Contemporary Sorrow Songs: Traces of Mourning, Lament, and Vulnerability in Hip Hop

Abstract

In this article, I use Du Bois’s reading of the sorrow songs and adopt the trope of sorrow to trace themes of loss, suffering, and hope within hip-hop music and culture. I argue that we can find two prominent forms of mourning within hip hop—one in response to race-inflected violence and injustice and another in response to the so called death of authentic hip hop. In the concluding part of this essay, I suggest ways to transform nostalgia for the golden age into a relationship to the past that is creative and generative.