yele Haiti led by Wyclef StreetKing led by Curtis Jackson and many others (News One 2011) These efforts suggestthat a new class of typically mainstream hip-hop artists is choosing philanthropicless explicitly political non-confrontational methods to engage with social inequal-ities (Hasan 2014) This is not to suggest that earlier forms of hip-hop activismhave gone away or even become less common but they must now compete withlsquohip-hop corporate charityrsquo supported by widely promoted hip-hop artists withstrong pro-capitalist vision of hip-hoprsquos role in social transformation This studywas motivated by curiosity about the rhetorical and musical features that might dis-tinguish hip-hop activist approaches that diverge from philanthropic hip-hop in theirexplicit critiques of capitalism and corrupt state power

When artists write songs and speak publicly about social justice issues andcivic engagement they engage with reflect andor refashion political rhetoric

1 There is a significant body of literature that offers insights into what was meant by the term lsquohip-hopactivismrsquo when it first began to be used (Kitwana 2002 Bynoe 2004 Tucker 2005 Watkins 2005Chang 2007) Early uses of the term were closely related to the term lsquohip-hop politicsrsquo and referredto a wide range of political efforts enacted by generations of citizens who grew up with hip-hopmusic as it became a popular and widespread cultural form These forms of civic engagement oftenemployed hip-hop performance or other aesthetic elements of the genre as part of their political strat-egies Additionally these efforts often focused on issues that were articulated as being specifically rele-vant to the lsquohip-hoprsquo generation including the prisonndashindustrial complex and juvenile justice as well ascontemporary issues regarding education health environmental justice racism and sexism Hip-hopactivism often focused on mobilising the hip-hop generation around these issues using the mechanismof electoral politics

2 Periodically I shall refer to Jasiri X as X Jasiri X asked that I use the name X as due to political andreligious beliefs he does not use or recognise his legal name

lsquoWe demand justice We just getting startedrsquo 433

(Ards 2004 Watkins 2005 Alim 2006) It is partly for this reason that Street (2013)argues that music and politics should not be seen as distinct categories By closely exam-ining the traces of political philosophy or philosophies of activism as they exist in music-al texts we come to understand both the music and the rhetoric itself in new ways

After a brief theoretical orientation exploring how discussions of constitutiverhetoric can contribute to scholarship of popular music and hip-hop studies I willdescribe 1Hoodrsquos basic narrative and then move into a deeper exploration of howthis narrative is articulated in a variety of texts To this end I will consider a varietyof ways in which the audience is implied paying special attention to how they arepositioned with respect to character archetypes and real social actors as they are con-structed in the world of the narrative

Key concepts

While a variety of work in hip-hop studies focuses on hip-hoprsquos political rhetoric ingeneral this study takes up the precise question of how the audience is implied Indoing so it also draws on several concepts from continental philosophy From Burke(1969) White (1973) and the work of authors such as Charland (1987) who engagewith their ideas this study borrows insights regarding the crucial role that narrativesplay in rhetorical appeals and the idea that audiences are constructed by texts Forthese authors narratives ndash political and otherwise ndash inevitably use processes of iden-tification that address and position readers as lsquoimplied auditorsrsquo with ethical tem-poral spatial legal and economic relationships to other textual reference points Infact human beings cannot access and interpret their own relation to historical con-temporary and future events without narrative structures that allow them to selectspecific phenomena as particularly important As Charland points out narrativeslsquorender the sites of action and experience stablersquo and in so doing they lsquooffer aworld in which human agency is possible and acts can be meaningfulrsquo (Charland1987 p 139) These campaigns connect their audiences through representations ofdistant and familiar events people institutions conditions and locations It is inthis way that texts can be said to constitute audiences as already interpolated sub-jects positioning them through linguistic and semiotic rhetoric in particular sociallocations within hierarchies of social power

With this in mind various authors explore how specific texts elicit identifica-tion and the roles that specific narratives play in that process James Boyd White(1973 p 37) coined the term lsquoconstitutive rhetoricrsquo in writing about the languageand appeals of judicial decisions stressing the circumstances under which audiencescome to accept a collective identity Burke argues that a primary task of rhetoric is tomove beyond individuality by forming lsquotranscendental unitiesrsquo and lsquoconsubstantialrsquoidentities Quoting Watson3 Burke notes that lsquoin identification lies the source of ded-ications and enslavements in fact of cooperationrsquo (Burke 1969 p xiv) In addition topositioning the audience within the narrative the process of constituting the audi-ence can also be viewed as a process of creating a lsquotranscendental unityrsquo among audi-ence members that supersedes their sense of individual identities

Following Burke (1969) Charland (1987) applies the concept of constitutiverhetoric by positing several stages of identification in state discourses related to

3 Burke quotes James Watson under his occasional pseudonym WC Blum

434 Chenjerai Kumanyika

the Mouvement Souveraineteacute-Association (MSA) a movement trying to achieve pol-itical sovereignty for Quebec The first stage that Charland identifies is the rhetoricalconstitution of the collective subject In Charlandrsquos Quebec example the forms ofindividuality that needed to be overcome were class interests religious interests dif-ferences of circumstance loyalty and a broad range of potential divisions that mightcause the citizens being addressed to see themselves as French Canadian or othersubject positions less unified in service of the sovereignty project (Charland 1987)The rhetorical mechanism worked to transcend these differences by the positing oflsquoa peoplersquo ndash the lsquoQuebecoisrsquo

Fairclough (2003) also recognises that problems of lsquoIrsquo and lsquowersquo individualityand collectivity are central to the process of eliciting identification But in his explor-ation of these lsquoexternal relations of textsrsquo he reveals another important dimension ofidentification in its function as a major aspect of textual meaning He discusses a rela-tional view of the process of identification which emphasises its dialectal relation-ship to action and representation Fairclough argues that identities are constructedlsquonecessarily in relation to othersrsquo because lsquowho one is is a matter of how one relatesto the world and other peoplersquo He then offers examples of how both characters with-in texts and audiencesreaders are constructed as lsquoidentities in relationrsquo within busi-ness management and political media

This idea can be applied to certain features of Charlandrsquos Canadian example ndashthe citizens who would be newly constructed as lsquoQuebecoisrsquo are defined lsquoin relationtorsquo and in opposition to other Canadian citizens (Charland 1987) However forCharland the rhetorical appeal relies more on positioning the collective subject inrelation to their own ancestry within a historical narrative that they must now com-plete 1Hood Mediarsquos rhetorical motives aim at creating social issue-based solidarity(in the case of 1Hood Media) rather than political sovereignty but different sourcesof division must nevertheless be overcome in the process of constituting the collectivesubject Of course appeals that are critical of corporate and state power in general arenot at all exclusive to 1Hood By focusing on 1Hoodrsquos constitutive rhetoric I invitescholars of popular music hip-hop studies rhetoric and social movements to askmore explicitly how audiences are rhetorically constituted by musical texts andwhat role such appeals play in cultural politics

