“We Are Gone”: “Black Steel” and the Technologies of Presence and Absence

摘要

Although rap music grew out of live performance and communal interactions, it has steadily shifted toward studio-based production, which favors technological mediation over interpersonal dynamics. The critical response to this shift has been divided, with scholars disagreeing over the ways in which technology redefines human presence or affects collective agency. Using a close analysis of Public Enemy's track “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos” to navigate these theoretical approaches, I hope to demonstrate the ways in which technology, particularly as seen through sampling and voice distortion, allows rappers to complicate notions of presence, absence, and subjective agency—and in doing so, to complicate our own theoretical approaches to the genre.View full textDownload full textRelated var addthis_config = { ui_cobrand: "Taylor & Francis Online", services_compact: "citeulike,netvibes,twitter,technorati,delicious,linkedin,facebook,stumbleupon,digg,google,more", pubid: "ra-4dff56cd6bb1830b" }; Add to shortlist Link Permalink http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15405701003676089