from Make Rappers Rap Again: Interrogating the Mumble Rap “Crisis”
Theorizing African American Music Series | Oxford University Press | August 2025
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“I don’t feel like nobody who they say mumble rap mumbles. . . .They don’t understand my slang or my accent. . . .They’re just trying to bring it down.”
—21 Savage (2017)
In the third chapter of Make Rappers Rap Again: Interrogating the Mumble Rap “Crisis,“ I begin to explain the subjugation of Mumble Rap by examining the claims that mumble rappers and their fans are stupid, juvenile, degenerate, and cognitively disabled. I then situate the subgenre as Southern, noting most mumble rappers are from the South, such as Future and Savage (Atlanta), StaySolidRocky (Virginia), Kodak Black (South Florida), Rae Sremmurd (Mississippi), NBA YoungBoy (Louisiana), and Travis Scott (Houston). I also attend to the ways Mumble Rap is largely powered by southern DJs and producers like Georgia’s Mike WiLL Made-It, DJ Esco, London on da Track, and Zaytoven. I more substantially underscore the southernness of Mumble Rap by examining mumble rappers’ discursive claims to the South in their lyrics and music videos and the ways they showcase southern pride and/or appreciation vis-à-vis citational and collaborative politics.
The Songs
The Videos
The Images
Dr. Heidi R. Lewis 