From Don Imus's "nappy headed-ho's" and default public scapegoating of Hip Hop culture to the burial of the "N" word by black religious leaders, Religion and Hip Hop settles the score between the sacred and the profane by drawing on data on youth and religion, recently published books by rappers that look like Bibles, and new religious sensibilities among youth culture. What we call religious in Hip Hop and youth culture, aint' that religious, after all. Miller suggests, "We must begin again by rethinking the religious."
Religion and Hip Hop brings together the category of religion, hip hop cultural modalities and the demographic of youth. Bringing postmodern theory and critical approaches in the study of religion to bear on Hip Hop cultural practices, this book examines how scholars in religious and theological studies have deployed and approached religion when analyzing Hip Hop data. Using existing empirical studies on youth and religion to the cultural criticism of the Humanities, Religion and Hip Hop argues that common among existing scholarship is a thin interrogation of the category of religion. As such, Miller calls for a redescription of religion in popular cultural analysis - a challenge she further explores and advances through various materialist engagements.
Going beyond the traditional and more common approach of analyzing rap lyrics, from film, dance, to virtual reality, Religion and Hip Hop takes a fresh approach to exploring the paranoid posture of the religious in popular cultural forms, by going beyond what "is" religious about Hip Hop culture. Rather, Miller explores what rhetorical uses of religion in Hip Hop culture accomplish for various and often competing social and cultural interests.
