Get Crunk! The Performative Resistance of Atlanta Hip-Hop Party Music Kevin C. Holt Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2018 ©2018 Kevin C. Holt All rights reserved ABSTRACT Get Crunk! The Performative Resistance of Atlanta Hip-Hop Party Music Kevin C. Holt This dissertation offers an aesthetic and historical overview of crunk, a hip- hop subgenre that took form in Atlanta, Georgia during the late 1990s. Get Crunk! is an ethnography that draws heavily on methodologies from African-American studies, musicological analysis, and performance studies in order to discuss crunk as a performed response to the policing of black youth in public space in the 1990s. Crunk is a subgenre of hip-hop that emanated from party circuits in the American southeast during the 1990s, characterized by the prevalence of repeating chanted phrases, harmonically sparse beats, and moderate tempi. The music is often accompanied by images that convey psychic pain, i.e. contortions of the body and face, and a moshing dance style in which participants thrash against one another in spontaneously formed epicenters while chanting along with the music. Crunk’s ascension to prominence coincided with a moment in Atlanta’s history during which inhabitants worked diligently to redefine Atlanta for various political purposes. Some hoped to recast the city as a cosmopolitan tourist destination for the approaching new millennium, while others sought to recreate the city as a beacon of Southern gentility, an articulation of the city’s mythologized pre-Civil War existence; both of these positions impacted Atlanta’s growing hip-hop community, which had the twins goals of drawing in black youth tourism and creating and marketing an easily identifiable Southern style of hip-hop for mainstream consumption; the result was crunk. This dissertation investigates the formation and function of crunk methods of composition, performance, and listening in Southern recreational spaces, the ways in which artists and audiences negotiate identities based on notions of race, gender, and region through crunk, and various manifestations of aesthetic evaluation and moral panic surrounding crunk. The argument here is that the dynamic rituals of listening and emergent performance among crunk audiences constitute a kind of catharsis and social commentary for its primarily black youth listenership; one that lies beyond the scope of lyrical analysis and, accordingly requires analysis that incorporates a conceptualization of listening as an embodied, participatory experience expressed through gesture. The first chapter begins with a historical overview of race, segregation, and the allocation of public space in Atlanta, Georgia in order to establish the social topography upon which Atlanta hip-hop was built; it ends with a social and historical overview of yeeking, Atlanta’s first distinct hip-hop party dance style and marked precursor to crunk. The second chapter delves into essentialist constructions of Southern identity and hip-hop authenticity, from which Atlanta hip- hoppers constructed novel expressions of Southern hip-hop identity through a process akin to Dick Hebdige’s theory of bricolage. Chapter three discusses the history and sociopolitical significance of Freaknik, a large Atlanta spring break event that catered specifically to students of Historically Black Colleges and Universities. At its peak, Freaknik became the focus of a moral panic, which led to increased policing of black youth in public space and ultimately the dismantling of the event due in large part to harassment; it is this moment in Atlanta’s history which gives context to the performative abandon of crunk. The fourth chapter discusses the aesthetics of crunk music and imagery, focusing on the subgenre’s embrace of Southern gangsta archetypes, timbral dissonance in compositional methodology, and crunk’s corporeal and vocal catharses illustrated by performative violent embodiment (i.e. moshing) and the centrality of screams and chants. The fifth chapter focuses on gender performativity in Southern hip-hop party spaces. The chapter begins with a discussion of gender normativity in yeeking and how insincere non-normative performances of gender are incorporated as a means of reinforcing the gender normativity; this is framed by analyses of a yeek dance move called “the sissy” and the trap era dance, the nae nae. As is argued in the latter half of this chapter, women performers in crunk engaged in the same kind of bricolage outlined in chapter two in order to transform traditionally male-centric crunk music into something specifically and performatively woman centered. Ultimately, these discussions of gender indicate a kind of performative fluidity that echoes the kind of performance-based subversion that this dissertation argues crunk represented for black youth laying claim to public space