Hip Hop Desis

Refiguring American Music

A series edited by Ronald Radano and Josh Kun

Charles McGovern, contributing editor

 Nitasha Tamar Sharma

Hip Hop Desis

South Asian Americans, Blackness,

and a Global Race Consciousness

Duke University Press

Durham and London 2010
 © 2010 Duke University Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of
America on acid-​free paper ∞
Designed by C. H. Westmoreland
Typeset in Quadraat by
Tseng Information Systems, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-
Publication Data appear on the last
printed page of this book.

Duke University Press gratefully ac-

knowledges the support of the North-
western University Research Grants
Committee, which provided funds
toward the production of this book.

frontispiece: Deejay Bella spins

at a 4th of July event. Photograph
courtesy of Deejay Bella.
 This book is dedicated with eternal love
to my parents, Miriam and Jagdish Sharma,

to Makaya McCraven with love

for his unending support and brilliance,

to the South Asian American hip hop artists

who make much more than music,

and to Ronald Takaki, who made generations

of activist scholars
 Contents

Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction: Claiming Space, Making Race 1

1 Alternative Ethnics: Rotten Coconuts and Ethnic

Hip Hop 37

2 Making Race: Desi Racial Identities, South Asian and

Black Relations, and Racialized Hip Hop 88

3 Flipping the Gender Script: Gender and Sexuality in

South Asian and Hip Hop America 138

4 The Appeal of Hip Hop, Ownership, and the Politics of

Location 190

5 Sampling South Asians: Dual Flows of Appropriation

and the Possibilities of Authenticity 234

Conclusion: Turning Thoughts into Action through

the Politics of Identification 283

Notes 301
References 315
Index 335
 Preface

The lives of South Asians in America, or desis—a term meaning “of

the land” from the Hindi/Urdu word desh, or country—are both
historically constituted and circumscribed by global processes and
the limitations of what is possible today. Yet some members of this
community, such as South Asian American hip hop artists, take
active roles in their surroundings by disrupting seemingly fixed
ideologies in order to generate new possibilities. In chapter 1 of
this volume, “Alternative Ethnics,” I explore the artists’ ambivalent
relationships to ethnicity and the influence of South Asian par-
ents and peers from recollections of their childhood and college
experiences. While nearly half of the artists grew up in middle-​
class, mostly White neighborhoods (as most desis do) where they
have contended with racism from a young age, the other half came
from racially and class-diverse neighborhoods in which they grew
up alongside Blacks and participated in creating hip hop culture.
Thus, class alone does not explain who becomes a hip hop artist;
however, where the artists grew up had broad implications for
their interactions with Blacks and their experiences with racism. I
illustrate the critique by these artists of expectations of ethnic au-
thenticity expressed within American South Asian communities as
hegemonic notions of desiness—that is, as conservative responses
to displacement, racism, and a desire to fit high up in American
society. Their production of “ethnic hip hop” illustrates a process
of sampling.
These individuals turn toward alternatives by rejecting not only
desi norms but those of the dominant White society as well. Neither
an insular ethnic identity nor assimilation with aspirations toward
Whiteness is an option. After all, the racism they experience from
Whites is doubled by South Asians’ own racism toward Blacks.
This tension conflicts with their emerging politics that attempt
to understand and overcome racist practices. Thus, in chapter 2
I illustrate how South Asian hip hop artists “branch out” (Flores
quoted in Lipsitz 2004) or turn toward communities and expres-
sions that speak to their sense of difference, injustice, and artis-
tic expression, as do some Latinos—another Brown population.
George Lipsitz samples Juan Flores’s concept to explain that “the
polylateral points of connection afforded by ‘branching out’ enable
Puerto Rican New Yorkers opportunities to remain ‘ethnic’ without
being either ‘always ethnic’ or ‘only ethnic,’ to create new identities
without having to surrender the historical consciousness and situ-
ated knowledges specific to their group” (33). In this volume I re-
veal that desis who become producers of hip hop enter Black social
and hip hop worlds in their childhoods rather than later as a rebel-
lious phase of adolescence. I explore how desi artists develop their
understanding of race and conceive of relations between South
Asians and Blacks through their relationships with Blacks. They ex-
press these worldviews through “racialized hip hop.”
In chapter 3, “Flipping the Gender Script,” I discuss how desi art-
ists negotiate gender and sexual expectations within both hip hop
and South Asian America. Female artists in particular must come
to grips with hip hop’s misogyny, which they engage by crafting
pro-​womanist work spaces. My ethnography contests theories that
assert the appeal of stereotypical racialized masculinities for non-​
Black men by exploring other possible interpretations for the role
of hip hop in the crafting of desi gender and sexual identities, both
straight and queer. Desi women in hip hop, in fact, engage with
tropes of Black masculinity, including players and pimps, to ex-
press themselves in the business of music. I explore these dynam-
ics by tracing the moves by desis within the hip hop industry and in
their intraethnic and interracial romances.
Following my discussion of ethnicity, race, gender, and sexuality,
I illustrate in chapter 4 the appeal of hip hop to these artists by
highlighting the counterhegemonic message of early rap music,
the sonic pleasure they derived from it, and the voice it gave them to

x Preface
represent their identities. Hip hop offers them the vocabulary, ide-
ology, and methodology for crafting their own resistant and racial-
ized worldviews that speak to questions of alienation and belong-
ing, equality and inequality. In “The Appeal of Hip Hop, Ownership,
and the Politics of Location” I discuss how Black Nationalism and
race pride teaches these artists how to develop a racialized identity.
However, it does not speak to their sense of ethnicity or their trans-
national ties. Thus, I analyze how they transform Black Power into
Brown Pride in response to racism and their attempts to belong to
the nation not as model minorities, eternal foreigners, or deracial-
ized “honorary Whites.” They face the racial politics of authenticity,
an essentialist test seemingly impossible to pass for people who
are not of African descent. Chapter 4 illustrates how these artists
conceive of Blackness in hip hop. The way they conceptualize them-
selves as legitimate Brown creators of Black popular culture offers
an ethnographic account of cross-​racial alliances.
In chapter 5, “Sampling South Asians,” I expand my attention
more broadly on dual flows of power and appropriation. I show how
South Asian American youth and mainstream hip hop culture since
2001 reveal examples of “appropriation as othering” (by which
one appropriates in order to reaffirm the distance between racial
groups) and “appropriation as identification” (through which bor-
rowing practices signal a bridging across differences). The height-
ened racialization and profiling of Brown people in the millennium
directly impacts the themes in the artists’ music as well as their visi-
bility. Analyzing the borrowing practices between members of two
groups who do not share a clear hierarchical relationship expands
the literature on appropriation that tends to focus on exchanges
between Blacks and Whites. The descriptions in this book are com-
plemented with the artists’ online videos and Web sites. Where ap-
propriate I provide Web site information, and I highly recommend
this multimedia approach to best illustrate the comportment of the
artists and their music.
I conclude this volume by reflecting on the use by artists of les-
sons learned from hip hop that extend beyond the realm of music
in their social justice activism. Their extramusical political commit-
ments, which take them beyond national and racial borders, reveal
their global race consciousness in action.

Preface xi
 Acknowledgments

For someone whose memory resembles Swiss cheese (it is full of

holes), remembering everyone who has helped make this book a
reality over the past decade is a daunting yet gratifying exercise. I
apologize in advance to those I have forgotten to mention; your in-
fluence is nonetheless reflected in these pages. My biggest thanks
and praises go to each and every artist I met over the course of
conducting fieldwork and who agreed to take part in this project
at a time when many academics were unclear about who or what
“hip hop” or “desis” referred to. Many of these desi hip hop artists
have become dear friends and have shaped this project well into
the editing phases, particularly Bella, Chirag, Kiran, Sammy, Nimo,
Swapnil, Vivek, D’Lo, Roger, Asad, Fahad, and Joseph. Your words,
vision, and actions have inspired me for years and I hope that
inspiration and consciousness is reflected in this work. I also wish
to thank KB, D’Lo, Chee Malabar, and Sammy for granting permis-
sion to use their words in the epigraphs. I could not have completed
this project without the enormous guidance, support, and comedic
relief of my dear friends, colleagues, and interlopers, including my
dissertation writing group at the University of California, Berke-
ley: Aaron Bobrow Strain, Rebecca Dolhinow, and Susan Shepler;
my tireless dear friends and intellectual interlocutors: Carleen
Basler, Jinah Kim, Kristi and the quints, Heather Lee, Anastasia
Panagakos, Dana Petersen, Elizabeth Schainbaum, Cathy Schlund-​
Vials, Zulema Valdez, and Andrew Yinger; and Laura Helper-​Ferris,
who helped me get back on track. While I do not envy your task of
having read (numerous!) versions of my text, I cannot thank the
following people enough for their thoughtful, fair, and solid ad-
vice: Richard Iton, Martha Biondi, Sherman Bryant, George Lip-
sitz, John Marquez, Oliver Wang, John Jackson, Gayatri Gopinath,
Dwight McBride, Vijay Prashad, and the anonymous and fabulous
reviewers enlisted by Duke University Press. If I had a voice, I would
sing aloud unending praises of Courtney Berger at Duke University
Press for her strong guiding hand, patience, and kindly delivered
praise; would every author be so lucky to work with her! Support-
ive mentors, inspirational leaders, and patient colleagues include
Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Mary Hancock, Darlene Clark Hine, Mattison
Mines, Triloki Pandey, Gary Okihiro, Victoria Robinson, Ved Vatuk,
and Ji-​Yeon Yuh. The time and resources necessary for the research,
writing, and editing of this book were made possible by generous
grants and fellowships from the following institutions: University
of California, Santa Barbara; University of California, Berkeley;
Institute for the Study of Social Change; Social Science Research
Council; Amherst College, particularly my colleagues in American
studies; and Northwestern University, with a special shout out to all
the faculty and staff in Asian American studies and African Ameri-
can studies, especially to Greg Jue, Marjorie McDonald, and Suzette
Denose. I am thankful to Peter Holderness for the author photo and
to the Asian American studies program at Northwestern Univer-
sity for providing funding for the index, professionally prepared by
Diana Witt. I hope this book reflects the immensely supportive role
and social justice ideals of my dearest mentor and professor, Ronald
Takaki. And none of this has any meaning were it not for my family
who engaged me with their perspectives, encouraged me over the
years, read my work (or, wisely, didn’t!), and trusted my voice: a big
mahalo to Arun Sharma, Agnes Zsigmondi, and Kinga McCraven.

xiv Acknowledgments
 Introduction
Claiming Space, Making Race

We . . . classify everyone on this earth who is not White as members of

the Black Nation. Japanese are members of the Black Nation. Mexicans
are members of the Black Nation. Chinese are members of the Black Na-
tion. All of your Indians and Africans are of the Black Nation. We are the
majority, not the minority.
—Malcolm X speaking at the American Embassy, 1961
I didn’t ever take the Black experience as my own per se but I did identify
with it . . . The immigrant and, really, any racial or nationalistic discourse
in this country, is framed first and foremost by the Black experience in
this country. You don’t have to identify with it in order to understand it,
but you need to know that the discussion begins there. I guess it made
me realize that a lot of immigrants who solely identified with the White
experience were incorrect and needed to understand that.
—Jonny, Indian hip hop journalist

I arranged to interview Vivek, a Harvard alumnus and recent Yale

Law School graduate, at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in
downtown San Francisco. I was meeting him at his office, where
he was interning for “one of the most leftist judges.” Despite our
formal surroundings and heightened security precautions—a
Black security guard buzzed me in and Vivek had to escort me to
his stately office—the slim, vivacious Indian was dressed casually.
A skull cap covered his closely shorn hair and he wore a silver hoop
in each ear. Complaining about his chappals (Indian sandals) cutting
into his feet, he removed them once we got to his office. Peeling off
clothing like layers of identity, he also shed his green kurta (a flow-
ing Indian top), under which he had on an old green Adidas T-​shirt
and jeans. Vivek, an Indian American rapper, is one of hip hop’s
desis, a term commonly used, especially among the second genera-
tion, to refer to South Asians in America.
Vivek was characteristically expressive during our interview. His
voice often reached a crescendo when he was excited. In a hurry
to get things out he rarely finished sentences but rather left them
with implied endings before skipping on to new ideas. But when
he spoke slowly and softly, reverently even, I paid special attention,
as that was when he relayed a most intriguing confession: Vivek
told me, cautiously, that he was Black. To forestall any confusion,
he clarified that he considered himself to be part of a “wider Black
consciousness.”
I translate Vivek’s conception, a worldview shared by all of the
artists in this study, as a global race consciousness. This phrase high-
lights the knowledge of how power-​holding groups have created
conceptions of group difference that exploit others for self-​gain
rather than an unexamined reification of “race.” This reorienta-
tion refers to race as a matter of critical understanding—of ways
of thinking about and being in the world rather than a reference
to an individual’s biology or phenotype. Thus, this notion refers
not to racial categories (e.g., “Black,” “Asian,” etc.) but rather to
understanding how and why Western Europeans created such cate-
gories, which non-Whites have since come to adopt. Central to this
understanding—or consciousness—is the comprehension of how
various racisms impact interminority relations and maintain the
material and ideological supremacy of Whites. These are historical
processes that have shaped global racial formations; they impact,
for instance, the relationships between “Asian” and “Black” dias-
poras across national borders. Yet the development of such a world-
view is politically enabling as these artists put this awareness of
power to work on behalf of their own anti-​racist and social justice
agendas.
Vivek’s identification as Black and his acknowledgment of racism
is atypical in light of the tendency of South Asians to sidestep racial

