Chronicling Stankonia - by Regina Bradley (Paperback)

About the Book

"Chronicling Stankonia situates hip hop as an intervention in constructing post-Civil Rights black identities and cultural discourse. For southern blacks, the past is often restricted to three recognizable historical moments - the Antebellum Era, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights Movement. Aside from the deeply traumatic experience of these periods of history, they also serve as cornerstones of validating and recognizing southern blacks' experiences. However, the challenge for post-Civil Rights generations of southern blacks is speaking truth to power when their truths depart the trajectory of what was considered power in the past. Chronicling Stankonia updates the black South using hip hop as an agent to reflect multiple intersections of time, race, and southernness in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Part of southern hip hop culture's truth remains attached to the past but its power is grounded in the fact that younger southerners use hip hop to embrace the possibility of multiple Souths, multiple narratives, and multiple entry points into contemporary southern black identities"--

Book Synopsis

This vibrant book pulses with the beats of a new American South, probing the ways music, literature, and film have remixed southern identities for a post-civil rights generation. For scholar and critic Regina N. Bradley, Outkast's work is the touchstone, a blend of funk, gospel, and hip-hop developed in conjunction with the work of other culture creators--including T.I., Kiese Laymon, and Jesmyn Ward. This work, Bradley argues, helps define new cultural possibilities for black southerners who came of age in the 1980s and 1990s and have used hip-hop culture to buffer themselves from the historical narratives and expectations of the civil rights era. André 3000, Big Boi, and a wider community of creators emerge as founding theoreticians of the hip-hop South, framing a larger question of how the region fits into not only hip-hop culture but also contemporary American society as a whole.

Chronicling Stankonia reflects the ways that culture, race, and southernness intersect in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Although part of southern hip-hop culture remains attached to the past, Bradley demonstrates how younger southerners use the music to embrace the possibility of multiple Souths, multiple narratives, and multiple points of entry to contemporary southern black identity.

Review Quotes

"Chronicling Stankonia is an engaging read, one that adroitly balances rigorous academic research with a deeply personal narrative about Black life and art in the post-Civil Rights Era in the South."--The Arts Fuse

"Chronicling Stankonia is the book that Regina N. Bradley was meant to write. She has emerged in recent years as one of the best scholars of Southern hip hop, and she is able to create discussion in really accessible ways that are fun to read without sacrificing any challenging concepts. It all comes through in a really impactful book that I'm sure we'll be referencing for years to come."--Chi Chi Thalken, Scratched Vinyl

"[Bradley] is less interested in writing a biography tracing the short reign of the South's greatest rap group. . . . and more fascinated with why OutKast matters. . . . [As] Bradley maintains, Big Boi and André continue to influence a new era of outkasted artists--musicians, filmmakers, and authors, most notably two of the best American writers working today: Kiese Laymon and Jesmyn Ward. . . . The best parts of this short book of essays find Bradley reminiscing about her own outkastedness."--A.V. Club

"Dr. Regina N. Bradley does an amazing job of reminding us how important the south is to hip-hop culture. . . . Bradley challenges us to acknowledge how southern culture influences Black identity and music."--Book Riot

"Readers will undeniably want to stream Outkast's hits on repeat once they manage to put down Bradley's book."--EBONY Magazine

"Regina Bradley's book gives Southern rap the academic treatment it was long overdue."--Reckon South

"The brisk, ebullient Chronicling Stankonia finds Regina N. Bradley deftly spinning tales of hip hop's rise in the American south, with OutKast the chief protagonist."--Boulder Weekly

"This treatise from leading Southern hip-hop scholar Regina N. Bradley is a revelatory collection of essays--part literary criticism, part sonic analysis, part personal memoir--that serves as an overdue and thrilling intervention on the NYC/L.A.-centric canon of hip-hop criticism. . . . A masterful work of criticism."--Rolling Stone

"Using OutKast's discography as a reference of sorts, Dr. Bradley's latest book helps define new cultural pathways for Black Southerners who came of age in the 1980s and 1990s and have used hip-hop culture to buffer themselves from the historical narratives and sometimes crushing expectations of the civil rights era."--Atlanta Magazine

"With vivid narrative and critical analysis, Bradley presents an innovative examination of the profound legacy and influence of Southern hip hop music and culture."--Ms. Magazine