Black and Brown Get Down: Cultural Politics, Chicano Music, and Hip Hop in Racialized Los Angeles

Abstract

Shows that, by the late 1940s, African Americans and Mexican Americans were engaged in a culture war over the sanctioned sounds and official values of Los Angeles, as their rhythymic dance music and vibrant street styles became popular among white youths, and, hence, subversive of the segregationist status quo. The essay sketches the innovative musical mestizaje particular to this city, mapping the cross-cultural currents flowing across its geography. The black-brown connection that fuelled earlier upstart genres was altered by the black power and Chicano movements. Between the 1965 Watts riot and the 1992 uprising, the African American community was devastated by deindustrialization, crack cocaine, and the incarceration of its young men. Out of the 1980s socio-economic crisis burst West Coast gangsta rap, with its distinctive critique of capitalism and its cool cholo clothing, tattoos, and low riders. Meanwhile, Chicano rappers portrayed the gang subculture's vida loca while producing an urban dystopic poetics that theorized globalization and its disastrous impact on postindustrial barrios.