2 Claiming Space, Making Race

matters, particularly our minority status in the United States, while
praising our cultural strengths and economic successes. In con-
trast is his consideration of the commonalities of South Asians
and Blacks linked by historical and global processes rooted in
colonialism that have differentially racialized and displaced these
groups. The alternative visions of hip hop desis emerge from and
contest hegemonic discourses common within mainstream Ameri-
can, South Asian, and hip hop communities that assume “same-
ness” (i.e., shared ancestry) unites, while “differences” (i.e., race)
divide. How and why do Vivek and the other artists come up with
this conception when so many South Asians in the United States
view Blacks as their antithesis—as a group that lacks strong cul-
tures, is dangerous, and has questionable moral and intellectual
abilities? And what accounts for the political ideologies of hip hop
desis with cross-​racial identifications who insist that South Asians
and Blacks share interests? This book unfolds to reveal the artists’
responses to these questions and illustrates their expression of a
global race consciousness through political acts of music making
and everyday activism.
This project explains how and why some young South Asians
negotiate their racial invisibility in the United States by developing
newly racialized identities that express a political consciousness of
interminority solidarity. The artists in this study craft new ways of
being desi, or alternative desiness, by drawing upon the concept
of Blackness, the most visible and salient example of a racial iden-
tity in the United States. And these desis express their perspectives
in the most popular and generationally relevant expression of Black-
ness at this time—hip hop. Desis borrow and expand upon Black-
ness by elaborating upon its possibilities as an empowering rather
than denigrated identity, not limited to people of African descent.
They identify not only as “diasporic ethnics” linked to global com-
munities as charted out in the literature on South Asian Americans
but also as “American minorities.” The identifications of hip hop
desis are multiscalar; they traverse and often transcend the bound-
aries of time, nation, and racial categorization, thereby overriding
the limits of “identity.” These artists develop self-​conceptions that
allow them to belong to a community strictly drawn along notions
of sameness (ethnicity, religion, class) while expressing a racial-
ized consciousness that emphasizes commonality formed in the

Claiming Space, Making Race 3

negotiation of difference among people of color. A global race con-
sciousness emerges from and illustrates the artists’ negotiations
and identifications as non-Whites in America, as non-Blacks within
hip hop worlds, and as South Asians with a diasporic sensibility.
What motivates these youth, whom the census categorizes racially
as Asians, to embrace a racial identity modeled on Blackness? I re-
veal how desi hip hoppers express their identifications with Blacks
by infusing traditionally United States–bound and Black-​centered
themes in hip hop with a diasporic sensibility and a global lens. As
cultural brokers and as independent music producers, desis who
create conscious hip hop music alter the contours of desiness,
Blackness, hip hop, and even Americanness. I analyze their creation
of new cultural formations as a process that infuses “culture” with
“politics” and vice versa.
My work in this ethnography focuses on hip hop artists who are
1.5-generation and second-​generation South Asians in America.1
The members of this group include twenty-​four male and female,
gay and straight, upper-​middle-class and lower-​middle-class
Indian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, Nepali, Bengali, and Indo-​Fijian hip
hop rappers, DJs, music producers, record label owners, and jour-
nalists who are mostly rooted in the Bay Area of northern Califor-
nia where the bulk of this ethnography takes place. Three central
questions frame my study. First, why do some members of an up-
wardly mobile, middle-​class immigrant community identify with
Blacks, a group that many Americans perceive to be “disadvan-
taged”? Second, how do South Asians use hip hop to create and
express racialized second-​generation identities? And, finally, how
do the artists forge political alliances between South Asians and
Blacks through Black popular culture? The artistic and political
interminority collaborations of desis are critical responses to the
increasing social, economic, political, and ideological gaps be-
tween Blacks and Asians in the United States that have the potential
to erupt in intergroup conflict, as occurred in Los Angeles in 1992
(Gooding-​Williams 1993; Kim 1999). Hip hop’s desis disrupt popu-
lar and divisive discourses about model (Asian) and not-​so-​model
(Black) minorities by connecting themselves to Black histories,
thereby forming an important critique of the “possessive invest-
ment in Whiteness” (Lipsitz 1998b) that persists through portrayals
of racial groups as incommensurably different.

4 Claiming Space, Making Race

 This book illustrates twenty-​first-​century multiracial politics
for equality and justice expressed through Black popular culture.
The lives, lyrics, and worldviews of desi performers reveal a two-​
pronged approach to “race” that I engage throughout the book.
First, they must contend with commonly accepted notions of “race”
in the United States. They grapple with the significance of living
in racially marked bodies reflected in categories like “Asian” or
“Black” created by those in power and that affect their life chances
and daily experiences. European and American colonialists and im-
perialists constructed White normativity by conceptualizing Asians
and Blacks as deviant groups on each side of the spectrum with re-
gard to matters of intelligence, physical ability, and so forth. Sec-
ond, desi artists create new and empowering meanings of “race”
that capture the interplay of identification and distancing by push-
ing beyond existing national boundaries and racial categories. A
global race consciousness affirms but breaks beyond the real im-
pacts of socially constructed notions of race in the United States
through broad-​scale identifications. I chart how a sense of alien-
ation and belonging of hip hop desis motivates their education
on historical and global links with other subjugated communities
across time and space. Their thoughts and actions reconfigure our
common assumptions of “sameness” and “difference.” The bond of
desis with members of a group they have been defined as in oppo-
sition to reconceptualizes “race” rooted not in shared biology and
identity but in a shared ideology and consciousness of how power
operates through racism. These desis excavate the past in order to
come to a conception of power attuned to the overlapping causes of
group inequality, including the colonials’ enslavement of Africans
and their indenture of Indians and Chinese. These performers not
only learn about alternative narratives of Black and South Asian dis-
placements and migrations, but their collaborative practices also
reflect historical precedents of South Asian and Black alliances in
places like the West Indies and Eng­land. This past inspires desi art-
ists to harness the power of agency and knowledge in their cultural-​
political work as hip hop artists to resist current forms of oppres-
sion and to articulate new grounds for future collaborations. This
ethnography illustrates a model of racial politics unhinged from
the body and rooted in a sense of connection across meaningful
differences that cultivate multiracial alliances for justice.

Claiming Space, Making Race 5

 Who Are Hip Hop’s Desis?
While the number of hip hop–producing South Asians is small,
there are more than is realized by most in the music industry. This
is the case even with the popular Black DJs and radio personalities
in the Bay Area who worked with some of the artists in this project.
Desis in hip hop are also virtually invisible to the general popula-
tion of South Asians in the United States, who share the surprise
and skepticism of some Blacks. Having started rhyming and mixing
records in their preteens, most of the artists are now in their third
decade of producing Black popular culture. So what accounts for
their invisibility?
Americans are largely unaware of desi hip hoppers partly be-
cause they do not form a community in a traditional or imagined
sense (Anderson 1983). They do not always identify as a group or
live within a geographically circumscribed area, and when I started
this project few artists even knew of co-​ethnics in hip hop. Sev-
eral factors have led to a greater awareness of these artists, particu-
larly in desi circles, including their growing numbers in hip hop,
their artistic productivity, new networking technologies, and their
lengthy musical careers. Nonetheless, a search for a cyber commu-
nity devoted to “desi hip hop” is likely only to reveal the Web sites
of scholars like myself, newspaper and magazine articles that refer
to these artists as a group, and individual artists who self-​promote.
These performers, often the only desi in their local hip hop commu-
nities, are scattered in cities across the United States and produce
their music independently. I put them in touch with one another
over the past decade and mention their names, albums, and Web
sites in my interviews and lectures. South Asian art festivals have
also begun to introduce them to one another and to desi audiences.
Contact among the artists has led to some collaboration; often,
however, they distinguish among themselves based on the kinds
of hip hop they produce, their target audiences, and their philoso-
phies toward hip hop.
There is no genre of “desi hip hop.” Their sounds and roles in hip
hop culture are too diverse. In 2008 I cohosted “Hiphopistan: South
Asians in Hip Hop,” a multiday series of concerts and panels in
Chicago that featured some of the artists in this book.2 I wanted to
showcase the variety of productions by South Asians and to create

6 Claiming Space, Making Race

 The Hiphopistan weekend events took place in Chicago in 2008 and
featured eight South Asian American hip hop artists. Hiphopistan poster
courtesy of Samip Mallick.
a “community” among artists and academics who shared artistic
and political challenges and concerns. While the artists may have
felt isolated in their childhoods as one-​of-​a-​kind desis, they have
now met others who share their passions and predicaments, if not
their tastes in musical production and performance. These forums
are validating because they reveal not only the presence of a grow-
ing number of South Asian artists but also the range and matu-
rity of their art. Few entities reflect this emergent social formation;
in addition to Hiphopistan, the artists have been celebrated in the
documentary Brown Like Dat: South Asians and Hip Hop (dir. Raeshem
Nihjon 2005) and some contributed to an edited volume by artists
and academics, Desi Rap: Hip-Hop and South Asian America (Nair and
Balaji 2008). The present volume is the first ethnography of South
Asian American hip hop artists, and as such it analyzes the inter-
section of South Asians, Blacks, and hip hop music and details how
hip hop desis emerge from and contribute to racial politics at the
turn of the twenty-​first century.
Despite the artists’ dispersal and heterogeneous styles, there are
factors that unify them. Though they move often and live on the
East, West, and “Third” (the Midwest and the South) coasts as well
as overseas, most of the artists have deep connections to the San
Francisco-​Oakland Bay Area of northern California. The particular
racial demographics and dynamics of the Bay Area, and its political
and hip hop histories, leave its imprint upon most of these artists,
whether they grew up in the region or migrated there in adulthood.
The liberal politics and possibilities of California—a demographic
microcosm of the nation’s future—resonate in the form and con-
tent of this music and in the artists’ global race consciousness. They
share an understanding of the world emerging from and reflecting
their dedication to a form of popular culture that is rife with racial
and gender tensions, authenticity tests, and meager payoffs when it
comes to finances or fame. Before I move on to the major concepts
and context of this book, I will introduce some of hip hop’s desis,
whom I refer to as “artists,” “desi artists,” or “performers.”
“Hip hop’s been my first culture,” says Rawj, an MC in the multi-
racial hip hop group Feenom Circle based in the Bay Area.3 Rawj
is a Punjabi American whose Punjabi Indian immigrant parents
settled in Richmond, California, one of the birthplaces of hip hop.
Rawj grew up alongside Black and Filipino peers in the 1970s and

8 Claiming Space, Making Race

 MC Chee Malabar on a video shoot in New York.
Photograph courtesy of Richard Louissaint.

1980s with hip hop, and he later attended community college and
graduated from the University of California system in the 1990s.
KB, a South Indian American rapper also from Richmond who at-
tended the same predominantly Black high school as Rawj, was
managing a number of local rap acts by the time he was seventeen.
After graduating from the University of California, KB, along with
three other desi men, Sammy, Swap, and Nimo, formed Karmacy,
which is possibly the best-known Indian hip hop act among Ameri-
can desi audiences. Chee Malabar was a new arrival in the 1980s,
an eleven-​year-​old immigrant to San Francisco from Baroda, South
India, who learned Eng­lish by rapping with Black school friends he
mistook for Africans. He later formed Himalayan Project with his
Chinese American rapping partner, Rainman, and completed his
fifth album, a solo project produced by Zeeb titled Oblique Brown.
Hip hop saved D’Lo, a male-​identified gay Sri Lankan who, all
the while feeling like a boy trapped in a girl’s body, grew up in a
mostly White Southern California neighborhood contending with
racism and homophobia.4 D’Lo is one of the few desi female MCs.
Around the same time, Deejay Bella, whose Gujarati parents moved
to Southern California and then to Las Vegas, was becoming “ob-

Claiming Space, Making Race 9

sessed” with music.5 She spent all of her time and money buying
records and learning how to spin and mix them. Jonny, a fellow
Gujarati living in northern California, embarked on a career in hip
hop journalism after graduating from the same California university
that Rawj attended. Jonny moved to New York City and began writ-
ing for hip hop magazines and working for MTV. In Staten Island,
New York, three young Pakistani Muslim cousins, Asad, Fahad, and
Ali, who were about a decade younger than the other artists, were
coming of age and, inspired by the rap group Public Enemy, trans-
formed into MC Humanity, MC AbstractVision, and DJ Ali. In Dan-
bury, Connecticut, Vivek—the North Indian American whose voice
opens this book—was growing up with Black friends listening to
rap music. Soon he began writing lyrics on topics relevant to his life
as a budding social justice worker. The artists’ divergent styles and
identities, however, lead them to identify with one another as South
Asian hip hop artists rather than as South Asian hip hop artists.

