Chronicling Stankonia, Regina Bradley
Chronicling Stankonia, Regina Bradley
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Chronicling Stankonia
The Rise of the Hip-Hop South

Author: Regina Bradley

Narrator: Regina N. Bradley

Unabridged: 4 hr 22 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/15/2022


Synopsis

This vibrant book pulses with the beats of a new American South, probing the ways music, literature, and film have remixed southern identities for a post–civil rights generation. For scholar and critic Regina N. Bradley, Outkast’s work is the touchstone, a blend of funk, gospel, and hip-hop developed in conjunction with the work of other culture creators—including T.I., Kiese Laymon, and Jesmyn Ward. This work, Bradley argues, helps define new cultural possibilities for black southerners who came of age in the 1980s and 1990s and have used hip-hop culture to buffer themselves from the historical narratives and expectations of the civil rights era. André 3000, Big Boi, and a wider community of creators emerge as founding theoreticians of the hip-hop South, framing a larger question of how the region fits into not only hip-hop culture but also contemporary American society as a whole.

Chronicling Stankonia reflects the ways that culture, race, and southernness intersect in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Although part of southern hip-hop culture remains attached to the past, Bradley demonstrates how younger southerners use the music to embrace the possibility of multiple Souths, multiple narratives, and multiple points of entry to contemporary southern black identity.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Raymond on July 26, 2023

Chronicling Stankonia is about how Southern hip-hop artists impacted the broader music culture as well as pop culture based on or referencing the South. Regina Bradley highlights OutKast as one of the key groups that made Southern hip-hop popular and were also "founding theoreticians of the hip-hop......more

Goodreads review by Anthony on July 12, 2021

This is an innovative work of scholarship like none other. Examining Outkast and their music alongside African American literature makes for a rigorous, but accessible study. Regina Bradley has, with this text, established herself as the preeminent scholar on the Black Southern musical and literary......more

Goodreads review by Shawn on July 19, 2023

This one had so much potential but fell short of the assignment. The book started off well with a history of the group and an analysis (hyper-interpretation) of the lyrics. After Chapter 1, the author lost me! There was more of an opportunity to discuss OutKast, their music, and impact on Hip-Hop. A......more

Goodreads review by Petty Lisbon on March 17, 2022

(If you are familiar with the movie and text references, the book will be at least a 4 because of Regina Bradley's writing but I wasn't and I thought it would be more about Outkast and other hip hop artists in general so for me it would be around a 3.5.) I'm not that familiar with Outkast. I knew Hey......more

Goodreads review by Sheehan on April 12, 2021

I feel very blessed that my job places me in the enviable place of being known as, "someone who likes to read new stuff" Which often leads to great proposed titles and occasional new author book hand me downs. Folks who know me, get me, and this book was a kickdown from a friend who knows I geek out......more