Research that makes a difference
Our team publishes in world-leading academic journals and makes a difference to young people lives. The emcee culture project is committed to ensuring that our research benefits society.
Publications and Research Projects
Emcee Culture: Improving
Attainment through Spoken English and Popular Poetry
The Emcee Culture: Improving Attainment through Spoken English and Poetry project aims to develop a toolkit of learning resources and continuing professional development material and aimed at improving inclusion, wellbeing, and attainment through emcee culture.
The project is supported by Loughborough University.
Policing the Beats:
Black Music, Racism and
Criminal Injustice
This original and readable book offers the first in-depth account of the policing of Black music in Britain, highlighting the relationship between politics, culture and criminal (in)justice and inviting music lovers, scholars and activists to tune in.
The emergence of UK drill music made headline news, portraying it as a criminal enterprise instead of recognising it as an art form. This new rap subgenre, however, is neither the first nor the only Black music to be targeted this way. Policing the beats rewinds the tape to demonstrate how music has been used as an instrument for policing Black people, from the era of colonial slavery to the present day, revealing the racist legal processes that make crimes out of rhymes.
The Cambridge Companion to Global Rap
Rap has remapped the way we think about music. For more than fifty years its poetics, performance and political power has resonated across the globe. This Companion offers an array of perspectives on the form, from the fields of sociology, linguistics, musicology, psychology, literary studies, education and law, unpacking how this versatile form of oral communication has permeated nearly every aspect of daily life. Taking a decidedly global perspective, these accounts draw from practice in Australia, China, France, Germany, Jamaica, India and Tanzania; exploring how the form has taken hold in particular contexts, and what this can tell us about the medium itself and the environments in which it was repurposed. An indispensable resource for students and researchers, the collection provides an introduction to global rap studies as well as insights into the some of the most important and exciting new developments in this field.
Level Up: Live Performance
and Creative Process in
Grime Music
Grime music has been central to British youth culture since the beginning of the 21st century. Performed by MCs and DJs, it is an Afrodiasporic form that developed on street corners, on pirate radio and at raves. Level Up: Live Performance and Creative Process in Grime Music offers the first long-form ethnographic study of grime practice; it questions how and why artists do what they do; and it asks what this can tell us about creative process and improvisation more widely.
Performing Hip Hop
Englishness
The Performing Hip-Hop Englishness project was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
The project examined the performance of alternative British identities through rap in contrasting organisational contexts. The research identified how youth workers and educators developed 'ethical citizens' through music workshops and how emcee culture shapes the relations between young people within and beyond these organisational settings.
UK Hip Hop, Grime & the City: The Aesthetics and
Ethics of London Based Rap
Young people in London have created a distinctively British rap culture. This book moves beyond accounts of Hip-Hop’s marginality and shows, with an examination of the production, dissemination and use of rap in London, how this cultural form plays an important role in the everyday lives of young Londoners. Through in-depth interviews with a range of leading and emerging rap artists, close analysis of rap music tracks, and over two years of ethnographic research of London’s UK Hip-Hop and Grime scenes, the author examines how black and white urban youths use rap to come together to explore their creative abilities.