Ethnic Hip Hop and Racialized Hip Hop

Desi hip hoppers represent a broader spectrum of Asian and Pacific
Island American youth, including Filipinos, Chinese, Cambodi-
ans, and Samoans, who define themselves through Black popular
culture. They highlight the underanalyzed impacts of American
Blacks and their cultures upon the “new second generation,” or the
United States–born children of post-​1965 immigrants from Asia,
Latin America, and the Caribbean (Rumbaut 1994). Hip hop studies
scholars have similarly underexamined the participation and im-
pacts of Asian Americans and hip hop, thereby reinforcing the in-
visibility of Asian Americans in U.S. racial discourse. In this vol-
ume I illustrate cross-​racial interactions beyond a one-​way flow of
South Asians into Black cultural realms; desis engage and impact
the very meanings of Blackness and the expressions of Black popu-
lar culture. “Cross-​fertilization” is how Vivek describes the kinds of
racial, religious, and cultural interactions that he facilitates: “One
of the things that I have enjoyed in my life is that I stand at some
kind of strange position, having like massive [numbers of ] Black
people at the house dancing dandia raas!6 That was dope! You know,
that was beautiful. The year before I brought like fifteen kids . . . ten
Black people, three or four White people, and three or four Indian

10 Claiming Space, Making Race

people from New Haven to a Navratri [the Hindu festival of Nine
Nights] with like five hundred people! You know, we were in there,
I dressed people up in salwar kameez [traditional Indian clothing],
you know? And they were lovin’ it!” These actions dialogically im-
pact desis who produce hip hop and the lives of those around them.
In my work in this book I analyze how the artists contend with
multiple and often competing expectations within their ethnic and
hip hop communities. Are they confused ethnics who turn their
backs on their ancestries? Are they drawn to the rebellious and
tough images of Blackness in mainstream rap music? The artists
develop strategies that bridge the distinct identities of ethnicity
and race. For instance, Vivek, the son of immigrants from the Kutch
Desert region of Gujarat, incorporates his knowledge and sense
of ethnic identity with his awareness of Black histories and con-
cerns. As the MC recalls, “When I did present a Kwanzaa principle
last year—I had the one that was collective work—I told a Birbal
[a close advisor to Akbar the Great] story as I presented it. And
so [this is] one of the things that I enjoy being able to do . . . ! Or
when I dance with that West African group: my solo moves, some of
them are from bhangra! When I dance solo some of them are break
dancing, which fits into West African [dance], too, which is from
when I was little. I grew up dancing street-​t ype shit.” These forms
of intertextual citation, or sampling, illustrate the everyday lives of
these artists. Some of them produce what I term “ethnic hip hop,”
in which they incorporate South Asian languages, instruments, and
immigrant themes. It is through ethnic hip hop (the topic of chap-
ter 1) that desi artists such as KB, Swap, Nimo, and Sammy and
their group, Karmacy, operate as cultural brokers who translate be-
tween generations of American South Asians. This kind of desi hip
hop contests hegemonic desiness, or the expectations that ethnic
gatekeepers place upon co-​ethnics, thereby restricting what quali-
fies as “authentic” ethnicity to proscribed beliefs and behaviors.
In the subgenre of ethnic hip hop, desi artists express alternative
desiness; they also convey a diasporic sensibility to their Black peers
and to multiracial audiences who may be more familiar with hip
hop music centered on United States themes.
These desis’ diasporic sense of ethnicity, or their global connec-
tion to other South Asians based on shared ancestry, immigra-
tion, and cultural practices, is mediated by their relationship to co-​

Claiming Space, Making Race 11

ethnics and to Blacks rather than primarily to Whites—the focus
of most scholars on Asian American ethnicity. Desi hip hop art-
ists develop simultaneous and multiple scales of identification not
captured in the scholarship that views immigrants strictly through
the lens of ethnicity. These performers forge a sense of ethnic be-
longing to fellow Indians or Pakistanis, for example, by recasting
the meanings of ethnicity; they also create panethnic “South Asian”
or “desi”—rather than Asian American—communities as a result
of the processes of racialization that South Asians in the United
States undergo (and did even prior to 9/11); and they express racial
identifications as minorities in solidarity with Blacks, a uniquely
racialized and oppressed group. In chapter 2 I illustrate how the
artists uncover historical, political, and sonic connections be-
tween South Asians and Blacks that frame their identifications with
Blacks. While most Americans across racial categories are unaware
of historical and contemporary connections between Asians and
Blacks (such as the relationship between Martin Luther King Jr.,
Malcolm X, and Mahatma Gandhi, for example), why did the artists
unearth these ties? Those bent on professing these hidden histories
create “racialized hip hop.”
Racialized hip hop is sonically and thematically familiar to
American hip hop audiences with its lyrics that address inequali-
ties and injustices against minorities. Bay Area artists such as Chee
Malabar of Himalayan Project and Rawj of Feenom Circle produce
this kind of music and in so doing become cultural brokers across
the constructed divides of “Black” and “South Asian” by taking up
themes considered irrelevant to many Asian Americans. While lis-
teners often say that the creators of these songs “sound Black,” desi
hip hoppers do not adopt wholesale a Black identity. South Asians
use hip hop to identify with Blacks rather than as Black.
The lives and musical productions of these performers illustrate
the process of sampling—a patching together and rejecting of vari-
ous influences. The artists craft alternative desiness, for instance,
by applying race-​conscious paradigms of hip hop to their studies
of South Asian histories. Other scholars have applied the concept
of sampling, taken from music production, to describe how indi-
viduals “cut ’n’ mix” identities (Hebdige 1987) by weaving together
existing signs and symbols into novel ethnic expressions (Maira
2002). I use sampling as a metaphor for music, identity, and com-

12 Claiming Space, Making Race

munity formation that is anti-​essentialist and dialogic or that is
never created in a vacuum but always in dialogue with multiple in-
fluences. The way these artists stitch together their identities repre-
sents a broader phenomenon among young Americans. Yet how and
what the artists sample in their expressions of ethnicity, race, gen-
der, and sexuality and how these processes denaturalize seemingly
stable categories of belonging is unique. Throughout this book I ex-
amine the role of appropriation and sampling—foundational prac-
tices of hip hop culture—in the way artists craft their identities,
create art, and impact those around them.
The participants in this study expand monochromatic ethno-
graphic and popular portraits of South Asians as middle-​class
suburban Hindu professionals and their college-​attending youth
(Jensen 1988; Lessinger 1995; Maira 2002; Purkayastha 2005). The
political ideologies, educational trajectories, and interracial ties
of these artists also challenge sociological predictions about the
children of immigrants (Portes 1996; Portes and Rumbaut 2001).
In particular, I take issue with segmented assimilation (Portes and
Zhou 1993; Rumbaut 1994; Zhou and Bankston 1998), a theory that
posits that only a negative connection can emerge from the im-
pacts of American Blacks upon second-​generation youth.7 Ameri-
can Blacks are not the devalued or demonized underclass that ex-
poses immigrant youth to “the adversarial subculture” of hip hop
and lead them to the path of “downward assimilation” (Portes and
Zhou 1993: 83; see Neckerman et al. 1999 for a rebuttal). My exami-
nation of desis in hip hop suggests new approaches to relations
between native-​born and immigrant minorities by focusing on col-
laborative and mutually constitutive exchanges.

Hi, My Name Is . . . :
South Asian Americans, Hip Hop, and Second-​Generation Desis
When I began fieldwork for this project in the late 1990s I had been
an avid fan of hip hop for less than a decade. Hip hop took its time
crossing the Pacific to the oceanic outpost of Honolulu, Hawai‘i,
where my brother and I were born in the 1970s. Our parents were
two transplants—professors who decided that Hawai‘i would be
the most hospitable place to raise hapa, or mixed race, children.
(Our father is from a village in Uttar Pradesh, India, and our mother

Claiming Space, Making Race 13

is the Brooklyn-​born daughter of Jewish immigrants from Minsk,
Russia). It was my brother’s 1985 vinyl of “The Show” and “La Di Da
Di (We Like to Party)” by Doug E. Fresh and the Get Fresh Crew that
first turned me on to this new music, which was produced thou-
sands of miles away in my mother’s home state of New York.8 In
Hawai‘i I had limited exposure to hip hop and the people who made
it because there were so few Blacks other than those who were sta-
tioned on the military bases throughout the islands. Further, be-
cause we didn’t have cable television I did not see the hip hop videos
on Yo! MTV Raps. Indeed, it wasn’t until the early 1990s when I moved
to the mainland to attend college in northern California that I was
finally introduced to my Black peers and the golden era of hip hop.
It was then that I also met other American-​born South Asians
along with the Black and White racial illogic of the continental
United States. We were the second-​generation children of profes-
sionals who had immigrated in large numbers to the United States
as part of the second wave of Indian migration. The Immigration
Act of 1965 opened quotas for skilled professionals, thereby leading
to the entry of millions of immigrants from Asia, Latin America,
and the Caribbean.9 Indians were among those who found work
in science, technology, medicine, and higher education and raised
their children, including the artists in this study, during the 1970s
and 1980s. These younger 1.5-​generation and second-​generation
South Asians faced their parents’ conceptions of national and reli-
gious divisions while beginning to craft their own diasporic pan-
ethnic identities. By the 1990s, when we were in college, Indians in
the United States had become the highest income earners and most
educated of all groups, surpassing other Asians and Whites and in-
heriting the label “model minority,” which formerly applied to East
Asians.
The cultural thesis of the model minority myth plays a central role
in the hegemonic desiness that hip hoppers contest. This myth is an
ahistorical form of cultural racism that explains the economic and
educational success of Asians in America, including South Asians,
as a result of “Asian traits” of strong family and cultural values.
Mainstream Americans hail Asians for enculturating their children
with respect for elders and authority figures and for advocating
education as the pathway to the American dream. Scholars have
detailed the dangers of this ideology (Chang 1995; Palumbo-​Liu

14 Claiming Space, Making Race

1999; Prashad 2000, 2001), but several points frame how Americans
view Asians and, therefore, circumscribe how Asians and Blacks
interact. The model minority myth denies everyday and institutional
forms of racism against Asians, portrays them as apolitical non-
agitators, and ignores the plight of less fortunate Asians, includ-
ing first- and third-​wave South Asian immigrants.10 Therefore, this
popular explanation hides the heterogeneity of past and present
communities of South Asians in the United States. To support the
view that everyone—even minorities—can make it in this meritoc-
racy, the contemporary face of “Indians in America” is represented
by second-​wave immigrant Hindu Indian professionals who have
become ethnic gatekeepers who define “proper desiness.” Second-​
generation desis must negotiate these expectations; some choose
to challenge them.
The artists in this study take up hip hop not only to challenge the
model minority myth and issues concerning less fortunate South
Asians but also to resist South Asian anti-​Black racism. The preva-
lence of cultural explanations for group difference since the 1960s
and this myth’s complementary facade has led many South Asians
attempting to claim a higher status to adopt this framework (Raja-
gopal 1995; Prashad 2000). The strength of “culture” and “family”
are common ways that South Asians understand their “success”
and speak about the “failures” of others, including Blacks. This
ideological wedge between Asians and Blacks was, in fact, one of
the reasons why the mainstream American media created the model
minority myth; Whites deployed Asian Americans as “proof ” of
this nation’s level playing field and of the end of racism. Such cul-
turalist explanations became entrenched during the 1990s when
multiculturalism celebrated South Asians’ status as evidence that
minorities could achieve the American dream and maintain their
cultural distinctiveness.
Wealthy South Asians, in turn, use these concepts to explain to
their children that success results from their allegiance to both the
“benevolence” of their adopted nation and ethnic values of hard
work, discipline, and filial piety rather than from structural, eco-
nomic, and historical factors. Thus, even as growing numbers of
working-​class third-​wave South Asian immigrants altered the rosy
depiction of Indian professionals during the 1980s and 1990s, cul-
turalist explanations for success dovetailed with the model mi-