1Hoodrsquos background

1Hood began in 2006 as a coalition of young Pittsburgh-based grassroots organisa-tions and activists focused on a variety of issues affecting African American commu-nities The coalition became known in Pittsburgh for an approach to activism thatcombined physical presence in some of Pittsburghrsquos most feared and violence-riddenareas cultural programming events and public confrontation with local elected offi-cials Eventually the founders of the coalition Jasiri X and Paradise Gray wouldform the media production company 1Hood Media 1Hood Media produces a var-iety of media products but the music videos and songs of Jasiri X are a significantportion of their work and tend to have the highest profile

1Hoodrsquos albums and videos have been released on music platforms such asYouTube Bandcamp iTunes and Spotify and promoted on social media platformssuch as Facebook and Twitter However their cultural products are frequently cre-ated in contractual relation or implicit solidarity with specific activist organisations

or campaigns So although the sale of albums is part of what supports Jasiri Xrsquos andParadise Grayrsquos careers as full time hip-hop activists the sale of albums seems to beof less concern than the exchange and promotion of their content

The emergence of affordable digital production tools and new media distribu-tion and social platforms were central to 1Hood mediarsquos strategy particularly after2007 1Hood Mediarsquos productions therefore offer an insight into the intersectionsbetween music cultural politics user-generated content and promotional capitalthat deserves more complete treatment than will be offered here The rhetorical con-stitution of 1Hoodrsquos audience is not separate from the politics and tactics of audienceproduction facilitated by digital measurement features of online platforms theirmusical and narrative choices were partially informed by their understanding ofonline audiences that they actively built and maintained

Gray and X take advantage of affordances that allow users to upload and pro-mote their own media in order to attach their musical products to timely news topicsThe most interesting questions around this strategy have to do with how citizens pro-duce and are organised and measured by digital platforms This kind of relationshipbetween audiences production distribution and newsocial media platforms hasbeen theorised using concepts such as user-generated content lsquoProsumptionrsquo(Ruckenstein 2011) lsquoPlaybourrsquo (Kuumlcklich 2005) and many other terms Hamilton(2014) offers a historically grounded framework in which to think about these strat-egies Gray and Xrsquos use of the participation in lsquocommunitarianrsquo user-communitiesassociated with the aforementioned platforms fit within Hamiltonrsquos framework tosome extent but their negotiation of activist capitalist logic warrants a nuancedreading The possibility of fast online distribution combined with the promotionalstrategy of what I call hip-hop journalism meant that 1Hoodrsquos musical topics weredirectly influenced by news events

1Hoodrsquos central narrative

The plots of 1Hoodrsquos media narrative unfold according to familiar populist tropesOften the video introduces a problematic violation of rights that requires a responsefrom the collective public 1Hood Media appears to expose the injustice recruit fol-lowers and threaten the powers that be with the prospect of their imminent demiseSome versions of the narrative invite the viewer into the story as populist protest hasalready begun In other versions Jasiri X rhetorically constructs the events in waysthat lead the audience to the inevitable conclusion that action is now required Inboth cases the narrative predicts an uprising in which citizens obtain justice throughcollective political action

These plot features arise from a variety of texts that comprise the campaignwhile the broader data collection included newspaper articles televised commercialsnews reports interviews music videos web pages customised pages and posts onsocial media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter and other texts This analysisfocuses mainly on music videos that 1Hood members uploaded to YouTube I illus-trate the elements of each brandrsquos narrative by analysing specific texts highlightingthe common patterns of representation that reflect an underlying ideology mostclosely in the lsquoJordan Milesrsquo video (Jasiri X 2011c) the lsquoOccupy (We the 99)rsquo video(Jasiri X 2011d) and an RT interview with Jasiri X (Jasiri X 2011a) First I explorehow the victims of injustice are represented in each case and how the audience is

constituted in relation to these victims The focus on victims sets up the necessaryconflict that creates the context for heroic action I then assess the representation ofheroic action focusing on the role of the audience and the nature of agency that isrepresented

Now the whole community wants justice victims and the audience in1Hood Mediarsquos texts

The first key to 1Hood Mediarsquos rhetorical constitution of its audience is the termlsquo1Hoodrsquo itself The term lsquohoodrsquo as it is used in urban and hip-hop vernacular is poly-semic it simultaneously connotes specific geographic and or socio-economiclocations as well as sets of belongings affective bonds and obligations that areunderstood as being linked to those locations

Partially as a result of its circulation and exchange in urban vernacular includ-ing the urban vernacular in hip-hop music the term lsquohoodrsquo has become a site of ten-sion surrounding its spatial socio-economic cultural and moral meanings CornelWest makes the distinction between the terms lsquohoodrsquo and lsquoneighbourhoodrsquo by sug-gesting that the former connotes criminalised and hostile aspects of urban lifewhile the latter connotes more sympathetic and communal dimensions (West1999) This binary however does not map onto the complex contemporary usagesof the term with sufficient precision Just as crime poverty solidarity familydeath decay and transformation are linked in the lived experience of residents ofthe urban economically impoverished neighbourhoods these experiences are alsolinked in contemporary usages of the term lsquohoodrsquo Forman (2002) offers a morenuanced framework considering the concept of lsquothe hoodrsquo as a new spatial tropethat can be deployed with a greater and more responsive range of meanings thanthe term lsquoghettorsquo lsquowhen used by members of the hip-hop generation to describeand delineate localityrsquo (Forman 2002 p 62) Where lsquothe ghettorsquo was linked primarilyto disparaging images of poverty and crime in Formanrsquos view lsquothe hoodrsquo can tran-scend these binaries

The specific usage of the term lsquohoodrsquo by X and Gray captures both the region-ally specific as well as the broader social conditions raised in the aforementioneddebates Paradise chose 1Hood as a name for the emerging coalition as a way of inter-vening into the problem of lsquohoodismrsquo ndash a sense of individualism and competitivelocalism he felt was present in the dominant culture Both Richardson and Skott-Myhre (2012 p 62) cite Paul Gilroyrsquos (1992) concern that the localised political com-mitments implied in the term lsquohoodrsquo might work against lsquothe enabling potentials of amobilizing politics of racersquo Therefore in their formulation the 1 in 1Hood is used tomediate the specifics of particular neighbourhoods in Pittsburgh with whatRichardson and Skott-Myhre (2012 p 9) describe lsquoas an awareness of communityan enclosed space in which residents are united in their daily strugglesrsquo This rhet-orical logic is also present in the aesthetic similarities of 1Hoodrsquos logo to thePittsburgh Steelersrsquo logo and colours lsquoSunday is one day when all of Pittsburghcomes together for footballrsquo (Gray personal communication 2012) In this sensethe term might be understood as another way of saying lsquowe are one communityrsquoor lsquowe should operate as one neighbourhood and communityrsquo

