‘Makin’ Somethin’ Outta Little-to-Nufin’’: Racism, Revision and Rotating Records – The Hip-Hop DJ in Composition Praxis

Abstract

Prompted by a moment in the classroom in which the DJ becomes integral for the writing instructor, this article looks at how the hip-hop DJ and hip-hop DJ/Producer become the intrinsic examples for first-year college writing students to think about how they conduct revision in their writing. After a review of two seminal hip-hop books and other scholarly sources that situate the viability of hip-hop discourse in the classroom, this article frames the hip-hop DJ as critical to the progression of the hip-hop producer and uses the hip-hop DJ/Producer as the catalyst for revision by looking at the original version and remix of two classic hip-hop songs. The unique collaborative investment between the hip-hop DJ/Producer and emcee/MC in creating ‘the remix’ presents an intriguing conundrum for the ways we might envision teaching practices in composition studies. Central to this moment is the way hip-hop flips the script on racist ideologies constructed as anti-hip-hop sentiments in academic spaces and allows students to absorb the idea of revision in writing studies. Finally, interviews from three hip-hop DJ/Producers help to demonstrate how the hip-hop DJ sits at the centre of this disrupt.

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