Presenter: Kenneth Mullins
Mentors: Priscilla Ovalle, Cinema Studies; Peter Alilunas, Journalism
Oral Presentation
Majors: Cinema Studies and Journalism
For many rappers, hip-hop gives them an outlet to express their masculinity, using a combination of braggadocio, misogyny, and violence to demonstrate their “hardness.” For others, hip-hop is an outlet for teaching, a way for them to speak out against the culture of violence that they have chosen to reject. The goal of this project is to explore how black masculinity is defined and depicted by hip-hop music, particularly in the creation and rejection of the “gangsta” stereotype; in a time when racial politics are at the forefront of the national discussion, understanding how these stereotypes are created and how they operate is more important than ever. By analyzing the film and music career of rapper Ice Cube, we can see how he has simultaneously contributed to and criticized this stereotypical depiction of black masculinity. As both a film and music star, Ice Cube provides a rich body of work to analyze this form of black racial identity. Through a close reading of his film appearances in Boyz n the Hood (1991) and Friday (1995), as well as his 1993 solo album The Predator, we can see how Ice Cube negotiated the “gangsta” stereotype, subverting it in a way that made his transition from hardcore gangster rapper to children’s film star seem natural.