The coalition would have the members of its collectivity transcend the narrowand divisive interests of its many hoods by unifying into 1Hood based on common

sets of economic cultural political and ethical interests Therefore while in theirwork at home the term lsquohoodrsquo operates on the surface as specific to Pittsburgh intheir national and international work 1Hood repositions the term lsquohoodrsquo as a globallyrelevant sociopolitical concept describing racial partisan organisational and othertypes of commitments

Collectively 1Hoodrsquos texts offer a populist vision that ascribes multiple roles toits audience They position the implied audience as simultaneously hero victim andwitness The victims in 1Hoodrsquos narratives are diverse in racial and ethnic identity1Hoodrsquos texts suggest that what the implied auditors (the audience) shares withthese victims is a witnessing of instances of oppression In this framework1Hoodrsquos texts frequently address their audiences as rights-bearing citizens and ref-erence the democratic ideals of the USA to highlight the contrasts between theAmerican promise of justice and equality inherent in such ideals and the real-lifedeployment of laws by the state apparatus X and Gray appear most often ashosts narrators or enablers offering the audience the rhetorical evidence that rightshave been violated and encouraging them to fight back

Many of 1Hoodrsquos texts advocate on behalf of young black males This focus ispartially related to the fact that the problems of racialised police brutality and stereo-typical images of African American men in the media hit home with X Gray andother 1Hood founders all African American male residents of Pittsburghrsquos urbanareas This issue of white supremacist law enforcement practices also gained increas-ing currency in the national media during the years of 1Hoodrsquos founding and devel-opment For instance in 2012 the Malcolm X Grassroots movement produced andpublicised a report lsquoon the extrajudicial killings of Black people by police securityguards or self-appointed law enforcersrsquo (Akuno 2012) The study found that in thefirst half of 2012 120 African Americans were killed in this manner 96 per cent ofwhom were male and 69 per cent of whom were between the ages of 13 and 31Also noteworthy is the finding that 46 per cent of the victims were unarmed andin another 36 per cent of the cases the initial claims by law enforcement that the vic-tim was armed were disputed by witnesses or future investigation lsquoEnoughrsquosEnoughrsquo (Jasiri X 2008) lsquoFree the Jena Sixrsquo (Jasiri X 2007) lsquoTrayvonrsquo (Jasiri X 2012)lsquoI am Troy Davisrsquo (Jasiri X 2011b) lsquoJordan Milesrsquo (Jasiri X 2011c) and GameChangers (One Hood Media 2013) are all 1Hood Media videos that construct theaudience as witnesses to the victimisation of African American males

It is important to recognise that Jasiri Xrsquos discussions of police brutality in asong like lsquoJordan Milesrsquo (2010) operate differently from the fairly common referencesto police corruption in mainstream commercial hip-hop music (Charity et al 2014) Inmainstream hip-hop references to police tend to be general in the sense that theyoften focus on regional departments or units rather than individuals that are current-ly under investigation Some hip-hop songs contain warnings andor fantasies offighting police corruption by shooting back at police officers For example Miller(2004) discusses the Goodie Mobrsquos reference to the Red Dog Unit in the songlsquoDirty Southrsquo (1996)4 where the artists describe a scene in which the police are lsquoattheir doorrsquo perhaps to steal drugs Miller notes that although the Red Dog Lyricdoes point to a police unit that was functional at the time the references to police

4 The Red Dog unit was Atlantarsquos aggressive drug strike force that was disbanded in 2009 lsquoRed Dogrsquowasan acronym for lsquoRun all drug dealers out of Georgiarsquo

corruption are lsquoobliquersquo and he focuses on the way that they are used as part of abroader construction of the lsquodirty southrsquo A 1992 group called Success-N-Effect alsoreferenced the Red Dog unit in the song lsquoFck 1 Time Revolutionist Sidersquo whichcomes closer to Jasiri Xrsquos style by presenting details about specific instances of con-temporary police brutality through the use of news footage-style speech that inter-rupts the lyrics Here however these specific cases are presented as evidence tosupport broader claims about problems with policing This contrasts with the contextand rhetoric of Jasiri Xrsquos lyrics which are organised around inviting the public toengage with a specific campaign that is underway at the time that the song wasreleased

The instrumental for 1Hoodrsquos song and video lsquoJordan Milesrsquo is borrowed fromthe Beastie Boys 1986 hit lsquoPaul Reverersquo and signifies through a complex chain ofintertextuality In addition to providing a sparse but catchy musical bed this instru-mental functions as a coded semiotic cue to hip-hop fans that a story will be told5and assumes to some extent an audience that will recognise the song as a remixJasiri X also borrows the Beastie Boysrsquo lsquoflowrsquo and certain key phrases that nod tothe original The lyrical and musical elements of lsquoJordan Milesrsquo draw on the familiar-ity and aesthetically opportune musical arrangement of the original rather thancommenting specifically on the original as some parodies do Jasiri Xrsquos quotationof specific phrases such as lsquoherersquos a little story I got to tellrsquo set up the narrative pres-entation In addition to being familiar the song also has the benefit of being instru-mentally sparse which creates rhythmic space to foreground the lyrical content

Justin Williams calls this kind of borrowing lsquoallosonic quotationrsquo ndash a particularkind of quotation that alludes to another rapperrsquos style by using combinations ofwords and flows (Williams 2013) Williamsrsquo identification of allosonic quotation ishelpful but it lacks a developed discussion of the functions of this kind of allusionIn the case of lsquoJordan Milesrsquo Xrsquos verses occasionally point back to the Beastie Boysrsquolyrics (actually written by both the Beasties and Run DMC) but there is more exten-sive quotation of the Beastie Boysrsquo flow The function of this quotation appears to beabout the pleasures of familiarity Additionally the repetitive evenly spaced rhyth-mic phrasing of the lyrics in lsquoPaul Reverersquo makes the narrative easier to follow for thelistener

This particular form of borrowing also operates in the tradition of dub toastingas articulated through the instrumental borrowing in hip-hop mixtapes (Veal 2007)Despite the seemingly simple lyrical presentation there is a dimension of artisticlsquoshowing offrsquo present in lsquoJordan Milesrsquo musical skill is required to insert onersquosown lyrics into another rapperrsquos flow with rhythmic precision In the mixtape trad-ition the quotation of flows and instrumentals is done so that an artist can displaysuperior skills By choosing to create a mixtape version of a song rappers areoften showing off their ability to identify and reproduce the elements of the styleof their competition Additionally mixtape versions highlight an artistrsquos ability tolsquofillrsquo another rapperrsquos basic melodic and rhythmic structure more substantivelywith content that speaks to specific situations In this case Jasiri X makes the musicalelements of lsquoPaul Reverersquo originally an urbanwestern robbery fantasy into aninstructive social justice commentary

