Illinois State University ISU ReD: Research and eData Theses and Dissertations 3-2-2017 On My Grind: Freestyle Rap Practices in Experimental Creative Writing and Composition Pedagogy Evan Nave Illinois State University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/etd Part of the African American Studies Commons, Creative Writing Commons, Curriculum and Instruction Commons, and the Educational Methods Commons Recommended Citation Nave, Evan, "On My Grind: Freestyle Rap Practices in Experimental Creative Writing and Composition Pedagogy" (2017). Theses and Dissertations. 697. https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/etd/697 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ISU ReD: Research and eData. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ISU ReD: Research and eData. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ON MY GRIND: FREESTYLE RAP PRACTICES IN EXPERIMENTAL CREATIVE WRITING AND COMPOSITION PEDAGOGY Evan Nave 312 Pages My work is always necessarily two-headed. Double-voiced. Call-and-response at once. Paranoid self-talk as dichotomous monologue to move the crowd. Part of this has to do with the deep cuts and scratches in my mind. Recorded and remixed across DNA double helixes. Structurally split. Generationally divided. A style and family history built on breaking down. Evidence of how ill I am. And then there’s the matter of skin. The material concerns of cultural cross-fertilization. Itching to plant seeds where the grass is always greener. Color collaborations and appropriations. Writing white/out with black art ink. Distinctions dangerously hidden behind backbeats or shamelessly displayed front and center for familiar-feeling consumption. Sell-out concerns always whispering or shouting further dissonance. Hip-hop became home when it welcomed all the voices in my head. And anyone who knows me knows how hard it can be for me to leave the house. White-flight phobias in reverse. Pale-faced. Afraid I’ll look like I’ve seen a ghost. Hip-hop pushed me to split. Like MF DOOM as hip-hop “Supervillain,” part hero, part madman, I come at writing and teaching writing ruptured. With desires to both build and destroy. Empower and self- destruct. Anything inching towards complete cohesion a saving grace and the mark of the beast. Best to keep it real/reel. Fragmentation always feeling painfully honest. So On My Grind is broken down into chapters of fragments designed to blur. “Hip-Hop Alone” written as both MC and alienated imposter. “Ain’t Shit: Freewriting to Freestyling” written as both instructor-theorist and disillusioned hip-hop disciple. “Bootleg Ghetto Pass Revoked” functioning as both self-conscious Blaxploitation flick and freestyle praxis. Each of the chapters doing creative and critical work, as much a nod to my deep-seated belief in the power of edutainment as a conscious recognition that any hip-hop text is always doing at least a few things at once. I’m most interested in the mess that happens when the chapters and fragments collide. The collage-effects made possible by the friction of the faulty/fault line design. Where the teacher-narrator of “Ain’t Shit” buys psychiatric dope on the corner in “Bootleg Ghetto Pass Revoked,” to numb the pain of the sick critic in “Hip-Hop Alone.” The voices in the chapters, while not necessarily unified, certainly speak the same language. They talk shit to each other. Signify to spit the truth through lies. All of it freestyled to the offbeat rhythms in my head. A suspicious half-trust in “first thought best thought” practices to the beat. Where editing meant freestyling over the original freestyles until they sounded right. Until they flowed. I flowed until I reached a flow state untouched by my illness. My mental state spit mysterious and spiritual. Ritualistic grinding through “ain’t shit” states of mind with flow-faith. On My Grind preaches belief and doubt. Devotion and heresy. Holding onto hope and completely losing it. KEYWORDS: Hip-hop studies, Freestyle rap, Freewriting ON MY GRIND: FREESTYLE RAP PRACTICES IN EXPERIMENTAL CREATIVE WRITING AND COMPOSITION PEDAGOGY EVAN NAVE A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of English ILLINOIS STATE UNIVERSITY 2017 © 2017 Evan Nave ON MY GRIND: FREESTYLE RAP PRACTICES IN EXPERIMENTAL CREATIVE WRITING AND COMPOSITION PEDAGOGY EVAN NAVE COMMITTEE MEMBERS: Ricardo Cortez Cruz, Chair Julie Cheville Bob Broad ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I’ll probably never have a “shout outs” section in the liner notes of the inside cover of a rap album, so this will have to do. First things first: I couldn’t have pushed through, gotten