in the years following the decline of Freaknik. The conclusion holds that, while the era of the crunk subgenre has passed, many of the underlying performative political subtexts persisted in subsequent subgenres of Southern hip-hop (e.g. snap, trap, etc.), which lays the foundation for discourse on methodologies of performative resistance in other hip-hop formats. Table of Contents. Acknowledgements ii Introduction Act A Fool 1 Chapter 1 In The Beginning There Was YEEK! 33 Chapter 2 What You Really Know About The Dirty South? Constructing Southern Hip-Hop Identity 66 Chapter 3 “U Can’t Stop The Cruising” Freaknik and the Politics of Black Youth in Public Space 111 Chapter 4 From Memphis Buck to Atlanta Crunk Aestheticizing Catharsis 148 Chapter 5 “But Y’all Were Doing The Sissy” On Gender Performativity in Atlanta Hip-Hop Spaces 179 Conclusion People Don’t Dance No Mo’ All They Do Is This 213 Bibliography 222 i Acknowledgements. The process of engaging this research and writing this dissertation has been challenging and exhilarating, taxing and curative. Many have helped me through this journey and I would like to acknowledge their contributions. I offer my gratitude to my family for their unwavering support. To my brother Jason whose hard work, tenacity and musicianship inspire me, who keeps me connected to new music. To my sister Chandra, who has helped keep me grounded through this process. To my newest sister, Patricia as she engages on her own journey into the Atlanta music scene. To my sister Erica/Motunrayo who inspired so much of this research, whose humor and bright spirit preceded me into the field and whose engagement with culture, creativity, and healing continues to motivate me. To my stepfather Tony for his moral support. To my mother who has helped me more than I can express with words; whose kindness kept me standing when I was dejected and whose encouragement urged me to work harder and to do more than I thought I could. To my nieces, Olivia and Deliylah who never fail to brighten my day. To my grandparents, aunts, and uncles who, at various times, made sure my stomach was full and my spirit was balanced. And to my cousins who were both my family and my friends. I offer a special thank you to my cousin Jasmine who was my roommate throughout my fieldwork, who always reminds me to push beyond my self-imposed limitations, and who was always a little more crunk than I was. ii I offer my gratitude to those who have transitioned to the land of the ancestors. To my father David Winston Holt, whom I miss every day and whose influence continues to guide me. To my aunt Annesther Holt who always had a gift for giving me what I needed, even if what I needed was just a smile. To my cousin Tommy Verel “Rel” Richardson, who always encouraged creativity and had the best music to share. To Dr. Manning Marable, who helped guide my development as a scholar. To Anne Gefell, whose advice and humor helped me (and countless others) navigate the intricacies of graduate student life. To Aja Micole Little whom I only met briefly, but whose presence and impact reverberates through the love expressed by the dancers of Melodic Movements. To those who I don’t know and may never know but were nonetheless instrumental in my being here and engaging in this work. I offer my gratitude to Mel, Ted, Ant, Gary, Carlos, Kool-Aid and the dancers of Melodic Movements for the histories and stories they shared through music and dance. To my friends Shea, John, Mary, Joseph, Hollie and José Alfredo who lent a sympathetic ear when I was overwhelmed. To my friends Dwayne and Geo who reminded me that hard work must be balanced with recuperation. To the graduate students who offered peer support during my time at Columbia University, especially those in my cohort in ethnomusicology, César and Beatriz. I offer my gratitude to the faculty at Columbia University who encouraged me to develop my ideas about crunk music into a book-length project. To Farah Jasmine iii Griffin, who oversaw the thesis that led to this dissertation and ultimately helped me lay strong foundations for this work. To Aaron A. Fox and Ellie Hisama who helped guide the development of this research and ensured its theoretical integrity. To Kevin Fellezs, whose support was immeasurable; whose attentiveness and dedication was pivotal in helping me realize this dissertation and whose calming and joyful spirit always provided an aspirational blend of diligent, critical thought, activism, and peace. I offer my gratitude to the staff members at Columbia University, especially Sharon Harris in the Institute for Research in African-American Studies and to Gabriela Kumar Sharma and Johanna Lopez in the Department of Music, all of whom at one point or another took time to make sure I was organized, motivated, and in good health. Finally, I offer my gratitude to my many homelands.