5 And that the story will likely include a call to defense

The video starts with an especially prominent branding technique consisting ofa large yellow 1Hood logo (reminiscent of the Pittsburgh Steelersrsquo logo) against ablack screen Punctuated with the sound of a cymbal played backward this screenthen switches to Xrsquos logo (an X with an eye at its centre) The next shot featuresJasiri X descending the front steps of a house rapping the opening lines

Now herersquos a little story I got to tellAbout three officers you donrsquot know so wellIt started way back last JanuaryWith officers Ewing Sisak and SaldutteThey ran into boy named Jordan MilesA real good kid who for sure was mildBut he was found guilty before a trialCause hersquos a young black man in the wrong part of town

Shots of X performing these lyrics are juxtaposed with black-and-white footage of theofficers and Miles from the arraignment The footage features each officer holding uphis judicially required name card The chronological and step-by-step presentation ofthe events rhetorically constructs the audience as juror Xrsquos lyrics editorialise but alsoreason with the collective viewerjury The dramatic re-enactments and court footageappear as objective confirmation of Xrsquos claims

The primary problematic that the viewer is asked to assess is that Jordan Milesa high school-aged rights-bearing model African American male citizen was chasedbrutally beaten and arrested by Pittsburgh police and yet he was innocent Xrsquos lyricsarticulate both of these claims While 1Hood has decried the unlawful beatings andkillings of a variety of citizens Miles is constructed as an especially undeserving can-didate for criminal profiling

Jordan is a kid that gets good gradesNot a thug bragging that hersquos hood raisedHe takes care of his grandmother cause shersquos olderWent to performance arts school and plays the violaHe never did a crime one day in his lifeHis favorite TV show is CSIWhen he graduated he wanted to learnHow to catch a criminal like Lawrence Fishburne

This representation of Jordan as studious nurturing respectful and creative appealsto a viewer who would appreciate these traits It gives the viewer the necessary mate-rials to experience pathos when the graphic details of the beating are relayedStanding at the scene of the beating in Pittsburghrsquos Homewood district X narratesa version of the sequence of events in which plain-clothes officers emerge from anunmarked vehicle and accuse Miles of possessing drugs and guns The discussionof Jordanrsquos desire to be a forensic officer enhances the sense of injustice in the narra-tive by creating a sense of irony for the viewer Not only was Miles a law-abidingcitizen and a good student he also actually dreamed of working in law enforcementThe irony in turn works to construct both Miles and the outraged audience-witnessas morally superior to the police officers who according to the narrative fail touphold the law

Although Ewing Sisak and Saldutte are identified early on in the video tobring them into the light as named tangible actors that can be realistically broughtto justice they are also strategically lsquodepersonalisedrsquo with terms like lsquothe copsrsquo Asa representation of social actors phrases such as lsquothe officersrsquo and lsquothe copsrsquo invite

the audience to think about the actions of these individuals through their roles aspart of the state apparatus As cops rather than as named individuals they arepart of the larger force of police and more easily connectable to historical trends ofracial profiling abuse and murder

He didnrsquot get far before the cops catch emNow that they got em they gotta teach him a lessonBecause he ran that means they gotta wreck himThey slam him on his neck and start to chin check himBlow after blow till his face was swollenHe thinks theyrsquore gonna stop but they just keep goingHe calls on God whispering the lords prayerThey grab him by his locks just to rip out his hairBeaten and bloody they finally handcuff himBut then when they search they donrsquot find nothing

X lies on the ground during his performance of these lines taking the position ofMiles during the beating X raises his hands protectively across his face and atone point he performs with a photograph of Milesrsquos swollen post-beating mugshot covering his face (see Figure 1) The camera maintains its position lookingdown onto Xrsquos depiction of the events but the lines lsquoHe thinks theyrsquore gonna stopbut they just keep goingrsquo inviting the viewer to enter into and identify withMilesrsquos perspective during the moment of the beating As such the appeal to identi-fication is one that invites the viewers to imagine themselves as Miles and to formtheir own empathic outrage at the wrongness of his treatment by police and thelegal system that refused to put them on trial

While there are a variety of meanings at work in the Jordan Miles video thenarrative is essentially an account of a model citizen suffering multiple rights viola-tions at the hands of a racially biased and ineffective legal process Like many other1Hood texts this text does not appeal to viewers who favour extra-legal justiceactions Instead this appeal asks viewers to understand restorative justice as begin-ning with the legal investigation and the accountability of the officers in questionThe transcendental identity of the audience-subject that Jordan Miles constructs isthat of a citizen who is outraged at the violation of rights X indicates this by placinghis own body at the site of the incident Lying down and acting out Milesrsquos victim-isation X constructs himself and by implication other citizens as consubstantialwith Miles In this case the vulnerability to rights violation is a key mechanism ofviolation

Fairclough defines modality as lsquowhat one commits to when they makestatements or ask questions or make demands or offersrsquo (Fairclough 2003 p 165)In his view modality is one discursive parameter that produces meaning by structur-ing the relationship between texts action representation and identification X con-structs himself as what might be called a lsquocitizen-witnessrsquo who is deeply familiarwith the facts of the case and wary of an attempt to obstruct justice BridgingMilesrsquos vulnerability to civil rights violation with the implied audience through hisown situation in the narrative X commits himself to two attitudes The first is an atti-tude of determination to see the due process of law carried out despite the initialunwillingness of the city to investigate which can be seen as a demand on boththe collective audience-subject and on Pittsburghrsquos judicial authorities The secondstance that X commits to is an assertion of the guilt of the police officers As notedabove this is accomplished through the attribution of intention to the police officers

the imaginative entering of Milesrsquo perspective during the beating and the graphicdescription of Milesrsquo lsquobeaten and bloodyrsquo state at the time of his arrest These commit-ments are modal choices that represent one of many potential ways of relating thefacts of the case

The vast majority of 1Hoodrsquos pieces on individual instances of police brutalityand murder highlight racial bias as a problematic mode of law enforcement Theargument is explicit at the end of the Trayvon video as X concludes his narrativeof Martinrsquos killing by a self-appointed neighbourhood watchman lsquoAnd GeorgeZimmerman wasnrsquot even arrested the message is only white lives are protected in Americarsquo In the Jordan Miles video the focus on race is captured in the lineslsquobut he was found guilty before a trial cause hersquos a young black man in the wrongpart of townrsquo The racial profiling of the victims is also specifically mentioned laterin the song as X describes the details of the incident lsquoThey saw Jordan walking they lips they start lickin therersquos a young black male hell yeah letrsquos get himrsquo X attri-butes an intentional maliciousness to Zimmerman in the Trayvon case and the

Figure 1 X performs with image of Milesrsquos beaten face over his own

officers in the Miles case In reality it is impossible to know what the actors werethinking but this rhetorical strategy prompts viewers who believe that the perpetra-tors of each case did not have malicious intent to recognise that the outcomes wouldhave been the same either way