Claiming Space, Making Race 15

nority myth in the minds of many second-​generation youth. But
this ideology rests uneasily with others, including those who turn
to hip hop to articulate their concerns about South Asians who deny
the struggles of minorities within and outside South Asian America.
The presence of desis in hip hop and particularly their cross-​racial
identifications with Blacks is surprising given this opposing con-
ception of South Asians and Blacks and the material gaps (income,
residential patterns, education) between them. Black and Brown
worlds often do not mix, even among college students. Hip hop
music and styles are overwhelmingly popular among desi youth
(Maira 2002) despite the conspicuous absence of Black people.
While the impacts of Blackness are often only implied in desi cul-
tural worlds, Blacks continue to represent the most visible example
of a minority identity for South Asians of all generations. Given the
relative invisibility of Asians in America, however, Blacks are often
less aware of or concerned about Asian Americans until policies,
like affirmative action, explicitly frame Asians and Blacks as com-
petitors.
In the 1990s, second-​generation desis went on to college and came
of age during the reign of multiculturalism (Prashad 2000), racial
conflicts (e.g., the 1992 Los Angeles uprising), and the Silicon Val-
ley hi-​tech boom (Shankar 2008). Desi artists saw local hip hop acts
rise to national fame while South Asians’ increasing wealth and nu-
meric presence led to the greater visibility of “Indians.” As the offi-
cial discourse on difference that impacted structural and funding
decisions in universities, multiculturalism impacted desis’ college
education and identity exploration just as counterhegemonic narra-
tives delivered in rhyme were filling the airwaves. The confluence of
these economic policies and political and racial discourses directly
affected the way that desi youth understood themselves.
Hip hop became the culture of their times for the second gen-
eration at large, just when media monopolies linked with trans-
national corporations to turn hip hop superstars into global com-
modities.11 Many desi youths tended to embrace Black popular
culture in ways similar to that of suburban White youths—that is,
as avid consumers who could afford the commodities that main-
stream rappers were increasingly rapping about and who consumed
Blackness, itself, as if it were a commodity. And, encouraged by
their parents, they maintained a physical distance from actual Black

16 Claiming Space, Making Race

people. As the 1990s progressed, desis in California colleges were
among the first to see—if not feel—the effects of anti-​affirmative
action policies and a heightened rhetoric of colorblindness. Some
favored these policies, agreeing with the former University of Cali-
fornia Regent and anti-​affirmative action leader Ward Connerly that
race-​based policies “hurt” Asian Americans. Even on the relatively
diverse and multicultural California university campuses prior to
the banning of affirmative action in the 1990s I met desis who had
never personally known even one Black person.
Hip hop desis, in contrast, speak directly to South Asian anti-​
Black racism and the mutual lack of South Asian and Black inter-
action. Their music explores alternatives to the cultural determin-
ism of the model minority myth and offers ethnic alternatives that
explore the potential of race-​based identifications. The prominence
of hip hop among all youth in the 1990s did not mean that young
people across color lines came to know each other any better. It
did, however, grant an opening to those invested in exploring inter-
minority commonalities.

Claiming Space:
A Multiracial Look Back at Asian Americans in Hip Hop
Hip hop began in the early 1970s when minorities, particularly
Blacks in urban areas, lost jobs as a result of deindustrialization.
President Reagan’s political and economic policies in the 1980s
compounded the situation by removing the security of social ser-
vices from the newly jobless and restricting children’s opportuni-
ties for education and play. Black and Puerto Rican youth in the
South Bronx responded to these strictures creatively by making use
of the technology available to them. They hooked up speakers to sta-
dium lights at local parks, played records on one and even two turn-
tables to mix them back and forth to produce a continuous party
track, chanted on microphones in rhyme, danced with fancy foot-
work reminiscent of Brazil’s capoeira, and reclaimed the increas-
ingly restricted and policed public spaces by tagging their pseudo-
nyms on walls and subways with spray paint. This new culture, hip
hop, started out as a localized expression of youthful exuberance
and creativity but soon turned to urgent messages.12 Sweeping
to the West Coast, where Black and Brown men also earned pink

Claiming Space, Making Race 17

slips from their jobs, gangsta rap emerged as the new angry face of
Black America in the late 1980s, the time when desi artists were in
high school. By the 1990s, when these second-​generation members
began to attend college, hip hop exploded commercially. Increas-
ingly attractive to suburban White youth, other non-Blacks, and cor-
porate marketers, hip hop’s iconic rebellious male image was cap-
tured by N.W.A. (Niggaz with Attitude) from Compton, California.
Hip hop also emerged from parts of northern California, and the
history and character of the Bay Area explains why some desi chil-
dren, who were born just as hip hop itself was born in the 1970s,
felt that they could be a part of a new kind of Black popular cul-
ture. Bay Area hip hop was particularly multiracial from its incep-
tion, from the Filipino DJ crews in Daly City to biracial rappers in
Oakland, from Korean b-​boys and b-​girls to Mexican graffiti artists
(see Wang 2005, 2006; Tiongson 2006). Racial politics accompa-
nied racial mixing among Bay Area musicians; rappers are only the
latest to deploy Black music for political and coalitional purposes
(see Rios 2004; Watkins 2005; Arnold 2006).13
The origins and ownership of hip hop is a topic that dominates
debates among hip hop heads and scholars alike. Historians such
as Jeff Chang (2005) who evoke the multiracial origins of hip hop
are interpreted by some as wanting to “take hip hop away from
Blacks.” But revisiting hip hop history informs debates over whom
and what is incorporated into hip hop today without displacing the
centrality of Blacks. Indeed, hip hop (like identities and cultures) is
a product and process of multidirectional appropriations. The multi-
vocality of hip hop contests accounts of its appropriation as a uni-
directional power relation whereby the dominant group “takes”
from the dominated. To analyze this notion I illustrate bidirectional
flows of appropriation between South Asian and Black producers of
hip hop (e.g., Mercer 1995; Ziff and Rao 1997).
The history of hip hop has been considered elsewhere (Rose 1994;
Light 1999; Fricke and Ahearn 2002; Jeff Chang 2005) but a few
points are worth mentioning in order to frame my consideration
of Blackness and hip hop. A host of multiracial actors have pro-
duced the form of Black popular culture called hip hop that incor-
porates influences across color and culture lines. This perspective
pulls together both the undeniable Blackness of hip hop rooted in
the experiences of those who largely created the culture (see Perry

18 Claiming Space, Making Race

2004) and the contributions of Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Filipinos,
Samoans and others over the past thirty years (Flores 2000; Rivera
2003; Chang 2005; Wang 2005; Tiongson 2006). Kool Herc, a 1.5-​
generation immigrant from Jamaica, introduced the break-​beat DJ
style from his homeland to the Bronx. The Jamaican art of toasting,
or chanting on the microphone over a beat, also informed rapping,
while some of the earliest DJs, graffiti artists, and b-​boys of the
Rock Steady Crew included Puerto Rican youth from New York (see
Chang 2005). The famous Nuyorican b-​boy Pop Master Fabel noted
that while many see Brazilian capoeira in the dance elements of
hip hop, it was actually Bruce Lee and the Shaw Brothers’s martial
arts movies in the 1970s and 1980s that inspired young b-​boys and
b-​girls (see Ongiri 2002; Kato 2007).14 Thus, desi artists take part
in a multicultural production of Black popular culture. This book is
not concerned with defining an originary moment of hip hop cre-
ation (see Rose 1994 for an excellent history); detailing the impor-
tant players that led to the emergence of this globally significant
expression is likewise outside the scope of this project. Instead, I
analyze how racism impacts the lives of those desi youths who turn
to hip hop as a mode for analyzing racism. Why do they choose this
form of Black popular culture to express themselves? A brief sketch
of Asian Americans in hip hop helps frame this discussion.
Numerous Asian American youths who grew up alongside Blacks
in the 1970s and 1980s “live, breathe, and bleed this rap shit,” as
one Pakistani MC says. Filipino Americans have earned some of the
highest accolades for their turntablism while some Chinese Ameri-
cans, like the members of the Mountain Brothers and the Miami
rapper Jin, use their rhymes to battle, express witticisms, and de-
mand representation (Wang 2007). The artist MC PraCh, a Cambo-
dian refugee living in Long Beach, California, raps about the kill-
ing fields from which he fled and expresses a transnational identity
(Schlund-​Vials 2008). Asian Americans have always been in hip
hop yet their invisibility mirrors their status in America as demo-
graphically outnumbered and often unrecognizable within Black
and White United States conceptions of race. Despite their relative
invisibility in hip hop, however, one of their biggest draws is to hip
hop’s potential for self-​representation.
Generally speaking, South, East, and Southeast Asian Ameri-
cans in hip hop contend with shared predicaments—notably, the

Claiming Space, Making Race 19

audiences’ misinterpretations of their motives for embracing Black
culture and being Asian in a predominantly Black art form. Oliver
Wang, a scholar on Asian American hip hop, specializes on the his-
tory of California Filipino DJ crews in the 1980s. Although there are
differences in the subgroups and methodologies that Wang and I
use, some of our findings overlap. Wang periodizes Asian American
hip hop into three waves. The first wave occurred in the early 1990s
and includes groups that used hip hop as a “tool for political agita-
tion,” expressed racial and ethnic identities, and were not bent on
turning rap into a viable career (2007: 43). The second wave, dated
to the mid-​1990s, took a deracialized approach to their non-Black
status and did not focus on their ethnicity (47). The third wave,
which came at the end of the 1990s, is best represented by Jin, per-
haps the most famous “Asian rapper.” This Chinese American MC,
signed by Ruff Ryder Records following his publicized freestyle
battle success on Black Entertainment Television (BET), attracted
mainstream audiences with his single “Learn Chinese.” According
to Wang, Jin dealt a preemptive strike with his racial otherness by
incorporating copious references to his racial (Asian) and ethnic
(Chinese) identities.
Desi artists in this project employ all of these approaches to race
and politics simultaneously. Their hip hop practices and the content
of their music also changes over the course of their decades-​long
careers.15 Wang illustrates how East Asian rappers produce hip hop
“for, by, and about Asian Americans” (44). Among desi artists, how-
ever, I found a split. There are those who tend to produce “ethnic
hip hop,” which may qualify as music for, by, and about (South)
Asian Americans. And there are those who create “racialized hip
hop” that addresses broader political issues by artists who do not
want to restrict their appeal to desi audiences but rather want to
attract “the tastemakers,” or real hip hop heads. While this distinc-
tion can be sonically ascertained quite obviously, it is not firm; desi
artists often change their music’s content, sound, and target audi-
ences over time. Unlike other Asian Americans, South Asians must
also contend with their racialization as “Muslim-​looking peoples.”
How do reactions to 9/11 impact the outlook of these artists, who
were cognizant of anti-​Asian racism well before 9/11?
This book analyzes desis’ performances of Black popular culture
as acts of “self-​racialization” that are autonomous and responsive

20 Claiming Space, Making Race

to the ways Americans have conceptualized them (Wong 2004). De-
tailing how desis negotiate their multiple positions of belonging as
they claim space within an art form that prioritizes the male, Black,
and working-​class body contributes to authenticity debates. Called
“rotten coconuts” (Sharma 2001) and “bruised bananas,” common
and scholarly accounts depict most Asian crossovers into Black cul-
ture as either a new form of “blackface” or an attempt to defeat
emasculation by embodying Black male sexuality.16 These compel-
ling theories explain the general population of South Asian youth,
whom I call “mainstream desis,” but they do not apply to desis who
chose to produce anti-​racist hip hop and live in Black communities.
Observers most commonly apply theories about “why White kids
love hip hop” (Kitwana 2005) to understand Asian Americans in
hip hop, a problematic move given the non-White status of Asian
Americans. The analysis by Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) of White jazz
artists’ love of Black music emphasizes the conundrum of choice
and race central to my discussion: “The white beboppers of the for-
ties were as removed from the society as Negroes, but as a mat-
ter of choice. The important idea here is that the white musicians
and other young Whites who associated themselves with this Negro
music identified the Negro with this separation, this nonconfor-
mity, though, of course, the Negro himself had no choice” (Jones
1963: 188). Some desis, too, are drawn to Black cultural expressions
precisely because they signify a break from mainstream society;
however the motivations of second-​generation youth negotiating
their non-White, non-Black immigrant status—which, due to the
racialization of non-Whites, they cannot fully choose—demands
specific analysis (see Prashad 2001; Rana 2002; Chatterjee 2006;
Nair and Balaji 2008). South Asians in America face racism. Unlike
Whiteness, the relative “value” of a Brown identity, which has never
overcome the stigma of “foreigner,” has gone down in stock follow-
ing 2001. Second, unlike the appeal of rebelliousness that Baraka
says underlined Whites’ love of jazz, South Asians do not become
hip hop for purely rebellious reasons.
The costs of disavowal from their insular ethnic communities are
too great for mere teenage rebellion by these performers. Sunaina
Maira (2002) analyzes how Indian American youth use hip hop in
remix subcultures to contend with their class, ethnic, sexual, gen-
der, and racial anxieties. She reveals how some desi men renego-

