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[
Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism
2008, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 74–92]© 2008 by Smith College. All rights reserved.
74
anaya mcmurray 
Hotep and Hip-Hop
Can Black Muslim Women Be Down withHip-Hop?
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Abstract 
“Black Muslim women and hip-hop? . . . real Muslims don’t listen to hip-hop.” For many it isalmost unfathomable that black Muslim women would have any involvement with hip-hopmusic. While several scholars have explored the connections between hip-hop and Islam, hip-hop scholarship usually neglects in-depth conversations about black Muslim women. Using theexamples of Erykah Badu, Eve, and myself, this paper explores the ways in which black Muslimwomen of the hip-hop generation use our music to negotiate faith and culture. Creatingimprovisation zones that highlight the flexibility of religion as it moves through cultures andspaces of resistance, black Muslim women successfully reconcile hotep and hip-hop.
Introduction
Though several scholars and critics have explored the connections betweenhip-hop and Islam,
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for many it is almost unfathomable that black Muslim women would have any involvement with hip-hop music. Using theexamples of hip-hop artists Erykah Badu, Eve, and myself, I argue that the ways in which black Muslim women balance structures in Islam with hip-hop culture create unique spaces or “improvisation zones”
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through musicthat define and express religious and cultural identities simultaneously.
 
anaya mcmurray • hotep and hip-hop 75
Recognizing and celebrating these improvisation zones have seriouspolitical implications in contemporary U.S. society. At the juncture of religion and culture there are often moments of improvisation that areignored in discourses around Islam, which thus marginalize the experi-ences of particular groups of Muslims, such as black Muslim women. The ways in which black Muslim women have become agents in negotiatingIslamic faith and hip-hop culture in their music is of great significance when considering issues of power and representation that work to defineand control black Muslim womanhood. This paper will explore thissignificance by highlighting the ways in which black Muslim womenbecome improvisational agents, negotiating Islam and hip-hop in theirmusic, as well as some of the tools used by the larger society to represent Islam and hip-hop that work to marginalize black Muslim women.
Improvisation as a Useful Metaphor
Whether in theater, music, or everyday conversations, the arrangement of ideas is never simply random, but is always guided by structures encoun-tered in our experiences. In her discussion of jazz improvisation, IngridMonson argues that improvisation has a “collaborative and communica-tive quality” that becomes apparent when “musical sounds, people, andtheir musical and cultural histories” interact (Monson 1994, 2). Thusimprovisation occurs within a space structured by the experiences andhistories of the people involved. With this in mind, I use improvisationzones as a metaphor to describe spaces that represent ways in which Islammoves in and through cultures as a “boundary object.” Islam can beconsidered a boundary object since it is malleable enough to hold multiplemeanings in various contexts, while still having some coherence orrecognizable structures across communities.
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When defining an object,one should always consider “the moments and histories of its productionover time, the contests for meaning within which it is embedded, [and] thepolitical contours that are the circumstances out of which it is fabricated”(King 1994, xvi). Treating Islam as a boundary object that must travelthrough contested meanings, political histories, and various communitiesdraws attention to the presence and power of people as agents who shapethe faith within particular cultures. Despite very rigid definitions of Islamand hip-hop circulating in the U.S. public imaginary, black Muslim women
 
76 meridians 8:1
exercise agency, creating new meanings and interesting spaces of resis-tance through mixing faith and hip-hop culture.
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“The Proof is in the People” and the Music: Black Women,Islam, and Hip-Hop
Bakari Kitwana defines the hip-hop generation as “those young AfricanAmericans born between 1965 and 1984 who came of age in the eightiesand nineties and . . . share a specific set of values and attitudes” (Kitwana2002, 4). Though this definition ignores the contribution of non-blacks tohip-hop, it is useful in locating cultural aspects in relation to a particulargroup, black Muslim women. Kitwana outlines six major sociopoliticalforces that have shaped the hip-hop generation: the visibility of black youthin popular culture, globalization, the persistent nature of segregation,public policy surrounding the criminal justice system, media representa-tions of black youth, and the general quality of life within the hip-hopcommunity. To differentiate this generation from the civil rights and black power generations, Kitwana outlines several of the unique values andattitudes that constitute a hip-hop identity: materialism, a disjuncturebetween the sexes, the acceptance of nontraditional family arrangements,racial consciousness shaped by events such as the Million Man March,media transmissions of representations (often misrepresentations) of black culture, and an ability to effectively cross class lines.It is this generation that has created the culture of hip-hop, whichoriginated in New York as a result of the 1970s post-industrial decline(Pough 2004) and spread across the nation and the globe. In this sense, theculture was created out of a communal resistance to desperation due tolack of jobs to support families and a shortage of activities for youth. Hip-hop culture is thus constituted by an ability to create alternative spaces of growth and expression as well as new ways of accessing capital for black people (as well as many other people of color) raised in an America that hasoften cultivated the values and attitudes Kitwana outlines.When I refer to black Muslim women and hip-hop, I do not considerblack Muslim women and rap music, but black Muslim women who createmusic and who are a part of the hip-hop generation Kitwana describes.Erykah Badu, Eve, and I are three black women who are a part of the hip-
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MuslimVoices

This article was made available as part of the Voices and Visions Project of Indiana University. www.muslimvoices.org.

reply10 / 29 / 2009
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