Ultimately 1Hood Mediarsquos highlighting of racial bias is positioned in contrastto the due process of law or humane treatment as prescribed by civil rights The inci-dents are presented in such a way as to disturb the identity of viewers who see them-selves as part of a just law-governed society who must then act to restore justiceAgain the audience is constructed through this description of the resulting socialaction because in the narrative of the music video lsquothe whole communityrsquo actsnot simply African American males or specific advocacy groups This can beobserved in the lines lsquoNow the whole community wants justice for Jordan andthe cops charged for the crimes they reported Call the DA and tell him to presscharges we demand justice and we just getting startedrsquo

Another way that 1Hood Mediarsquos overarching narrative works to construct theaudiencersquos identification with victims through a sense of shared injustice has been byexpanding from its primary focus on incidents of police brutality against young blackmales to include an age- race- and gender-diverse representation of the victims ofinjustice The lsquoOccupy (We the 99)rsquo video which was filmed and released at roughlythe same time as the SK launch offers a clear example of 1Hoodrsquos rhetorical position-ing of the audience as both victims of and witnesses to instances of injustice First thevideo constructs the victims of injustice and protesters as ethnically diverse male andfemale and predominantly working class These appeals invite viewers from a var-iety of backgrounds to see the context of their involvement as one of mutually inter-twined rights rather than charitable volunteerism X sees 1Hoodrsquos participation in thevideo as countering the mainstream mediarsquos attempts to discredit the movementby characterising its supporters as exclusively young white privileged studentslsquoOccupy (We the 99)rsquo challenges this characterisation depicting the bodies thatmarch and that are brutalised by police as disproportionately white but ultimatelydiverse The representation of diversity is achieved by the juxtaposition of X anAfrican American man with the images of mostly white protesters (see Figure 2)supplemented by intermittent shots of African American protesters holding signsDuring one shot X holds up a newspaper that features the image of executedAfrican American male prisoner Troy Davis This invites the viewer to make connec-tions between the unequal and racialised application of the death penalty andunequal law enforcement with respect to issues of economic inequality

X doesnrsquot appear in the first 40 seconds of the video and his performance scenesare consistently interrupted by the footage of protesters being beaten pepper-sprayed dragged through the street and arrested by police officers The inclusionof a variety of instances of police brutality particularly at the beginning of thevideo suggests that police brutality has become a standard mode of law enforce-ment rather than an exception in isolated incidents

Lyrically X describes the scenes playing out on the screen and contrasts theimages of police brutality with Obamarsquos foreign policy rhetoric

Remember when police beat the Egyptians who were defiantEven president Obama condemned the violenceBut when NYPD beat Americans therersquos silenceItrsquos apparent that therersquos bias

The suggestion here is that in this case Americans receive less justice than Africans(Egyptians) In other words this is a form of oppression that is close to the audienceand one that they can relate to

The next lines of the song clarify what X means by lsquobiasrsquo contrasting the brutaltreatment of some protesters with supportive policies for banks and investmentfirms

Sticks for the people but give carrots to the liarsThose crooked cops just for embarrassment should be firedAnd if you want to see terrorists then look higherThey in them skyscrapers with billions from my labor

The phrase lsquothe peoplersquo invites the audience to identify with the working protestersand by extension the working class Xrsquos use of the idiom lsquocarrots and sticksrsquo worksin multiple layers at one level it operates as an ironic reversal of Warren Buffetrsquos 2009use of the same idiom to suggest lsquoWall Street was not evil but needs carrots andsticksrsquo (Crippen 2009) Since Buffet a high-profile investor suggested that WallStreet needs lsquomore sticksrsquo meaning more punitive regulatory policies any citationof this widely circulated metaphor in reference to Wall Street can be viewed as ironic

Figure 2 X performing in lsquoOccupy (We the 99)rsquo video at New York protest

X appropriates the metaphor to suggest that Americarsquos justice system operates in waysthat reward investors for corrupt practices while violently punishing citizens whoprotest that corruption The term lsquosticksrsquo ndash a metaphor for punitive discipline ndash inthis context evokes the image of the police nightsticks that are used in incidents ofpolice brutality

Like the chorus of the song lsquowe gonrsquo occupyrsquo the lines lsquobuilding skyscraperswith billions from my laborrsquo solicit identification by inviting the listener to sing itslyrics In the mouth of the listeneraudience the words lsquomy laborrsquo doesnrsquot refer toXrsquos work but to the work of taxpayers and investment clients that were defraudedby the practices of the financial sector Therefore by singing the lyrics the listeneris constituted as a member of the working class The combination of footage andXrsquos lyrics invites viewers to confront events that are rhetorically framed as injustices

Another central component of the appeal in lsquoOccupy (We the 99)rsquo is that1Hoodrsquos audience is also addressed as rights-bearing American citizens Under thevideorsquos opening montage of police brutality footage a voice can be heard shoutingthe following words

Leave these people alone Theyrsquore US citizens US citizens US It does not make youtough to do this to them It doesnrsquot Stop hurting these people man Why yrsquoall doing this toour people I been to Iraq 14 times for my people You come here and hurt them Theydonrsquot have guns They donrsquot have guns They donrsquot why are you hurting these people Itdoesnrsquot make any sense It doesnrsquot make any sense How do you sleep at night There is nohonor in this There is no honor in this There is no honor in this shit

The voice is that of Iraq War veteran and Marine Sergeant Shamar Thomas as heconfronted the NYPD following a large lsquoOccupy (We the 99)rsquo Wall Street demonstra-tion in Times Square on 15 October 2011 The first words uttered in the video arelsquoleave these people alone Theyrsquore US citizensrsquo This rhetoric refers to the occupy pro-testers but also attempts to forge a citizenship-based bond with the audience of con-frontation (and the officers themselves) The confrontation was recorded uploaded toYouTube and went viral in a matter of days generating over eight million views andwidespread blog coverage (Huffington Post 2011) In the beginning of lsquoOccupy (Wethe 99)rsquo footage from the video of the confrontation is juxtaposed with the openingscenes of brutality As an Iraq War veteran who confronts the line of police officers inuniform Thomas operates as lsquothe ultimate citizenrsquo modelling the outrage that thevideo is meant to evoke from its audience Thomas admonishes the police officersnot for brutality but for abusing lsquoUS citizensrsquo Thomasrsquos outrage is not a responseto a human rights violation but what he perceives as civil rights violations whereinpolice are assaulting citizens that have rights that he felt he had risked his life to pro-tect By beginning the video with Thomasrsquos argument the video offers it as an ana-lytic framework through which to understand everything that follows Thomasrsquosshouting of lsquothere is no honor in this shitrsquo is interrupted by Xrsquos voice on the chorusof the song lsquowe gonrsquo occupy we the 99rsquo