over, or kept my head together without the endless support and encouragement of Professor Ricardo Cortez Cruz. If I’m the rapper, he’s the DJ. Always bringing the noise and coaxing the right amount of wreck out of me. Trust: You’d never hear from me without him. I’d also like to express my gratitude to Dr. Julie Cheville for teaching me what it means to teach writing thoughtfully, mindfully. With my head and heart in the right places. Her patience, kindness, and generosity allowed me to write this dissertation in my own time, in my own voice. She helped me sit with this project even when I didn’t know what I stood for and, as a result, now I know where I stand. Although we’ve only started working together somewhat recently, Dr. Bob Broad’s expertise in expressivism and writing assessment challenged me to put my pedagogical money where my mouth is with this project. Put up or shut up, with an emphasis on value. What all this writing and teaching means when the chips are down. I want to thank him for buying into my vision for this dissertation and seeing it through to the end. There were many members of the Illinois State University community who supported me, held me down, while I worked through the PhD program. I specifically want to thank Dr. Steve Halle and Tara Reeser for helping me stay focused on what mattered most—bettering myself and doing work I believe in. I’m a better/badder writer, teacher, and person for knowing them. Finally, I want to thank my best friends, Robert Harrison and Charish Halliburton, and my partner, Alyssa Bralower, for being there for me, having my back, as I wrote this dissertation. i They were always all ears when I needed to rap about my writing, and their unwavering belief in me and my work consistently reminded me why I do all this. Much love. E.N. ii CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS i CONTENTS iii CHAPTER I: HIP-HOP ALONE 1 CHAPTER II: BOOTLEG GHETTO PASS REVOKED 69 CHAPTER III: AIN'T SHIT: FREEWRITING TO FREESTYLING 246 REFERENCES 306 iii CHAPTER I: HIP-HOP ALONE Hip-Hop Written – Pt. 2 dream hampton doesn’t remember the specific moment she became a hip-hop writer. She never consciously planned on blending her passions for writing and hip-hop, she says—“It just sort of happened” (Rausch 85). I remember the day I became a hip-hop writer because I still have the calendar on a bookshelf, stuck between Mumia Abu-Jamal’s Live from Death Row and a Merriam-Webster’s Rhyming Dictionary. I became a hip-hop writer on the calendar. Literally. I transcribed Sister Souljah’s The Coldest Winter Ever word-for-word in the date boxes from December 22 to March 20. To get through the cold itself where I lived. Something cold that happens in my mind when it snows. When I turn cold-blooded on myself and start hearing Jay- Z’s “D’Evils” like a palm reading. Frostbit. I had to take a pen into my palm like divinely inspired scriptures. I had to write 8 hours a day, obsessively, to be prolific like Tupac Shakur in the studio. Chapter after chapter like tracks. Put in work. Pay my dues. Do penance. And I had to write so small to make the sentences fit that the words were unreadable. My hands shook and ached from the tedium built into my practice. But I was drawn to the precision and routine. My mind filled with escape routes. My mind filled with rap-styled first family Mafiosos and the women who love to love them. I thought about buying a gun and ending every day’s work with a bullet. I thought about buying a gun and using it as a paperweight, so the work wouldn’t blow me away. I was drawn to the punctual violence. I could put my finger on it. The characters spoke in subliminal messages. All of them confirmed my authenticity. They included personal anecdotes in paratext. I used a pill bottle full of anti-depressants as a paperweight instead. Its dosage instructions included personal anecdotes as paratext. I wrote until the work was finished and I 1 was a hip-hop writer for real. I closed the windows until I was finished and winter was over and woke up on the first day of spring a hip-hop writer with a body of work to prove it. 2 But Both To me, hip-hop is the tension between trash and talent. What’s overlooked and left behind and what’s worth holding onto. A “started-from-the-bottom-now-we-here” ethos where “the bottom” and “here” could be indistinguishable outside the hip-hopper’s head. The shifting signifiers situated loosely between performance and belief. Hip-hop requiring a certain religious faith in the unknown. Speaking/writing/dancing/spinning something bigger than oneself into existence to imagine something bigger than oneself is possible, period.