Claiming Space, Making Race 21

tiate their racialized masculinity through hip hop culture. These
New York youths are similar to the Bay Area mainstream college
desis I observed during my fieldwork who consume hypersexual-
ized images of Blackness at a distance from Black people. Second-​
generation desis, Maira explains, remix urban American notions
of coolness with homeland nostalgia and ethnic authenticity. Desi
hip hop artists contrast with these mainstream desis in their ideas
about race and identity and in their approaches to hip hop culture.
In fact, hip hop desis feel ambivalent about their own ethnic iden-
tities when confronted with hegemonic conceptions among desis
that include a sense of ethnic exceptionalism, racial distance, insu-
larity, and anti-​Black racism. While a comfort to some, these fac-
tors actually make these artists open up to the influences of Black
peers.
The presence of South Asians in hip hop affirms revisionist,
multiracial histories of hip hop and highlights music’s role in
forging multiracial connections. Desis are drawn to hip hop’s bond
with Black people in ways that parallel Asian American jazz artists
a generation older than them: “For them,” writes the ethnomusi-
cologist Deborah Wong, “the use of the category ‘jazz’ is both con-
necting and confining. The tie to African Americans is important
to all of them, and jazz is the genre they have chosen to speak for
and to that community . . . The Asian American political identifica-
tion with jazz is thus as an African American music” (2004: 178).
In contrast to dominant analyses of Asians, desi performers do not
deracialize hip hop to make it “their own”; rather, they use Black
music as Asian American jazz musicians do: to racialize themselves
as minorities by drawing upon models of Blackness.
According to George Lipsitz (1994), particular cultural forms
may resonate with members of various “aggrieved communities”
in ways that enable them to form “families of resemblance.” Simi-
larly, some desis’ political expressions take the form of and trans-
form Black music through multiracial collaborations. While hip
hop desis draw upon notions of Blackness to cultivate their own
racial identities, they also identify as transnational ethnics (i.e.,
as Sri Lankan, Pakistani, etc.). Noting the problematics of some
Black/Asian crossovers (Wang 2006), scholars are nonetheless opti-
mistic. As Wong notes, “Still, the choice to move away from White-
ness is a racial performative that is anti-​assimilationist and poten-

22 Claiming Space, Making Race

tially bridge-​building” (2004: 189). They engage in “lateral” and
sometimes “reciprocal identification[s],” similar to those between
some Black and White jazz musicians (232). But these are not suf-
ficient explanations. In considering the case of desis in hip hop,
I suggest several alternative theories for why, despite confronting
the fraught and complicated racial, gender, and sexual politics of
hip hop culture, these desis still choose to pursue musical careers.
The concept of polyculturalism illustrates how the appropriation
of Black popular culture by hip hop desis bears fruit through their
multiracial production of new cultural formations.

Making Race:
Polycultural Sampling as Identity and Community Formation
American desis create identities, music, and communities through
the use of sampling as they interact with new influences in novel
contexts. Sampling, or the practice of cutting and remixing seg-
ments of preexisting forms to create a fresh product, is founda-
tional to hip hop culture (Schloss 2004). The earliest DJs were
technological innovators who, in light of scarce resources, pro-
duced tracks by mixing two records that played simultaneously.
They reworked sound bytes—say a James Brown holler or part of
a Malcolm X speech—filled with historical and shared references
that produced a community of insiders. This sonic form of inter-
textual citation also exemplifies the “borrowing” of gender, sexual,
and racial expressions. Desis, too, interweave multiple references
upon their bodies and in their music to create inclusive communi-
ties of “resemblance.”
Hip hop’s defining practices make it especially open—or vulner-
able—to productions by new groups of people. Non-Black influ-
ences became core elements of early hip hop and illustrate poly-
culturalism (Kelley 1999; Prashad 2001), the idea that people forge
cultures by incorporating “outside” influences through inter-
actions. In contrast to multiculturalism, polyculturalism asserts
that no culture or group is a pure, bounded, and self-​referential
entity. “Culture,” Prashad (2001) writes, “is a process (that may
sometimes be seen as an object) with no identifiable origin. There-
fore, no cultural actor can, in good faith, claim proprietary inter-
est in what is claimed to be his or her authentic culture. ‘All the

Claiming Space, Making Race 23

culture to be had is culture in the making,’ notes anthropologist
Gerd Baumann. ‘All cultural differences are acts of differentiation,
and all cultural identities are acts of cultural identifications’” (66).
The artists form desi identities and hip hop communities through
polycultural, “cut ’n’ mix” formations (Hebdige 1987). Sampling
numerous influences in hip hop production contests the claims
of sole authorship and the idea that cultures are static and self-​
contained.17 Rather, individuals and collectives create identities
through dialogic exchanges of polyculturalism as sampling.
Hip hop desis challenge an American expectation that culture
and identity should align, and they elicit the suspicion of others
who ask why an Indian would love hip hop. Polyculturalism, which
contributes to debates about the ownership, purity, and member-
ship of hip hop, offers one response. If people work across cultures
to create new social formations, how can certain individuals “own”
particular cultures or a shared set of values, ideas, practices, and
their products? Polyculturalism emphasizes the multiple flows of
appropriation that minimize essentialist interpretations of culture,
a perspective equally applicable to hip hop and to diasporic South
Asians’ reconfigurations of ethnicity. Many Americans, however,
feel that identity is rooted in biology and ancestry, around which
communities should be organized. But, taken a step further, poly-
culturalism also suggests that individuals cannot claim to own par-
ticular identities, such as “Black” or “Asian,” either.
This book illustrates the lives of a small segment of Asian
America that chooses to engage in everyday meaningful contact
with America’s racial other. Rather than identifying strongly as eth-
nics (i.e., Indian) or assimilating into the dominant (White) Ameri-
can culture, desis drawn to hip hop create racial identities. They
amplify the underanalyzed and implicit impacts of Blacks on the
identity formation process of Asian and Latino youth. These artists
are not engaged in “blackface”; they do not love hip hop’s decon-
textualized and stereotyped images of racialized masculinity, hedo-
nism, and rebellion. They come to identify hip hop as their culture
because many of them grew up with it well before hip hop was mass
produced.
As the children of recent immigrants, desi youth have few models
of American-​based identities within their own communities (see
de Leon 2004). Ian Condry’s findings that Black expressive forms

24 Claiming Space, Making Race

resonate with some Japanese apply to desis in hip hop: “One para-
dox of hip-​hop in Japan is that it was not supposed to mean any-
thing to young Japanese, yet it does. They should not be hip-​hop, yet
they are” (2006: 207). The racially explicit and counterhegemonic
messages of hip hop that analyze and challenge racism are taken
up by these desis who apply them to their own experiences as dis-
tinctly racialized subjects. The demonization of Muslim-​looking
people following 9/11, which some of the artists have experienced
firsthand in New York City, does not form (but certainly informs)
the basis of their political ideologies, which developed earlier in
their lives. From their life histories we learn that they represent a
segment of Asian America that has always been concerned with the
impact of racism on United States-​born Asians even before they
could properly articulate what race, racism, and racialization were.
The model minority myth and other cultural theories of difference
obfuscate the fact that Whites have historically racialized Asians as
the opposite of Blacks as part of the process of justifying White
privilege. This understanding refers back to my first conception of
race: desi artists must contend with Whites’ racialization of South
Asians. Americans have framed Asian immigrants as cultural rather
than racialized populations, but desi hip hop artists push past such
reductive depictions by embodying and performing ethnic, sexual,
political, artistic, and racial identities. By theorizing the racial iden-
tity of non-White, non-Black immigrants we better understand
their experiences and the choices of their United States–born chil-
dren. Asians and Latinos, who often do not “fit” binary categories
of race (Davis 1996), pose a “problem” to conceptions of identity
only if we insist on a Black and White paradigm (Marable 1994;
see also Pulido 2006; Kurashige 2008). Examining how members of
these groups operate within and expand upon existing notions of
race will allow scholars to revise these frameworks to better explain
the dynamic and increasingly complex lives of Americans. Central
to this reconceptualization of Asian Americans’ racial status must
be the recognition of the centrality of racism in second-​generation
lives; this includes the racism that youth face as well as the racism
among co-​ethnics against other minorities.
The range of identities available and desirable to South Asians
in America centers not only on the fact of their non-Whiteness but
also on their being not Black. Nonetheless, racism structures the

Claiming Space, Making Race 25

lives of desis who are not “becoming White” despite those who
argue otherwise (Yancey 2003; see also Bonilla Silva and Embrick
2006; cp. Tuan 1999).18 The misconception of the honorary White-
ness of Asians is reinforced by South Asians’ underreporting of
racism and scholarly inattention to this phenomenon, particularly
as it affects middle-​class Asian Americans.19
Ethnicity, not race, has claimed the attention of most Asian
American scholarship, and South Asians do not usually view them-
selves in racial terms. The ethnicity model emphasizes how immi-
grants retain culture and negotiate its loss. Within the context of
multiculturalism, these theories also evade discussing power dif-
ferentials and group inequality by discussing cultural identities and
representation. Framing Asian American identity as strictly cultural
does not illuminate the myriad factors that structure minorities’
lives in the United States or that shape intergroup relations. Addi-
tionally, “culture” inadequately explains the differential standing of
groups in American society and this ideology easily sidesteps the
differential impacts of historical and institutional factors on the
lives of Asians and Blacks, in this case.
By emphasizing the relational dynamics among Asians, Whites,
and Blacks I wish to alleviate the overemphasis placed by scholars
on exchanges between Asians and Whites to the neglect of those
with Blacks. Racial triangulation analyzes Whites’ racialization of
Asians, including South Asians, as culturally foreign and unequal
outsiders to the nation and Blacks as inferior subjects of the na-
tion (Kim 1999). This theorization explains Americans’ “relative val-
orization” of Asians compared to Blacks (Kim 2003) that frames
the overall racial politics of South Asians in the United States who
tend to accept this elevated position. But by complying with this
racial ordering—by stamping the girmit, or contract (Prashad 2000:
104), of a supremacist system that disenfranchises all nondomi-
nant groups—they cosign their own relative devaluation.20 By side-
stepping “race,” cultural notions of difference leave South Asian
parents ill equipped to understand racism or explain race to their
children. A relational conception of “race” may frame the problem-
atic racial attitudes of many South Asians but it also constitutes
the building blocks of desi hip hoppers’ global race consciousness.
This leads to my second conception of how some desis are “making
race” in empowering ways, referring to their expansive communi-

26 Claiming Space, Making Race

ties and worldviews rather than to reified notions of identity, eth-
nicity, or authenticity.
Desi rappers and DJs understand how people create categories
and infuse them with meaning. For instance, they agree that the
heterogeneity of people of African descent denounces the singular
notion of “Blackness” that implies a biological or genetic basis to
a process that is actually socially and historically constructed (Hall
1983; Dyson 1993; Gilroy 1993a).21 This knowledge propels these
Brown performers to recuperate “desiness” and “Blackness” by en-
gaging in meaning making. They strategically employ the seeming
fixity of race through self-​representations that push beyond im-
posed identities toward re-​creation and empowerment (see Gilroy
2005). Thus the artists make race by rejecting and incorporating what
is available to them and reaching out for those less-​known samples,
including aspects of South Asian and African diasporic formations
in Eng­land and the Caribbean. In not being a biological concept
tied to ancestry that is imputed upon individuals, “desi” becomes a
racialized construct selected by some South Asians.
South Asians occupy a liminal position in American society: they
stand between foreigner and citizen, between South Asian and
American, between Black and White (van Gennep 1909; Turner
1969). Not even the racial designation “Asian American” properly
describes their sense of self. Although historically South Asians
fall into the larger narrative of Asians in America, their distinctions
are important. Like Pacific Islanders and Filipinos, they fall outside
mainstream conceptions of (East) Asians. Rather than being seen
as “Orientals” or “Asians,” Brown subcontinentals have been racial-
ized as spiritual exotics and increasingly as Muslim fundamental-
ist Middle Easterners. Thus, I weave South Asians in and out of the
story of Asian America.
This liminal status may be problematic for desis; after all, Michael
Omi and Howard Winant (1994) explain that without a racial iden-
tity Americans would have almost no identity at all. However, desis
in this project engage third spaces of possibility (Bhabha 1994) by
engaging ambiguity strategically in order to endow categories (“desi,”
“South Asian”) and ambiguous bodies with their own meanings.
Indeed, I do not celebrate their social locations and choices as if
they can ever overcome or transcend the circumscribing factors of
race (see Morris 1995). Yet while their subjectivities emerge in re-

Claiming Space, Making Race 27

sponse to United States racial binaries and discourses, the artists
attempt to change some of the terms of engagement by critiquing
racism and claiming explicitly racialized identities.
Their sliding, ambiguous positions offer potential spaces for
Asian Americans to reframe Black and White racial poles by mov-
ing laterally across communities thought to be unlikely allies. What
this work demonstrates is that these artists’ racial liminality and
their cross-​fertilizations illustrate difference (Derrida 1982); or, ac-
cording to Stuart Hall, a “‘weave’ of similarities and differences
that refuse to separate into fixed binary oppositions” (2000: 216).
Like liminality, desiness “arises in the gaps and aporias which
constitute potential sites of resistance, intervention, translation”
(216), and it offers the potential for rearticulation precisely due to
its unfixed nature. South Asians can harness their racial instability
and the ambiguity of desiness by endowing it with a new set of ref-
erences, thereby shaping how others view them.
The artists in this ethnography harness ambiguity strategically
to expand their options of being in the world beyond what is cur-
rently modeled for them by others. They broaden desiness to in-
clude political activism and conscious artistry. Some of them work
alongside other young desi activists and artists who fight for the
rights of marginalized South Asian populations, including the
working class, undocumented immigrants, and gays and lesbians
(Das Gupta 2006). Anti-​racist youth who employ popular culture
to speak truth to power embody Foucauldian notions of power as
forms of resistance against hegemony, both of which are consti-
tuted through contestation and are therefore unstable. Desi artists
find hip hop their preferred vehicle of expression as many aspects
of this culture exemplify these same notions of resistance and em-
powerment.
The racial self-​conceptions of desi artists illustrate the assertions
among Mixed Race studies scholars against singular racial identi-
ties, or the idea that people must choose “only one” race. Instead,
like people of mixed racial descent, the artists embrace “both/and”
rather than “either/or” identifications. This reflects their toler-
ance for ambiguity, difference, and unresolved tensions, and they
are more concerned with understanding rather than “overcoming”
difference. Liminal individuals live in and through sameness and
difference simultaneously expressed through their identification

28 Claiming Space, Making Race

with multiple communities. As David Scott notes, “Against the old
view of identity as self-​presence, [Stuart Hall] urges that we think
in terms of an open-​ended process of identification. In this sense of
it, identity is not a fixed and permanent entity existing continuously
through time but an always unfinished suturing together of frag-
ments” (2005: 14). In addition, desis forge identifications across
constricting boundaries by “suturing together” samples to create
multiracial communities rooted in shared interests. Hardly color-
blind or idealistic, they engage upfront with racial ideologies that
construct them as exotic others and fill the category of desiness
with new meanings. We can understand the choices of desis in hip
hop by contextualizing their predicaments within historical prece-
dents of Afro-​Asian relations.