The aforementioned lyrics of the song also construct the audience as rights-bearing citizens

We came to crash your party and we ainrsquot leaving until wersquore evenThe Constitution guarantees these freedomsAny one against thatrsquos committing treasonYoursquore not a real patriot unless you stand for what you believe in

Here X appeals to the constitution as the authority that grants occupy protesters themoral right to lsquocrash your partyrsquo The line lsquoanyone against thatrsquos committing treasonrsquois another Shamar Thomas-esque reference to the police who are framed in the videoas working against the constitutional rights of protesting citizens The next line con-tinues to develop the rights-based argument claiming that the protesting citizens arelsquoreal patriotsrsquowhile those who refuse to join them are not This rhetorical move clearlyaddresses aUScitizenwho imagineshimself tobe apatriotAgain theuseof lsquowersquo invitesthe audience to identify with the perspective of occupy protesters by singing along

This construction of a collective subject that is a rights-bearing American wit-ness to inequality and repression is also at work in other media coverage of 1Hoodactions In an RT interview about the Occupy protests X discusses the attempt of theUniversity of Connecticut to censor his performance by contractually stating that ifhe performed the song lsquoOccupy (We the 99)rsquo he would not be paid (Jasiri X2011a) The introduction of the newscast sets up Xrsquos censorship as the primary prob-lematic and invites the viewer to bear witness to this

Just this month he was slated to appear at a political awareness rally organized by the studentgovernment But then he was told that he would only be paid and allowed to attend if he didnot perform his songOccupyWe Are the 99 [sic] because it contained obvious political statements

When asked why he chose to perform the song anyway X responds by sayinglsquobecause I felt this was more erosion of freedom of speechrsquo X situates this incidentwithin a narrative of ongoing erosion of constitutional rights packaging the frameto appeal to a viewer who would be displeased at such a prospect

The texts of 1Hood Media depict transformative social action through represen-tations of citizens holding local state agencies accountable through legal action citi-zens holding corporate citizens accountable through radical protest and thedevelopment of marginalised populations into media literate producers of media

We came to crash your party heroic action in 1Hood Mediarsquos texts

Among the variety of ways that 1Hood Media depicts heroic action three stand outin the specific texts under analysis The first of these is the representation of citizensholding local state agencies accountable through legal action the second is protestaimed at obtaining accountability from national government bodies and nationallyinfluential private entities the third is the process of assisting youth to develop crit-ical media literacy The aforementioned Jordan Miles video offers an instructiveexample of this The video describes the events surrounding the civil rights case ofJordan Miles (the Pittsburgh-based African American youth who was physicallyassaulted and arrested by police on 12 January 2010) As both an educational pieceof media about the case and protest songvideo lsquoJordan Milesrsquo stands as an exampleof social action Specific types of social action are also represented in the text of thesong which constitutes a subject position of citizenship

The primary representation of legal agency in lsquoJordan Milesrsquo comes at the end ofthe song with the lyrics lsquonow the whole community wants justice for Jordan Andthe cops charged for the crimes they reported Call the DA and tell him to presscharges we demand justice and we just getting startedrsquo These lyrics are specificabout the kind of justice that is being sought in this case legal action The phraselsquowe just getting startedrsquo indicates the intention of the Justice for Jordan Miles

campaign to continue to push for this specific end The use of the term lsquowersquo refers tothose already in support of the campaign but it also invites the audience to identifywith the campaign through the act of singing the lyrics The video ends by directlyasking the viewer to take action on behalf of the case by placing the following text inwhite lettering over a black screen

Call Steven A Zappala JrAllegheny County District Attorney4123504400[screen switch]Demand he press charges onthe 3 officers that brutally beat Jordan Miles[screen switch]For more information go tojusticeforjordanmilescom

1Hoodrsquos texts also depict citizens working to obtain accountability from national gov-ernment bodies and nationally influential private entities The song and video forlsquoOccupy (We the 99)rsquo offers an additional example of this pattern of representationThe song was written as a manifesto for the Occupy movement and it decries theactions of the financial sector in relation to the sub-prime mortgage crisis the absenceof legal accountability in the wake of the crisis and the methods of law enforcementdirected at the Occupy protests This video was filmed at Zucotti Park in New Yorkand in Pittsburgh PA and includes footage from a variety of other protests The

Figure 3 Jasiri X performs in lsquoOccupy (We the 99)rsquo

videorsquos clearest symbol of social action is the seemingly endless collage of footageplaying throughout the video of police physically assaulting protesters at variousOccupy events These are juxtaposed with scenes of marches and protests and shotsof Jasiri performing his verses at various Occupy locations (see Figure 3) The lyricsof the song interpret these images for the viewer in a number of ways

The songrsquos chorus lsquowe gonrsquo occupy we the 99rsquo is sung by Jasiri X The phraselsquowe gonrsquo occupyrsquo announces the literal intention to continue engaging in politicallyoriented processes of reclaiming physical space but it also announces a generalintention to take action against the forms of injustice that are argued elsewhere inthe song lsquoWe the 99rsquo takes up the rhetoric of the Occupy movement inviting theviewers to see themselves as the victims of the practices of the financial sector andlax regulatory policies and processes but also as part of a community that reclaimsspace and demands accountability The verses reaffirm the intention to act and offermore rhetorical appeals that justify action In this sense the aforementioned lines lsquowecame to crash your party and we ainrsquot leaving until wersquore evenrsquo are an announce-ment of political action The lyrics go further to argue that for those who considerthemselves patriots social action is not a choice but a requirement of participation indemocracy But the form of action being discussed lsquowe came to crash your partyrsquodescribes the radical action directed at the institutions involved with the governanceof the financial sector In this case lsquoyour partyrsquo is meant to describe the villainwhereas the lsquowersquo refers to the constituted audience

Conclusion

1Hood Mediarsquos texts construct its collective subject as rights-bearing American citi-zens who bear witness to are close to and respond to instances of injustice The vic-tims of injustice who frequently speak for themselves in 1Hood Media productionsare mostly African American males but also include citizens who come from a var-iety of geographic and ethnic backgrounds 1Hood Media invites its audiences to feelconsubstantial with their experiences of injustice Additionally 1Hood Media offers amulti-faceted representation of social action This includes local and national strat-egies to hold law enforcement accountable as well as more radical projects ofreclaiming public space Additionally the development of art political media andnew generations of media producers lsquofrom the marginsrsquo are also depicted as neces-sary components for participation in the promotional public sphere Certainly Xand Paradise are prominent figures even protagonists in the productionsrsquo storiesbut similarities between them audiences and victims of injustice are emphasised

