Miller (2004), "Rap's Dirty South: From Subculture to Pop Culture"

Miller (2004) argues that Southern rap culture foregrounds current racial issues in the South. This allows Southern rappers to challenge these issues in a way that build a specific community for those living in the Southern states.

Though rap has traditionally been associated with urban locations, rappers in the "dirty South" take pride in narratives of the rural South. This allows hip hop rhetoric to be transported to the South in a way that speaks directly to Southern culture.

This movement forged common ground among rappers who identify with the "dirty South." Miller (2004) argues that this created a coalition community of rappers and consumers who acknowledge and rebel against Southern racism.

Baldwin (1999), "Black Empires, White Desires: The Spatial Politics of Identity in the Age of Hip Hop"

Baldwin (1999) argues that White America's outrage over hip hop's immorality is really about Black Americans taking pleasure in commodity. Baldwin (1999) sees this as a historical changing of the guard the represents a renegotiation of White cultural power. While White suburbia is defined by consumer culture, Baldwin (1999) argues that White Americans are not comfortable with Black Americans taking the same kind of pleasure in consumerism. Hip hop's conspicuous consumption can be read as a threat of Black Americans taking over White Americans' roles as consumers.

Gabbard (2007), "White Face, Black Noise: Miles Davis and the Soundtrack

1. Soundtrack music has to be ignored to be effective. When Black musicians contribute soundtrack music, their role as a creator is ignored, as the work is in service only to the White film producers and characters.

Gabbard (2007) argues that soundtrack music must be ignored to be effective. Audience awareness of the musical bedding breaks the cinematic illusion. This becomes problematic when one considers the White music industry’s historical cooptation of Black music for its own profit, since using Black cultural forms to enhance all-White film products hides Black musicians from view, exploiting them for the purposes of the White film industry. 

2. Gabbard (2007) uses Miles Davis' contribution to the Pleasantville soundtrack to illustrate his point. Though Davis' music plays an integral role in the characters' transformation, the politics of Whiteness in the film are never interrogated. Davis' songs function only in service of the White characters.

Gabbard's most compelling example involves the snippets of Miles Davis' work that frame characters' emotional and physical awareness in Pleasantville. As the characters learn more about their world, they change from black and white into color, an effect that is enhanced by Davis' music. However, the viewer is not encouraged to acknowledge the jazz bedding: "[films like this] deny personhood to African Americans and keep them off screen at the same time that the films use black music to give depth and romance to their white characters" (275). In short, Davis' cultural work is shelved as a discrete art form, and rechanneled in service of White characters and filmmakers.

McRobbie (1980), "Settling Accounts with Subcultures: A Feminist Critique"

Hebdige's (1979) Suculture has been widely critiqued, but perhaps the most famous of these is McRobbie's (1980) feminist critique. As McRobbie (1980) aptly argues, the masculinization of “youth” is exacerbated by the academy’s refusal to acknowledge gender’s cultural role. Style itself is invisibly built on women’s backs, McRobbie (1980) notes, and by continuing to erase the ways in which the female body is objectified and acted upon in the name of style, cultural studies loses much political ground. McRobbie’s (1980) critique suggests a bridging of the public and private spheres in subcultural research, arguing that cultural studies gains complexity and depth by expanding its thrust to “questions of style and sexual politics” (p. 78).

She levels two main charges at Hebdige (1979).

1. Hebdige (1979) ignores the fact that his subcultures are the prerogative of men.

McRobbie (1980) argues that the subcultural moves Hebdige describes are primarily based upon the styles of the men in the group. Many of the groups he studies are exclusively led by men.

2. McRobbie (1980) takes Hebdige (1979) to task for ignoring the role women play in subcultures.

By ignoring women's roles in subcultures, Hebdige (1979) ignores the fact that subculture's male fantasy and expression is made possible by women who take up the extra burdens as wives and mothers.

Women are also often used as objects in the development of subcultural style.  Women are present in the visibility of style, but generally only as accessories to the men's presentations.

Hebdige (1979) "Style as Homology and Signifying Practice"

Hebdige (1979) argues that a concept of polysemic, postmodern semiotics should be integrated into subcultural studies. Punk swastikas, for example, do not necessary refer to Nazism; rather, the symbol is borrowed simply for its ability to shock and revolt a culture from which punks aim to be differentiated. If we understand the signifying elements of style as poached from a broader cultural context, Hebdige (1979) argues, then the function of style is revealed as a way of distancing subcultural members from the mass society: “although the punks referred continually to the realities of school, work, family, and class, these references. . . were passed through the fractured circuitry of punk style and re-presented as ‘noise,’ disturbance, entropy” (p. 61).

By borrowing from the broader culture, subcultures demonstrate both a distance from the masses and a communal identity.

Dawkins (2010), "Close to the Edge: The Representational Tactics of Eminem"

Dawkins (2010) uses de Certeau to examine the dichotomy between Eminem and the black hip hop tradition, arguing that Eminem uses three strategies to bounce between his identity as white outsider and “black” insider. Dawkins’ (2010) primary purpose in the article is to use Eminem as a case study for understanding transracial politics in the popular culture arena. 

1. Eminem redraws the boundary of the Other as women, LGBT people, and rich white men

First, she argues, Eminem marginalizes women, homosexuals, and certain classes of white men in order to redraw the same/Other boundary. By exaggerating the Othered status of these groups, Eminem solidifies his position at the top of the hierarchy through his own hip hop sameness. 

2. Eminem marks himself as unique. He uses this uniqueness to position himself as unique within the Black community in which he wishes to perform.

Second, in carving out this borderland space for his hip hop sameness, Eminem's marketability relies on his uniqueness. This uniqueness becomes a rhetoric of authenticity, as he asserts the existence of a “real Slim Shady” thereby denigrating other white rappers (and Marshall Mathers) as imposters. 

3. Eminem reproduces his position as within the Black community in a variety of platforms. This reinforces the role he has carved for himself.

Third, Dawkins (2010) argues that Eminem disguises the manufacturing of his own sameness by combining a variety of cultural materials and styles into a hip hop brand. He sells his authenticity by endlessly reproducing it. 

McLeod (1999), "Authenticity Within Hip-Hop and Other Cultures Threatened with Assimilation"

McLeod (1999) traces authenticity discourses that surround hip hop performers by using a method similar to content analysis. The center of his argument is the phrase “keeping it real,” which he traces to a variety of sources including interviews, magazine coverage, and recordings. 

1. For McLeod (1999), the increasing market for hip hop in white suburban America threatens to colonize the form’s black cultural roots. Using an anthropological framework, he argues that the historical response to the threat of assimilation has been a vocal reaffirmation of the community, in this case, translating to the spatial politics of “the street,” “the underground,” and the pre-commercial “Old-School” style. 

2. The strength of McLeod’s (1999) piece lies in its thorough analysis of discourses; where many a rock essay references authenticity as though it were above explanation, McLeod (1999) neatly maps the forms and uses of the concept, leaving a methodological trail behind him.