Nairobi Hip Hop Flow: Diasporic Blackness and Embodied Performance in the Underground

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Nairobi Hip Hop Flow combines ethnographic methods, political history, and music and performance analysis to illustrate the richness of hip hop's embodied performance practices. RaShelle R. Peck examines how hip hop artists in Nairobi's underground rap culture engage with political seriousness in lyrics and sound by fostering a creative playfulness using bodily movement. This unprecedented study shows how Nairobi artists circulate diasporic blackness while at the same time indigenizing hip hop music to interrogate Kenya’s sociopolitical landscape.