Afro-​Asian Precedents
I understood Vivek’s hesitation to claim a Black identity during our
interview. We had met recently and although he was familiar with
my project, he didn’t know my take on South Asian hip hoppers.
After all, there have been historical examples of Asians claiming a
non-White status not as a sign of coalition but for economic gain.
In the 1980s the Association of Indians in America, whose mem-
bers included business owners, petitioned to change their status
from “White,” as they were categorized for the 1970s census, to
“Asian” (see Lessinger 1995). This was perhaps not so much a re-
flection of a politicized “Asian American” identity or a refutation of
a “White” status; rather, for these particular individuals the moti-
vation was to qualify for minority business loans. More recently,
the High Court in South Africa allowed Chinese to be reclassified
as “Black” so that they, too, could benefit from business and gov-
ernmental policies for non-Whites. These changes have occurred at
institutional levels and have garnered much attention, especially
within the realm of popular culture. Mississippi Masala is Mira Nair’s
1991 film about star-​crossed lovers and relations between working-​
class Indian immigrants and Blacks in small-​town Mississippi. In
a telling scene a Gujarati Indian motel owner proclaims “United
we stand, divided we fall!” to the Black owner of a carpet cleaning
company (played by Denzel Washington). As the movie progresses,
however, we realize this is only a strategic and momentary alliance

Claiming Space, Making Race 29

that the Indian employed to avoid a lawsuit. These kinds of Indian
identifications with Blacks for economic gains while they maintain
geographical and economic separation are common (in East Africa,
the West Indies, Europe, and the United States) and seem “insin-
cere” (see Jackson 2005). Additionally, the aforementioned legal
and institutional decisions have led some Blacks to feel mistrust-
ful of Asians’ identification with a minority position, which carries
over to their skepticism toward South Asians in hip hop. For South
Asians who pursue careers in hip hop, however, their claim to a mi-
nority status is not about economic profits (in fact, many of the art-
ists decry the materialism of their ethnic communities, see Sharma
2007); rather, it is about political and artistic expression.
Researchers of Indians’ attitudes about Blacks examine inter-
racial tensions experienced by groups such as the Sidis of western
India (see Jayasuria and Pankhurst 2003; Hawley 2008). Historians
have also pointed to British colonial notions of race that may have
encouraged Indians’ anti-​Black attitudes. Subcontinentals who
worked in South Africa, Kenya, and Uganda (where Idi Amin ex-
pelled Indians) also found ways to remain separate from Black Afri-
cans through endogamous marriages and strong cultural identities
(Lal, Reeves, and Rai 2007; Oonk 2007; Herzig 2008). Subconti-
nentals may have traveled with their ideas about otherness, includ-
ing privileging themselves and fairness over Blacks and darkness,
in their migration to the West Indies as indentured laborers and
to Eng­land and the United States where such notions overlap with
Western racial discourses.22 And although African, Caribbean, and
South Asian former British subjects came together as “Blacks” in
Eng­land, as among the Southall Black Sisters, this unity began to
fracture during the 1980s when other South Asians demanded par-
ticular representation and distinguished themselves from people
of African descent.23 Thus European colonial interests have crafted
global and historical precedents of the conflicts between South
Asians and Blacks. These tensions also arise in the United States
because of the patterns of racialization and colonial displacement
that locate these groups in sectors of the economy that induce com-
petition and reify their differences.
Despite antagonisms that characterize interminority relations,
the burgeoning scholarship in Afro-​Asian studies uncovers histori-
cal precedents for Black and Asian alliances (Du Bois in Mullen and

30 Claiming Space, Making Race

Watson 2005). Vijay Prashad (2000) hails W. E. B. Du Bois’s call
for solidarity among Third World peoples across the globe and de-
tails a history of Indian and African collaboration among traders
between Africa, over the Indian Ocean and into India and China,
well before European “adventurers” added their own foul spices to
the mix. In Walter Rodney’s analysis of the Black Power movement
in the Caribbean, he includes all non-White people in one defini-
tion of Black: “The black people of whom I speak, therefore, are
non-​whites—the hundreds of millions of people whose homelands
are in Asia and Africa, with another few millions in the Americas”
(1969: 16). He highlights the labor strikes held in concert by Black
and Indian workers against exploitative conditions in the West
Indies. Therefore, as Prashad writes, “The lack of connection be-
tween desi advancement on the backs of blacks and of the use of
desis in a war against black Americans comes at the expense of a
tradition of solidarity and fellowship that began at least a hundred
years ago” (171).
The large-​scale migration of Blacks and Asians to the United
Kingdom since the 1950s makes Britain an important comparison
for this study. The relationship between Blacks and Asians in the
United States converges with and diverges from that in Eng­land;
the nation-​bound perspectives within American Ethnic Studies ob-
fuscates these global and historical comparisons, thus leading to
their underexamination. Many of the South Asians who came to
Eng­land in the 1950s came, along with their African-​descended
compatriots, from the West Indies. They shared colonial pasts and
a racist present in the “belly of the beast,” which made economic
advancement difficult. The migration histories and the overlap-
ping racializations of people of African and South Asian descent
in Eng­land are specific. They cannot be generalized into the United
States context where a majority of South Asians arrived as profes-
sionals in the 1960s and 1970s and have rarely been categorized
as Black, for either politically progressive or oppressive purposes.
Additionally, the class differences between South Asians and Blacks
in Eng­land are less extreme than they are in the United States due to
each nation’s differing labor demands, immigration patterns, and
forms of racism.
In contrast to their shared immigration history in Britain, in
popular United States discourse the citizen-​foreigner dichotomy

Claiming Space, Making Race 31

splits Blacks from Asians: despite immigration status or ethno-​
national identities, Americans often assume that all Blacks in the
United States are African American; in contrast, irrespective of
length of stay, citizenship status, or distance from Asia, Asians in
America are assumed, like Latinos, to be recent immigrants. This
divide between racialized Blacks and ethnicized Asians empha-
sizes a link between slavery and an American minority status.24
In speaking of the umbrella category “Black” in Eng­land, Stuart
Hall explains that “one unintended effect was to privilege the Afro-​
Caribbean experience over that experienced by Asians” (2000: 224;
see Modood 1994 for a critique of “Black”). In addition to charting
the rise of the emergent Black British identity, postcolonial scholars
criticize the hegemony of the Black authenticity of African Ameri-
cans that neglects the experiences of others in the African diaspora
(Gilroy 1993a). Their critique of racial essentialism and Hall’s call
to “the end of the innocent notion of the essential black subject”
(1992: 32) highlights different ways of being “Black” in the world
that should not be homogenized. Alternately, despite their differ-
ences, in both the United States and Eng­land Blacks and Asians are
linked by their racialization and experiences with racism. As Rehan
Hyder writes, “For Britain’s black and Asian minorities, the com-
mon experiences of prejudice and racism have meant that a sense
of cultural and ethnic identity has assumed a particularly important
role in many aspects of everyday life” (2004: 17). Although less ana-
lyzed, racism is also formative for South Asians on this side of the
Atlantic.
In addition to their attention to multiple communities of color,
some British race studies scholars offer theories applicable to the
United States context (Gilroy 1993a; Brah 1996; Sharma, Hutnyk,
and Sharma 1996; Hall 2000; Hesse 2000). They emphasize the dan-
gers of essentialism and chart out possibilities for anti-​essentialist
multiracial solidarities. Although the case of Eng­land is particu-
lar, the claims of these theorists who illustrate an inclusive com-
parative race studies scholarship apply to the United States case—
including, for example, that Blacks have ethnicities (Hall 2000);
that South Asians and Blacks are both racialized minorities sub-
ject to overlapping processes of historical and global exploitation,
displacement, and racisms via coloniality (Hesse and Sayyid 2006);
and that acknowledging these overlaps does not erase difference

32 Claiming Space, Making Race

but allows minority groups to inhabit a stance of belonging-​in-​
difference (Scott 2005: 2).
British South Asian musicians who incorporate rapping, such as
M.I.A., Hard Kaur, and the band FunDaMental, along with Ameri-
can desi hip hoppers stand within this larger narrative of conflict-
ing and cooperative relations, of overlapping and discrete histo-
ries.25 At the same time, the choices by hip hop desis to defy ethnic
expectations by committing their time, resources, and politics to
art and to nondesi peers could only have emerged in this time and
place and in this particular form. In this sense, they are “atypical
desis,” distinguished also from those of the mainstream second
generation whose lives have been detailed in existing ethnogra-
phies.

Methods:
Comparative Racial Studies through Multisited Ethnography
I suggest a race-​centered approach to Asian American studies and
a comparative approach to the study of race. This methodology em-
phasizes the impact of race on immigrants and their youth and con-
tributes to larger debates in ethnic studies. Histories impact the
present, including how power and inequality are institutionally in-
scribed in contemporary societal structures such as in education,
the job market, and the prison industrial system. Comparative ap-
proaches to race illustrate the specific and overlapping processes
of racialization and highlight the dynamics of within-​group and
cross-​group relations. The theories that emerge from comparative
race projects interpret how a multitude of individuals live race in
America. Therefore, this research furthers our understanding of
race and racism and has the potential to illustrate models of inter-
minority solidarities. In illustrating relations between immigrant
and native-​born minorities this project disrupts the Black and
White binary and fills in the contours of contemporary interminor-
ity relations. It maps the emergent possibilities of coalitions and
suggests models for their creation. Analyzing relations between
two minority groups whose hierarchical relation to one another is
under construction contributes to theories that explore the dialogic
formation of individual and group identities.
In taking its cue from Asian American youth, Asian American

Claiming Space, Making Race 33

studies can move beyond the model minority myth, intergenera-
tional conflict, internal Asian American community dynamics,
and their relation only to Whites. A fuller picture of Asian America
emerges when we expand our politics, recommit to the founding
principles of Asian American studies that link the academy with
community, and dedicate ourselves to knowledge production and
cross-​racial activism. This includes coming to grips with our com-
monalities without erasing important differences. If much of the
literature on Asian Americans—the fastest-​growing group in the
United States—continues to focus on their ethnic and cultural
identities and is still largely based on assimilation models of up-
ward mobility, hip hop scholarship has been equally inward looking
by focusing on issues of authenticity, corporate commodification,
and the racial politics of Black popular culture. In pulling together
Asian American studies and African American studies, this cultural
studies ethnography details one basis of cross-​racial social move-
ments. Such a race-​centered approach is also a defining feature of
the music made by South Asian American hip hop artists.
Some of the most exciting work in South Asian American studies
focuses on the lives of “atypical” desis, including those with “alter-
native” class, religious, and sexual identities (all of whom are rep-
resented in this project) (Gopinath 2005; Das Gupta 2006; Maira
2009). Depicting the various processes of racialization that affect
Brown people, especially since 9/11, necessitates that we account
for—and not just theorize—actual interracial relations. This project
ethnographically illustrates the impacts of Black people and Black
popular culture on the lives and worldviews of some South Asians.
Since 2000 South Asians in hip hop have shown me what a
sampled cross-​racial life looks like by supplementing my analyses
of their lyrics and what they shared with me during taped conversa-
tions. Their lives reveal an integral and complex weaving together of
passions, politics, practices, and ideologies that spill over the realm
of music. Grounding theories within the realities of everyday lives
is of paramount importance. Scholars are able to produce more
accurate theories of appropriation and better understand relations
between groups when they root their interpretations of how and
why people appropriate by spending time with them, understand-
ing their perspectives, and observing their relations with others. An
ethnographic approach contests analyses that speak of borrowing

