| Abstrakt: |
Movement intellectuals in popular music are musical artists who educate an audience by sharing counter-narratives that reflect the concerns of a large mass of people. Since Dr. King's assassination, Black musical artists have taken up his critical-structural paradigmatic worldview through the vernacular of their music. As such, Dr. King and his legacy live on through the messages and actions of artists. In adopting critical race theory and rhetoric, we hope to shed light on how it is Black artists educate a larger audience on the concerns raised by Black Americans over the last 50 years. That is, we examine the lyrical content and career pursuits of Black artists that raise an awareness of systemic oppression and ultimately move toward action. We first draw our attention to artists at the time of Dr. King's rise and fall (Sam Cooke, the Staple Singers, and Curtis Mayfield). We then turn our attention to contemporary artists' pursuit of social and economic justice (Common, Lupe Fiasco, and Chance the Rapper). Throughout our analysis, we tie artists' lyrics and career moves back to Dr. King's final "I Have Been to the Mountaintop" speech. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
