from Make Rappers Rap Again: Interrogating the Mumble Rap “Crisis”
Theorizing African American Music Series | Oxford University Press | August 2025
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“Stress on my shoulders like an anvil. Percky got me itchin’ like an anthill. Drugs killin’ me softly. Lauryn Hill. Sometimes, I don’t know how to feel.”
—Juice WRLD, “Wishing Well” (2020)
In the fourth chapter of Make Rappers Rap Again: Interrogating the Mumble Rap “Crisis,” I further explain the subjugation of Mumble Rap by interrogating the claims that mumble rappers are too “soft” or feminine. I then examine the ways mumble rappers challenge dominant notions about real Hip Hop masculinity vis-à-vis their attention to the mental and emotional, drug use and addiction, and the fallacies of gender and sexuality norms. While I am careful not to romanticize Mumble Rap along these lines, noting the ways mumble rappers adhere to masculinity norms as they trouble them, I situate Mumble Rap as resistant to real Hip Hop formalism and uniquely congruent with a Hip Hop committed to challenging prescriptive sociopolitical boundaries that surveil, police, and punish spirited Black youth who are often ignored or willfully misunderstood. Consequently, I argue Mumble Rap offers a more robust and humane landscape of Hip Hop ontologies, especially for young Black men.
The Songs
The Videos
The Images
Dr. Heidi R. Lewis 