Due to the focus on violations of justice almost all of 1Hood Mediarsquos songs orvideos feature the victim or victims as prominent ndash as rights-bearing American citi-zens with whom the imagined audience is seen to share certain key similarities Thiscontrasts with the victims (the recipients of aid) in the media of philanthropic cam-paigns who are generally depicted as foreign and desperate lsquoothersrsquo and whose onlysalvation is compassionate institutional or celebrity actors While the institutionalactors in 1Hood Mediarsquos narrative are occasionally privately governed systemssuch as the G20 or investment banks they are more frequently state apparatusessuch as the police or the state itself in the form of the White House or membersof Congress Rather than acting on behalf of citizens these institutions are depictedas systems of oppression and are the perpetrators of injustice

1Hoodrsquos texts like many commercial brands constitute the artist-celebrity andthe imagined audience as heroes But the heroic action of commercial brands is essen-tially consumption whereas 1Hoodrsquos narrative provides a view of heroic action morefundamentally rooted in ideas of citizenship The audience-heroes male and femalecome from a diverse range of ethnicities and are constituted as having literacy withthe constitution economic policies and systems of oppression In response theyspeak courageously and articulately about the nature of the injustices that they wit-ness and experience Finally they are able to act in collective protest and endure vio-lent repression in the service of their cause

X and to a lesser extent Paradise Gray are heroes in 1Hoodrsquos narratives how-ever 1Hood Mediarsquos brand narrative relies on Xrsquos history as a driving component toa limited extent This may be partially due to the fact that the complex interplaybetween 1Hoodrsquos history as an organisational coalition and the artistactivist careersof both X and Gray do not lend themselves to a quickly relatable heroic lsquobackstoryrsquoAdditionally the lifestyle of X or Gray is almost never a topic of 1Hoodrsquos produc-tions Rather than being the primary vehicle for social change Xrsquos role in this narra-tive fluctuates between narrator journalist and lsquoprophet of ragersquo as he addressesspecific events and constructs them as injustices

1Hoodrsquos narrative also struggles with its own contradictions Their appealsstraddle the mixed blessings that result from the political and promotional strategyof responding to high profile and controversial incidents or events The overarchingnarrative of 1Hoodrsquos overall body of work positions citizens in a proactive ongoingparticipation in democratic practices through the naming and challenging of systemsof oppression The sub-narratives of individual pieces of media that are related tospecific initiatives or campaigns may carry the unintended message that the primarypolitical energy of citizens should be geared toward reacting to specific instances ofinjustice as a corrective measure to systems that are fundamentally sound This risksoverly personalising the lsquocharactersrsquo especially victims and villains The narrativelogic of individual stories can therefore take over from a more historical or institu-tional understanding of social injustice

The lyrics in songs such as lsquoOccupy (We the 99)rsquo include references to the con-stitution or patriotic rhetoric that appears to aim at two goals This rhetoric illus-trates the failure of US domestic law enforcement and economic policies to liveup to the ideals that are espoused by its politicians and cherished by many citizensCiting violations or unequal enforcement of civil rights also carries the potentialbenefit of attracting the support of audiences who are sympathetic to patrioticviews while also offering evidence of deeply embedded structural injustice Thistype of appeal has often been used in populist movements to delegitimise thestate and inspire protest by highlighting a pattern of hypocrisy in the rhetoric orapplication of laws

Needless to say Jasiri X is far from the first hip-hop artist to take up issues ofsocial justice Since its beginnings in the early 1970s hip-hop has produced a varietyof socially conscious artists and songs One distinctive element of 1Hoodrsquos presentationis the specificity of their rhetorical appeal Jasiri X speaks to locally and personally spe-cific instances of current injustices More widely distributed political hip-hop songssuch as Public Enemyrsquos lsquoFight the Powerrsquo (Ridenhour 1989) or Lupe FiascorsquoslsquoWords I Never Saidrsquo (Jaco 2011) take on big social issues such as racism or the waron terror offering ideas and broadly familiar cultural reference points Songs suchas 1Hoodrsquos lsquoJordan Milesrsquo lsquoEnough is Enoughrsquo lsquoTroy Davisrsquo or lsquoThree Little Girlsrsquo

(Jasiri X 2011e) critique the injustice of police brutality and the extrajudicial killings ofAfrican Americans but they do so through close readings of specific and ongoingcases of particular situations

References

Akuno K 2012 lsquoReport on the extrajudicial killing of 120 black peoplersquo 1 Januaryndash30 June Mxgmorg httpsmxgmorgwp-contentuploads20120707_24_Report_all_rev_protectedpdf

Alim HS 2006 Roc the mic right The language of hip-hop culture (New York Routledge)Ards A 2004 lsquoOrganizing the hip-hop generationrsquo in Thatrsquos the Joint The Hip-Hop Studies Reader ed

MA Neal and M Forman (New York Psychology Press) pp 311ndash24Burke K 1969 A Rhetoric of Motives (Berkeley CA University of California Press)Bynoe Y 2004 Stand and Deliver Political Activism Leadership and Hip Hop Culture (New York Soft Skull

Press)Chang J 2007 Canrsquot Stop Wonrsquot Stop A History of the Hip-hop Generation (New York St Martinrsquos Press)Charity J Diaz A and Drake D 2014 lsquoA history of rap songs protesting police brutalityrsquo Complexcom 8

August httpwwwcomplexcommusic201408rap-songs-police-brutality (accessed 26 December 2014)Charland M 1987 lsquoConstitutive rhetoric the case of the Peuple Quebecoisrsquo Quarterly Journal of Speech 732

pp 133ndash50Tamraz C 2009 Warren Buffett Opens 4th Annual Lydian Roundtable and Launches New Payments Industry

Portal PYMNTScom Businesswire San Francisco CA httpwwwbusinesswirecomnewshome20091020006297enVW4s4GRViko

Fairclough N 2003 Analysing Discourse Textual Analysis for Social Research (London Psychology Press)Forman M 2002 The Hood Comes First Race Space and Place in Rap and Hip-hop (Middletown CT Wesleyan

University Press)Gilroy P 1992 lsquoItrsquos a family affairrsquo in Black Popular Culture ed G Dent (Seattle Bay Press) pp 303ndash16Hamilton JF 2014 lsquoHistorical forms of user productionrsquo Media Culture amp Society 364 491ndash507Hasan A 2014 lsquoHip-hop gives back the top twenty philanthropic hip-hop artistsrsquo Hiphopmywaycom 27

November httpwwwhiphopmywaycomhip-hop-gives-back-the-top-philanthropic-hip-hop-artists(accessed 30 April 2015)

Huffington Post 2011 lsquoOccupy Wall Street Sergeant Shamar Thomas yells at NYPD officers after TimesSquare protestrsquo (video) Huffington Post 17 October httpwwwhuffingtonpostcom20111017occupy-wall-street-sergea_n_1015902html (accessed 10 May 2013)

Jaco W Hafermann H and Grant A 2011 lsquoWords I Never Saidrsquo (Los Angeles CA Atlantic RecordingCorporation)

