Theorizing African American Music Series | Oxford University Press | August 2025
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“Yah, I’m up. Yah, I’m up. Yah. Everybody must know it. Yah, I’m up. Yah, I’m up. Yah. Tell the world, yeah, I’m floatin’. They ain’t think I’d ever go and flex like this. Never had plans of gettin’ less than this. My God, I know what a blessin’ is. Thank God I know what a blessin’ is. Prayers up. Whole squad sendin’ prayers up. Purple drank in my prayer cup.”
—Travis Scott, “Prayers Up” (2017)
Many critics claim Mumble Rap is not real Hip Hop (or the most authentic or pure), because mumble rappers are ignorant about Hip Hop history, disrespectful toward Hip Hop elders, too similar, unskilled, prone to rapping about nonsense, and too soft or feminine. Some critics have even declared Hip Hop dead (again). In Make Rappers Rap Again: Interrogating the Mumble Rap “Crisis” (Oxford UP, 2025), which features an interview with DJ Drama, I contrarily and perhaps controversially argue Mumble Rap is real Hip Hop. Relying primarily on discourse analysis, I examine Mumble Rap’s congruence with oft-forgotten or subjugated Hip Hop cornerstones like illegibility, melody, the DJ, and the subgenre, as well as the ways most mumble rappers practice citational and collaborative politics congruent with real Hip Hop. I also take a critical approach to examining the Mumble Rap sound, arguing it’s much more complicated than it’s often characterized, especially concerning flow and production. To explain the subjugation of Mumble Rap, I situate the subgenre as Southern and examine the ways it challenges dominant notions about real Hip Hop masculinity vis-à-vis mumble rappers’ attention to the mental and emotional, drug use and addiction, and the fallacies of gender and sexuality norms. Last, but not least, I argue Hip Hop will never die.
Dr. Heidi R. Lewis 