CIPHER: The International Council for Hip Hop Studies
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Updates from the CIPHER
UCC Transbordagem: Hip Hop Overflowing Workshop
Granary Theatre, Sunday 4 February 2023, 1 pm Theme: Space, Memory and Decoloniality in Contemporary Hip Hop: A dialogue between artists and scholars In the first edition of UCC Transbordagem: Hip Hop Overflowing Series, rap artists as well as leading Hip Hop and...
In Development: 3rdAI Hip Hop Research Engine
CIPHER has just launched our Interactive Artist Map at https://globalcipher.org/3rdai-hip-hop-research-engine/ — this will form the basis of the 3rdAI Hip Hop Research Engine which we hope to launch in January for Beta Testing with a massive lyric database and...
New publication in Ethnomusicology
The CIPHER Team's article, "Networking Global Hip Hop Knowledges: The CIPHER Method," was just published in Ethnomusicology the journal of the The Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM). Thanks to our amazing team of Ophelia McCabe, Warrick Moses, Jason Ng, Pataphysics,...
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Gems from the CIPHER
Montes/Montanhas in Latin American Hip Hop
From the mysterious mountains of Latin America, some compelling gems arise in hip-hop lyrics. The rap crew, Crack Family from Bogotá, Colombia rhymes in their hit "Medicina" (which has some very cool images of Colombian mountains in the music video): "Marihuana...
Hip Hop and/as Martial Art
In my fieldwork in Japan, my man Jase Ng took me to see the "Hip Hop City" Mural in Kawasaki--the diverse working class city on the outskirts of Tokyo. There at the left of this epic monument to hip hop in Japan, the artist Dragon76 has connected hip hop to his own...
RIP RapMoz icon, Azagaia
The name of our recently departed brother, the Mozambican MC, Azagaia, means "spear" -- a reference to his anticolonial cultural politics and his "words as weapons" artistic ethos. CIPHER Team member, Janne Rantala, describes his views in terms of Frantz Fanon's...
‘Mo Salah’ lyrics
In early January 2018, the first well-known hip hop reference to footballer Mo Salah appeared. It quickly spread across the globe, with artist in other countries using the footballer as a reference point for excellence – most of them comparing themselves to Mo Salah...
0phelia – ‘The Enlightenment of the Tree’
In this video 0phelia spits an acapella rap verse in her native language Gaelige, demonstrating the hip-hop wisdom that can be found in nature.
Alienness (MZK) – The Bronxstyle
Bboy Alienness refocused a generation through this seminal dance text of the 2000s. Inspiring a new old school, Alienness pushed the emphasis from power moves back to movement with feeling and groove, teaching: "I can teach a chihuahua to stand on one hand but I can't...
Little Simz – ‘Boss’
In 'Boss', Simz describes her rise to the top and asserts herself as a formidable artist in a predominantly male sphere. Inverting the masculinist language of the song title, she issues a warning shot: "I'm a boss in a fucking dress." -Warrick...
Spekulativ Fiktion – ‘Google’
Spek details the Local Geological Record that tracks the first animal to walk on land (and it's in Ireland, where CIPHER is based!). Dropping some intensely local knowledge, he highlights the importance of heritage: "its feckin’ timeless, like the Tetrapod Footprints...
