[Air-L] CFP: Special Issue of Global Hip Hop Studies: Hip Hop and the Internet

[Raquel Campos]

 *With apologies for cross postings*

*Special Issue of Global Hip Hop Studies
<https://www.intellectbooks.com/global-hip-hop-studies>: ‘It’s Where You’re
@: Hip Hop and the Internet’*
*Guest Editors: *Raquel Campos (University of Cambridge) and Steven Gamble
(University College Cork)
*Abstract Deadline*: 12 July 2021


Internet technologies have become intertwined with almost every aspect of
daily Western life, as demonstrated by the mass online migration of work,
leisure and cultural activity during the COVID-19 pandemic. Three decades
earlier, the Rakim lyric emphasizing ‘where you’re at’ coincided with the
development of the first modern web browser (circa 1990). Now, with the
emergence of virtual ciphers, online beat battles and hip hop chat rooms,
where we are all @ is online.
This special issue of GHHS is targeted at exploring the relationship
between hip hop and the internet, offering new perspectives on digital
communication technologies and their impact on hip hop culture, as well as
analysing the impact of hip hop culture on global online life, especially
in non-Western contexts. We are particularly interested in research that
reflects on the political, economic and social dynamics of hip hop culture
as they intersect with internet technologies.
With examples spanning from DatPiff to TikTok, internet technologies have
considerably altered the development and production of hip hop culture,
creating new spaces and forms of mediation. Although digital technology and
hip hop are no strangers to one another, elements of hip hop culture –
especially from the global North – have appeared at the forefront of
digital popular culture (for instance Drake’s ‘Hotline Bling’ meme template
or the viral power of Lizzo’s flute-twerking). Hip hop accounted for more
than one in every three pieces of music played across on-demand streaming
services, according to a 2018 Nielsen Music report. Creative communities
inhabit online platforms from Twitch to Discord. Rap critics on YouTube and
Genius rake in millions of views. Evidently, there is a vast online
community engaging with hip hop in various forms.
However, the online public sphere also disrupts many of the art form’s
analogue foundations – vinyl, block/house parties and spray paint –
unsettling and reconfiguring critical aspects of locality, authenticity and
identity through digital assemblages of mediation, corporatization and
commercialization. How are notions and relationships of locality,
visibility and anonymity in hip hop scenes altered by online tools? How do
digital avatars act and become understood as creative participants and how
are they linked to offline practices in the genre’s production of scenes?
How does all of this operate in the shadows – or even the spotlight – of
corporate big-data mining and oligopolization? We  encourage researchers to
reflect both on the opportunities and challenges of hip hop in online
spaces.

Disciplinary focus may include, but is not limited to hip hop studies,
internet studies, popular music studies, digital anthropology, digital
sociology, communication studies,
media studies, cultural studies, fan studies, human-computer interaction,
social computing, education and psychology.

Submissions may consider, but are not limited to, any of the following
topics:
• the history of hip hop and its relationship with the development of
internet technologies;
• hip hop and digital platforms, communication, networks and internet
cultures;
• digital information economies, platform capitalism and the
commercialization of creative practices;
• hip hop heads under surveillance: security and privacy of online actors;
criminalization of the scene and digital technologies
• boundaries to hip hop knowledge (the ‘fifth element’): issues of internet
access and global connectivity and critiques and celebrations of
digitalization and democratization;
• gender, sexuality and queerness in online hip hop spaces;
• individual and communal identities, authenticity and realness in online
fora;
• hip hop promotion and marketing, artist opportunities, profiles, avatars
and online personas;
• collectivities: online hip hop cultures, communities and virtual scenes;
• hip hop generations, digital ‘natives’ and late adopters;
• internet memes, virality and social media sharing of hip hop’s digital
artefacts;
• online-native music genres, e.g. ‘Soundcloud rap’, ‘trap metal’ and
neighbouring areas of digital creativity;
• virtual concerts, video games and live hip hop online; and
• smartphone and mobile musicking and the futures of hip hop production and
consumption technologies.

GHHS invites the following types of submission:
• articles (6,000–8,000 words maximum not including bibliography);
• interviews with artists, industry personnel and content creators
(2,000–4,000 words);
• reviews (books, digital media, events) (1,000–2,000 words);
• ‘Dive-in-the-Archive’ (web-oriented archival pieces) (1,000–4,000 words);
and
• ‘Show and Prove’ (400–2,000 words and at least one high-res image for the
issue’s cover).

*Deadlines*
Abstracts: 12 July 2021
Full articles: 22 October 2021

Please direct all queries to the Guest Editors at
hiphopandtheinternet at gmail.com
To be considered for this Special Issue, please submit the following via
this GoogleForm <https://forms.gle/NvWseKbk2dHdXdcZ7> by 12 July 2021:
• an abstract of 150–250 words;
• author information; and
• a brief bio of no more than 150 words.
If your abstract is accepted, we will expect to receive the full submission
uploaded via Intellect’s online submission portal by 22 October 2021.
For a journal-specific style guide, please visit Intellect’s website
<https://www.intellectbooks.com/global-hip-hop-studies>.

*The Journal*
Global Hip Hop Studies (GHHS)
<https://www.intellectbooks.com/global-hip-hop-studies> is a peer-reviewed,
rigorous and community responsive academic journal that publishes research
on contemporary as well as historical issues and debates surrounding hip
hop music and culture around the world.
*Coordinating Editors*
Adam Haupt, University of Cape Town
J. Griffith Rollefson, University College Cork




*Dr Raquel Campos AFHEA (She/Her)*
*Digital Ethnomusicologist*
*Andrew Goodwin Memorial Prize 2019 Winner*