34 Claiming Space, Making Race

practices as fixed and unidirectional. It also allows anthropologists
to weigh people’s words with their lifestyles.
This book stems from research spanning a decade, but it is par-
ticularly rooted in ethnographic research from 2000 to 2002 that
includes intensive participant observation and recorded and infor-
mal interviews with over one hundred people, including the artists
who are now mostly in their thirties. Although they are mostly male
and straight, the artists include women and one who identifies as
a boi (a term used within the LGBT community to, in this case,
refer to a female-​born person who does not fully or only identify as
female or feminine). I also gained insight from nondesis, includ-
ing African Americans, Africans, and Afro-​Caribbean Islanders in
hip hop and other music industries in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Among other topics, we discussed hip hop, cultural ownership, and
South Asian and Black relations.
In addition to countless conversations and get-​togethers, I re-
corded forty-​seven interviews that ranged from one to three hours,
along with fifty-​nine semistructured formal (written) and informal
interviews. I corroborated the performers’ past recollections with
my own firsthand accounts of their cities and schools. Generally, I
conducted tape recorded interviews in coffee shops, while the in-
formal interviews and conversations occurred during the course of
hanging out, driving, and at nightclubs and concerts. Although I
spent a lot of time with the artists during the day (especially if I had
arranged an interview), the majority of my fieldwork took place at
night. Primary events and locations included concerts, hip hop and
reggae nightclubs in the Bay Area, and house parties where some of
the artists mixed records and freestyled. I also attended as many of
the artists’ live shows as possible; these were often in other states
and in popular venues such as the House of Blues in Los Angeles
and Manhattan’s Knitting Factory. In addition, many of our con-
versations occurred over the twenty-​two-​month period by phone,
through email, and in person as we drove to an event together or
enjoyed a meal and drinks. Although my contact with the artists is
more sporadic since the period of my fieldwork, I continue to speak
and collaborate with some of them through the present.
I engaged other young and old South Asians who were not nec-
essarily involved in hip hop but who had important perspectives on
this topic. I met them at South Asian events; for instance at the Alli-

Claiming Space, Making Race 35

ance of South Asians Taking Action (ASATA) meetings, the Indo-​
American Community Service Center (ICSC) in Santa Clara where
I volunteered, at annual events (e.g., the India Day Festival held in
Fremont), and on college campuses across the Bay Area.26 In addi-
tion, I hosted parties and gatherings where different artists were
able to meet one another and develop professional networks over
time. While most of the ethnographic work took place in public
places, I also spent hours talking with people in their homes and
in mine as we browsed through our music collections and talked
about music, politics, and relationships.

Conclusion
Overall, this book reveals how these artists take the tools provided
from ethnic and racial communities—an immigrant sensibility, a
sense of otherness, an articulation of racial pride, and a counter-
hegemonic discourse—to craft expansive politics. By confronting
ethnic and racial norms and articulating cross-​racial links in rhyme,
they change what being an American desi means. These performers
also wish to alter the terms of understanding “difference” more
generally: they present South Asians as unequal citizens in a White
nation rather than honorific models, and they reframe South Asian
and Black relations as mutually constitutive and created through
lateral acts of cross-​pollination.
Brown members of the hip hop generation claim space outside of
ethnic parameters by engaging directly with their minority status,
racism, and inequality. They contest the impossibility that Asians
“would choose to move in the direction of color” (Wong 2004: 187).
Their lives resound with the notes of cultural, social, and political
cross-​fertilizations between South Asians and Blacks. This book is
an ode to the music and culture that became the poetics and politics
of the desi hip hop artists and shaped my own craft and worldview.
Hip hop plays a defining role in the development of new models of
immigrant identity, one that privileges the cultivation of positive
and progressive interracial relationships in an increasingly diverse
world.

36 Claiming Space, Making Race

 1.
Alternative Ethnics
Rotten Coconuts and Ethnic Hip Hop

In my freshman year of college I decided to go to the first Indus dance

of the year. I hung out for a while and then went to my dorm room early.
Two Indian guys (already two more Indian people than I had ever really
known and hung out with) came to my dorm room after the dance.
They said, “Hey, everybody’s talking about you. Yeah, they even have
a nickname for you. They’re calling you ‘the rotten coconut.’”
I didn’t get it. I said, “Rotten coconut? What does that mean?”
“They’re saying that you’re Brown on the outside, Black on the inside.”
—KB, Indian American MC
Race, not ethnicity, is the explanatory and hermeneutic concept needed
to describe the heterogeneous terrain of conflicting culture in the United
States. Race, not ethnicity, articulates with class and gender to generate
the effects of power in all its multiple protean forms. Ethnicity theory
elides power relations, conjuring an illusory state of parity among bar-
gaining agents. It serves chiefly to underwrite a functionalist mode of
sanctioning a given social order. It tends to legitimize a pluralist but hier-
archical status quo.
—E. San Juan Jr., Racial Formation/Critical Transformations

The South Indian American KB was born in the 1970s and grew up
in the majority-​Black city of Richmond, California, which is known
for its own brand of hip hop and was once voted the “most danger-
ous city in the United States.”1 He began rapping at a young age
and by the time he graduated from high school KB was managing
the rapping careers of several of his Black friends. More attuned to
the lives and tastes of these peers than to those of Indians, he con-
tributed to the culture of their generation’s namesake: hip hop. In
the 1990s he attended college in Berkeley, and although its loca-
tion is just a few miles south of Richmond it may have seemed a
world away with its hippies, progressive politics, and racial mixing.
In college KB continued with what he knew: he rhymed, expanded
his mind, and wrote his BA thesis on the impact of popular media
depictions of South Asians. At this time, KB met three other desi
men and together they formed a hip hop group, Karmacy. The col-
lege environment contrasted with both his urban childhood and
his later experience in the suburban private and mostly White high
school he attended once his family could afford to send him there.
At Berkeley he came across a community quite different from the
one he claimed—he found desi youth culture just as it was begin-
ning to form among the second-​generation children of Indian pro-
fessionals.
Having grown up without desi peers, KB decided to attend the
first Indus dance in order to explore what this clique found so in-
triguing about socializing strictly among co-​ethnics. His disillu-
sionment with their insularity coupled with the “rotten coconut”
incident related in the epigraph above was an experience encoun-
tered by other artists, and it heightened their ambivalence toward
other young South Asians. The artists were also seeking a commu-
nity but did not find it by retreating into a closely defined ethnic so-
cial group. Ethnicity was an ill-​fitting cloak that neither protected
them against negative experiences nor sufficiently expressed the
totality of their beings.
The artists’ interactions with co-​ethnics reveal the benefits and
limitations of both analyzing and building community in immi-
grant America around ethnicity. By ethnicity I refer to the sense of
belonging that emerges from the combination of shared cultural
practices and shared ancestry. My definition highlights the dias-
poric and transnational material and emotional ties among mem-
bers of Indian, Sri Lankan, or Pakistani communities, for instance,
and the fresh and prevalent impacts of immigration upon them. Of
course, individuals experience ethnicity and race (the topic of the

38 Alternative Ethnics
next chapter) simultaneously, and the dynamics internal to South
Asian American ethnic communities, including hegemonic notions
of desiness, develop through interracial relations. However, I pull
the concepts of race and ethnicity apart for two reasons. First, I
analyze the distinct impacts of desis and nondesis upon the artists,
who generally socialize with members of these groups separately.
Second, I theorize race and ethnicity differently, whereby ethnicity
describes the pull and obligations toward a group defined by cul-
ture and ancestry while race refers both to imposed categories as
well as to emergent identifications across existing categories. Race
and ethnicity cannot be wholly disentangled and their impacts and
definitions overlap at times; nonetheless, theirs is a tension that
generates new theories to understand life. Analyzing these con-
cepts in this way illustrates the separate and overlapping influences
of co-​ethnics and of Blacks upon desi artists who work within this
nexus to rearticulate alternative forms of desiness by identifying
with Blacks. A race-​centered and critical approach to the limits of
ethnicity yields theoretical clarity on the salience and incomplete-
ness of analyzing Asian Americans as ethnics only.
Ethnicity is neither the only nor even the primary identity for all
Asian American youth. And although many desis describe their
peers as “White identified,” Whiteness is not their only racial
option.2 This chapter addresses the shortcomings of theorists who
assert that ethnicity is an internally cohesive identity and a posi-
tive reaction to immigrants’ exclusion from mainstream America.
South Asian American hip hop artists defy expectations of the new
second generation by turning away from both an ethno-​national
identity (as “Sri Lankans,” for instance) and from an assimilated
mainstream White identity (Portes and Zhou 1993; Rumbaut 1994).
Instead, I address why some second-​generation immigrants choose
to identify with Blacks (not all of whom represent “the underclass”)
when they do not have to. This phenomenon also begs a reconsid-
eration of just how optional and flexible ethnicity is for South
Asians (Leonard 1992; Kibria 2000), particularly when gatekeep-
ers rigidify the “choices” of co-​ethnics. Without recourse to White-
ness because of their racial otherness, they cannot voluntarily or
symbolically choose whether, how, and when to “be ethnic” (Barth
1969; Glazer and Moynihan 1975; Gans 1996). Finally, ethnic iden-
tity is also not the only available reaction to racism, as predicted by

Alternative Ethnics 39
reactive ethnicity.3 We see this in the reformulations of desiness
into panethnicity by these hip hoppers as they attempt to create ex-
pansive and inclusive communities.
Desi performers learn important lessons from their respective
ethnic communities that cultivate diasporic sensibilities and mem-
bership in transnational communities with distinctive cultural
practices that impact their music. Identifying strongly as “Indian”
or “Nepali,” they nonetheless feel constrained by their elders who
define “real” or authentic ethnic expressions and norms. Part of
the critical distance of hip hop desis stems from not fitting into
such hegemonic conceptions; yet even those artists who do fit
the parameters—who are North Indian, middle class, and upper
caste—are sometimes critical of ethnic parochialism and chauvin-
ism.
This chapter illuminates South Asian Americans’ heterogeneity,
hybridity, and multiplicity (Lowe 1996). Many studies reaffirm
the dominant image of South Asians as Hindu Indians who have
achieved upward mobility, maintain close family ties, and live the
American dream. My work aligns with scholars who analyze the
unequal heterogeneity within South Asian America—the maltreat-
ment, disownment, and silencing of desis who are not hetero-
sexual, Hindu, and middle class, for instance (Prashad 2000; Gopi-
nath 2005; Das Gupta 2006). Dominant conceptions of proper
desiness can push those who are marginalized and who disagree
with such practices to disidentify with their ethnic communities.
Hip hop desis are among a new generation of progressive youth
who reconfigure themselves as members of groups outside the
bounds of ethnicity.
Over the course of their childhood and college years, desi per-
formers also reveal the kinds of progressive work that ethnicity,
reconfigured, can take on to nourish alliances. Like other activist-​
oriented desi youths, these artists tussle with desi conservatism.
Ethnographies have detailed how other Brown youths like those in
this project “negotiate ethnicity” (Purkayastha 2005) as they con-
tend with ethnic immersion, rejection, and reformulation. How-
ever, hip hoppers are unique desis for embracing Blackness and
Black people and for their emphasis upon the role of Black popular
culture in remixing ethnicity. Artists in this group create “ethnic hip
hop” to articulate alternative iterations of desiness by working out

40 Alternative Ethnics
contentious rather than essentialized or naturalized connections
to ethnicity (Sharma 2008). Using their words, beats, and samples,
they criticize parochial and conservative renditions of desiness that
delimit “proper” ethnicity. Some create ethnic hip hop as their ex-
pression of ethnic allegiances and commitments to inclusiveness
and commonality across differences. The artists take a role in shap-
ing, through performance and lyrics, how desis present themselves
to America, thereby impacting people’s conceptions of South Asian
Americans.
South Asian American rappers and DJs perform alternative iden-
tities that reject the assumed link between blood ties and belong-
ing and look to history and power relations within ethnic com-
munities. Desi youths who identify with Blacks reveal complex
interactions that suggest nothing less than a reconfiguration of our
notions about the role of ethnicity in the lives of Asian Americans.
In fact, desi artists reveal how ethnicity also enacts racism upon
others through conservative notions of authenticity that dovetail
with mainstream racial politics. The conservative racial politics of
hegemonic desiness becomes a motivating factor, in collusion with
White racism and mainstream discourses that obfuscate its opera-
tions, to foster ambivalent feelings about ethnicity. This group re-
veals a willingness to trade the privileges of their ethnic and class
status, indeed their very status of being non-Black. In turn, they
embrace self-​conceptions geared toward disenfranchised popula-
tions and open to social change. Ultimately, some individuals em-
ploy hip hop to express the alternative desiness that emerges from
their critiques and embrace of particular aspects of South Asian cul-
tures. This rearticulation opens up the very possibilities of commu-
nity formation outside the bonds of ethnic identity, which I discuss
in chapter 2.

