Remembering Black Consciousness Through Conscious Rap

ABSTRACT: The main concern of this study is to suggest a new dimension to the debates concerning the rise and fall of conscious rap through two elements of African-American consciousness: the ―veil‖ and ―double consciousness‖. These concepts were first identified and discussed by the great American civil rights activist William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, who devoted most of his life to relieving the plight of blacks in a New World full of dominant white racists. His reference to the veil and double consciousness are grounded in the struggle that blacks have experienced because of the divisions of race in a country where institutionalized racism is implemented by the white authorities of America. The double consciousness of being both black and American has created a self-identity crisis that has plagued blacks in their experiences in America, while the veil symbolizes the barrier that has prevented blacks from seeing themselves outside of what white Americans perceive them to be. In conscious rap, there was a positive and progressive group of rappers who rapped to educate African Americans and to strengthen the African element of their double consciousness by bringing into black consciousness and the black community a sense of belonging and black cultural pride that had eluded them in white America. The dissertation ends with a discussion of the rise of gangsta rap, a genre of hip hop that has contributed to the demise of conscious rap and its attempt to consolidate a black self-identity within the double consciousness of African Americans. Keywords: Veil, Double Consciousness, Conscious rap, African-American. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………