Jasiri X 2007 lsquoFree the Jena 6rsquo httpwwwyoutubecomwatchv=zZGzobVnYZAampfeature=youtube_gdata_playerJasiri X 2008 lsquoEnough is enough (Jasiri X dedication to Sean Bell)rsquo httpwwwyoutubecomwatch

v=rCC3VineWP4ampfeature=youtube_gdata_playerJasiri X 2011a lsquoHip-hop artist Jasiri X defends Occupy Movement and freedom of speechrsquo httpwwwyou-

tubecomwatchv=o4v_v16MAn8ampfeature=youtube_gdata_playerJasiri X 2011b lsquoI am Troy Davis (TROY)rsquo httpwwwyoutubecomwatchv=9WZUhITejfIampfeature=

youtube_gdata_playerJasiri X 2011c lsquoJordan Milesrsquo httpwwwyoutubecomwatchv=ONPo-wslB40ampfeature=youtube_gdata_

playerJasiri X 2011d lsquoOccupy (We the 99)rsquo httpwwwyoutubecomwatchv=Oxv9kIFJh5Yampfeature=youtube_

gdata_playerJasiri X 2011e lsquoThree little girlsrsquo httpswwwyoutubecomwatchv=kgcVMvl-k7AJasiri X 2012 lsquoTrayvonrsquo httpswwwyoutubecomwatchv=PJNi2eacjMsKitwana B 2002 The Hip Hop Generation Young Blacks and the Crisis in African American Culture (New York

Basic Books)Kuumlcklich J 2005 lsquoPrecarious playbour modders and the digital games industryrsquo Fibreculture 5 FJC-025Lord R 2013 lsquoNew civil trial date set in Jordan Milesrsquo case against Pittsburgh policersquo httpwwwpost-gazette

comstorieslocalneighborhoods-citynew-civil-trial-date-set-in-jordan-miles-case-against-pittsburgh-police-669871 (accessed 3 May 2013)

Miller M 2004 Raprsquos dirty south From subculture to pop culture Journal of Popular Music Studies 16(2)175ndash212

News One 2011 lsquo10 great moments in hip-hop philanthropyrsquo newsonecom httpnewsonecom200038510-great-moments-in-hip-hop-philanthropy (accessed 20 May 2013)

One Hood Media 2013 Game Changers The One Hood Media Academy httpwwwyoutubecomwatchv=cP9j58O0IjYampfeature=youtube_gdata_player

Richardson C and Skott-Myhre HA 2012 Habitus of the Hood (Chicago IL Intellect Books)Ridenhour C 1989 Fight the Power (New York Def Jam Recordings)

Street J 2013 Music and Politics (Cambridge Wiley)Tucker ML 2005 lsquoWhere politics and hip hop collidersquo AlterNetorg httpwwwalternetorgstory28118

where_politics_and_hip_hop_collideVeal M 2007 Dub Soundscapes and Shattered Songs in Jamaican Reggae (Middletown CT Wesleyan University

Press)Watkins SC 2005 Hip Hop Matters Politics Pop Culture and the Struggle for the Soul of a Movement (New York

Beacon Press)West C 1999 lsquoThe moral obligations of living in a democratic societyrsquo in The Good Citizen ed D Batstone and

E Mendieta (New York Routledge) pp 5ndash12White J B 1973 The Legal Imagination Studies in the nature of legal thought and expression Little Brown

and CompanyWhite J A 2013 Rhyminrsquoand Stealinrsquo Musical Borrowing in Hip-hop University of Michigan Press

Discography

Big Boi lsquoDirty Southrsquo Cool Breeze LaFace Records 1996B McDaniel and J Simmons lsquoPaul Reverersquo Def Jam Recordings 1986Success-N-Effect lsquoFuck 1 Timersquo Drive By Of Uh Revolutionist UmojaWrap Records 1992

lsquoWe demand justice We just getting started the constitutive rhetoric of 1Hood Medias hip-hop activism

Key concepts

1Hoods background

1Hoods central narrative

Now the whole community wants justice victims and the audience in 1Hood Medias texts

We came to crash your party heroic action in 1Hood Medias texts

Conclusion

References

Discography

lsquoWe demand justice We justgetting startedrsquo the constitutiverhetoric of 1Hood Mediarsquoship-hop activism

CH EN J E RA I KUMANY I KADepartment of Communication Studies Clemson University 401 Strode Tower Clemson South Carolina 29634USA

E-mail chenjeraikumanyikagmailcom

AbstractThe hip-hop activism of Pittsburghrsquos 1Hood Media has been a key element of the success of severalcontemporary social justice campaigns such as the 2010 Justice For Jordan Miles police brutalitycase After offering some background on 1Hood Media and a discussion of constitutive rhetoricthis study offers a close reading of 1Hoodrsquos rhetorical appeal focusing on the ways in which the audi-ence is constituted as both collective and individual subjects whose participation in the narrative isessential to its closure 1Hood Mediarsquos texts focus on a diverse range of victims of injustice who sufferat the hands of police brutality and murder and other forms of systemic oppression The villains inthese narratives are institutional forces such as racist police forces or corrupt Wall Street banks Byfocusing on music lyrical and visual features of 1Hoodrsquos cultural products this study contributes tostudies of popular music hip-hop rhetoric and cultural politics

Once the federal government decided not to investigate then they [the family of Jordan Miles]was like lsquoyarsquoll do yarsquoll thingrsquo So thatrsquos when we do the video and put Zappalarsquos name on thereWe shut down Zappalarsquos phone line We shut Zappalarsquos phone line down when we put thevideo out literally

(Jasiri X personal communication 2012)

In the epigraph above hip-hop artistactivist Jasiri X is referring to his 2011 musicvideo lsquoJordan Milesrsquowhich provides a narrative of a 2010 police brutality case The dra-matic video ends by urging the audience to call Pittsburgh District Attorney StephenA Zappala with the following text lsquoCall Stephen A Zappala Allegheny CountyDistrict Attorney 4123504400 Demand he press charges on the three officers who bru-tally beat Jordan Milesrsquo (Jasiri X 2011c) The incident occurred nearly three years earl-ier and the first civil trial resulted in a hung jury on accusations that the police ndashPittsburgh police officers Saldutte Sisak and Ewing ndash beat and falsely arrested MrMiles This decision sparked three years of cultural and artistic protest and legal man-oeuvres Central to these efforts was a grassroots media production organisation called1Hood Media whose two-man team consisted of Jasiri X and Paradise Gray

In this respect the beginning of the second civil trial in the case of 11 March2014 was an important mini-victory for the hip-hop fuelled Justice for Jordan

Popular Music (2015) Volume 343 copy Cambridge University Press 2015 pp 432ndash451

doi101017S0261143015000355

Key concepts

Conclusion

References

Discography