Exceptional Desis?
Locating Hip Hoppers within South Asian America
The family biographies of South Asian hip hop artists in the United
States are part of the overall story of the second wave of Asian im-
migrants who arrived following the Immigration Act of 1965. Desis
who perform hip hop reflect the enormous ethnic, regional, lin-
guistic, religious, caste, gender, sexual, and class diversity of South

Alternative Ethnics 41
Asians. Their parents, in partial response to their new status as “mi-
norities,” want their cultures to flourish within this adopted coun-
try in particularly crafted ways. First-​generation ideas and family
practices couple with class status and family structure to influence
second-​generation notions of ethnic authenticity that lead some
desis to hip hop.
South Asians in America create a particular “hegemonic” form
of ethnic identity, which Biju Mathew and Vijay Prashad (2000) call
“Yankee Hindutva” due to the nexus of factors impacting their ar-
rival. Global and historical forces (the British colonization of India
and the Second World War) and economic and political policies (a
postwar economic boom, the need for professionals in the United
States, civil rights gains, and the opening up of immigration quo-
tas in the 1960s) intersect with changing discourses of race that
continue to justify White supremacy in the face of changing demo-
graphics. Skilled postcolonials arrived in 1960s civil rights America
as the nation was reevaluating its approach to race from biological
discourses to similarly problematic cultural understandings of dif-
ference. This shift led to the idea that these new immigrants were
the “model minority,” a culturalist ideology that “praised” Asians
and disciplined Blacks with the corresponding theory of Black cul-
tural pathology.
South Asian immigrants, eager to enculturate their youth, re-
invented conservative elements of their cultures and explained
group inequality in the United States through culturalist explana-
tions. According to Vijay Prashad, “U.S. multiculturalism joins with
desi conservatism to invoke certain aspects of desi culture as desi
culture tout courte” (2000: 113). As the status of many professional
Asians grew in the hourglass economy of the 1980s, so too did their
distance from working-​class communities, including third-​wave
South Asians and many Blacks and Latinos. South Asians generally
adopted the idea that their success was due to strong cultural and
family values and they encouraged their children with the notion
that success was earned through hard work and persistence. This
bootstraps theory coincided with governmental neoliberal eco-
nomic policies that cut and privatized services (Dolhinow 2010).
The professional status of some of the artists’ families protected
them from these changes, thereby enabling their parents to pro-

42 Alternative Ethnics
vide them with private schools and stable homes in predominantly
White neighborhoods. But growing economic disparities hid the
existence of those who did not fare as well. Those desi artists in less
financially secure families, particularly those whose parents were
separated, grew up in class-​diverse minority neighborhoods and at-
tended school systems with Black peers who were directly affected
by changing economic conditions.
Hegemonic desiness emerged within this context among
wealthier Indians who praised their financial and educational ex-
ceptionalism. The aims of these ethnic gatekeepers coincided with
those of the American politicians and decision makers who ad-
vanced the idea that individuals are responsible for their own sta-
tion in life. They used Asians to illustrate the end of institutional
racism, and as long as these “models” supported the doctrine of
progress, they would not pose a problem. Some Asian Americans,
however, became troublemakers and crafted their own definitions
of success.
Second-​generation desis across all classes who were born in the
1970s and grew up in the Bay Area were particularly affected by the
identity-​based racial movements of the previous decade. The Black
Panthers started in Oakland, California, and the Black Power move-
ment influenced the Asian American, American Indian, and Chi-
cano movements. The heightened race consciousness of Bay Area
residents is in no small part due to the efforts of members of the
Black Students Union and the pan-​racial Third World Liberation
Front who held the longest student strike in history at San Fran-
cisco State University, thereby creating the nation’s first and sec-
ond (at Berkeley) ethnic studies departments. Some of the artists
attended these schools and were undeniably influenced by the logic
and goals of these social movements well into the 1990s, despite
the national sentiment that America had moved on. The pursuit of
elite educations and economic advancement by South Asians and
their closed ethnic circles make it difficult to ascertain the impact
of these global and race-conscious politics upon desis. Indeed, as
Glenn Omatsu (2000) describes, many desi youths illustrate the
shift taken by Asian Americans from broad-​based radical politi-
cal and anti-​war activism in the 1960s to a conservative and apo-
litical stance with the rise of second-​generation professionals in

Alternative Ethnics 43
the 1990s.4 However, some individuals, like these desis, continue
with the spirit of anti-​racist and consciousness-​raising movements,
which infuse their music.
In this section I analyze the expectations, including ethnic in-
sularity, cultural distinctiveness, and material success, within the
artists’ various South Asian communities that limited competing
possibilities. The childhood experiences of artists from wealthier
White neighborhoods and those from urban, racially mixed cities
explain their ethnic ambivalence rooted in their critique of rigid
expectations and conservatism. Hegemonic desiness opens them
to other “families of resemblance” beyond the bounds of ethnicity
(Lipsitz 1994).

Ethnic Insularity:
Middle-​Class South Asians from Predominantly White Areas
Most of the desi artists’ parents came from urban regions through-
out South Asia; a smaller number came from Fiji, Eng­land, and the
West Indies. Their fathers came to the United States as Eng­lish-​
speaking doctors, engineers, and graduate students in science and
medicine and their mothers worked as office managers, doctors’
assistants, and homemakers.5 Many of these families faced occupa-
tional downgrading in a gender- and race-​segregated market. The
shifts in family status from South Asia to the United States became
a source of frustration for some artists, especially for those whose
lives then became economically unstable. Nonetheless, despite the
high cost of living in California and New York where most of the
artists grew up, none of them came from poor families; rather, they
represented a range of middle-​class statuses. Nearly half of them
were middle- and upper-​middle-​class members of nuclear fami-
lies that lived in mostly White suburban-​t ype neighborhoods in
medium-​sized cities like Fremont, California, home to hi-​tech and
other professionals.6
Along with “Indianness,” wealthier South Asian families sought
to maintain mainstream American markers of success: a suburban-​
type solid middle-​class status, two-​parent household, and access
to White neighborhoods and schools. Members of the first genera-
tion drew strength from their cultural traditions, including filial
piety, hard work, and the importance of secure futures and endoga-

44 Alternative Ethnics
mous marriages. These expectations worked well with mainstream
American ideas of how to integrate newcomers in ways that allow
them their practices, given they cannot—or will not—be granted
equal status.
The privileged class status that these artists shared with their
White neighbors did not prevent them from routine encounters
with racism. White high school classmates called one artist “dot,”
referring to the bindi that some South Asian women wear on their
forehead; others were called “monkey” and “nigger” (and later
“nigger-​lover”).7 “They were so ignorant,” stated one DJ, “they used
to call me ‘chink.’” Like other Asians (Chan 1991; Espiritu 1992,
1997), South Asians have been victim to multiple forms of racism:
occupational downgrading, the glass ceiling, political invisibility,
religious persecution, and hate crimes (including the Dotbusters,
or individuals in New Jersey who violently targeted South Asians in
the 1980s, and the fatal violence and unconstitutional detentions
following 9/11). Despite such violence, South Asians tend to side-
step racial matters and their victimization. When the MC D’Lo re-
ported White harassment to his/her Sri Lankan father in the 1980s,
he said, “Yeah, it happens and don’t worry about it.” His response
was typical among South Asians who are often unfamiliar with how
American racism works but who are nonetheless aware of it: “They
tried not to make a big deal of it,” said D’Lo.
A widespread response to racism faced by these postcolonial
elites is ethnic insularity, a part of reactive ethnicity. South Asians
have turned inward to foster communities and organizations along
ethnic, regional, religious, and linguistic lines for solace from ten-
sions at work. In the poem “From Silent Confusion to Blaring Heal-
ing” D’Lo muses: “Sometimes her fellow uprooted friends / tried to
re-​plant themselves in historical soil / soil common to their ances-
tors.”8 Similarly, Muslim artists report that their families partici-
pate in closed social circles based on religious sectionalism. “Pretty
tribal” is how one Pakistani Shia MC from Staten Island describes
his family. “Like many South Asian families we stuck to our niche
community. . . . Most and maybe all of our social relations came out
of the religious community. . . . We pretty much associate with our-
selves.”9
Rigid ethnic borders also help parents fulfill their central goal of
raising children who will not only learn but embrace cultural and

Alternative Ethnics 45
South Asians in the United States continue to practice their religious
and cultural events. Author’s photograph.

religious practices, gendered roles, and generational obligations

(Prashad 2000: 118). They pass down to their children beliefs akin
to the Protestant work ethic hand in hand with the importance of
family, community, and culture. Middle-​class desis are subjected
to evaluation by co-​ethnics through competition and gossip. “No
Shame,” a poem in D’Lo’s third collection, describes the predica-
ment of Sri Lankan kids under the eyes of such watchdogs:
Have to politely ward off the gossip Aunties and
dodge intrusively interrogating uncles. Have to
tiptoe ’bout everything, have to look good, get the
edumacation, go to med or law school.
You know the boring background story.

Despite such monitoring, second-​generation desi youth who grew

up during the 1980s—a decade in which Asian Americans faced in-
creasing racial violence—employed similar insular strategies to
contend with racism (Maira 2002; Purkayastha 2005). Artists such
as D’Lo, Bella, and Jonny from middle-​class suburban neighbor-
hoods benefited from close-​knit ethnic communities. Their fami-
lies provided them with cultural practices, historical knowledge,

46 Alternative Ethnics
and a sense of belonging to a transnational community of real and
fictive aunties and uncles that helped them find their footing in
America (see Purkayastha 2005).
Many desis understand their cultural uniqueness in multicultural
terms and they deny the relevance of race while racism shapes their
daily lives. This is not the case for hip hop artists. Desis from White
neighborhoods who created hip hop contest ethnic insularity and
offer reflections rooted in an analysis of race and class rather than
in culture. Jonny, a hip hop journalist from Fremont, California,
sees that “a lot of Indians socialize together, still dislike other im-
migrant groups, and are quick not to embrace the Black experience
in America as being similar to their own.” He hypothesizes that,
like his, other Indian families understand “race as a function of
their own experiences as immigrants and as assimilants into the
successful economic track of America (usually guided by the White
experience).” His link between Indians’ upward mobility (class)
and their desire to align with Whites rather than Blacks (race) is an
alternative to the culture-​based analyses that underwrite the model
minority myth.
Desis in hip hop criticize as parochialism the insularity of mem-
bers of the first generation who “don’t see the connection with
anyone.” First- and second-​generation members of South Asian
communities have reacted to life in America by cultivating strong
internal ethnic bonds, but this move inward also signifies a trou-
bling “strategy of disidentification” (Kibria 2000: 84) with Blacks
and Latinos. The hip hoppers’ ambivalence toward ethnicity par-
tially stems from the reaction of elder immigrants who repress
their experiences with racism while discriminating against other
minorities. Thus, despite their access to a privileged identity, these
artists do not find comfort in ancestry-​based exclusivity.
Artists from wealthier families reveal some of the pressures faced
by second-​generation youth, including ethnic insularity, a focus on
economic success, and a sense of exceptionalism. Despite the bene-
fits of such a community, they sometimes question ethnicity be-
cause it requires them to sacrifice too many of their own interests
and perspectives. Ethnicity is adopted by South Asians unevenly,
even by those who have access to hegemonic desiness. What, then, do
we learn about the “options” of those who grew up without strong
ethnic networks in diverse and working-​class neighborhoods?

Alternative Ethnics 47
 Atypical Desis: South Asians from Racially Mixed Neighborhoods
The model minority image created by dominant Americans and
embraced by many Asian immigrants characterizes the early family
lives of the majority of desi youth generally, but it applies to the lives
of only half of the artists. In contrast to their wealthier counter-
parts, most of the artists from lower-​middle-​class families lived in
racially diverse neighborhoods in cities like Richmond, California,
during the 1970s through 1990s when they went off to college. Re-
cent scholars, dissatisfied with older conceptual models describing
South Asians in America, focus on the particularities and politics of
the second generation and disrupt the outmoded Black and White
conception of race.10 But the “social and economic positioning”
of various South Asian populations have, like their counterparts
in Britain, “become markedly more differentiated over time” (Hall
2000: 219). How do those from modest economic backgrounds
re-​create ethnicity? South Asian American studies often point to
third-​wave immigrants in the service sector as the face of working-​
class subcontinentals in the United States, yet not all second-​wave
professionals fared well. Class status does not determine whether
or not a South Asian will produce Black popular culture and forge
meaningful relationships with Blacks. However, it directly impacts
the lives and options of Americans by affecting their residence,
peers, engagement with institutions, and access to ethnic net-
works. Artists representing this group were particularly aware of
what they termed their “atypical” experiences in contrast to main-
stream desis.
Whereas their wealthier counterparts were primarily aware of
their ethnic otherness, artists of this second set were less focused
on White racism and noticed both class and race patterns. They
took more time to describe their ambiguous class status, for in-
stance. A Richmond-​raised rapper considered his family “middle
class” and described his as a “good home,” despite living near
people who were working class and “poor.” “If you take my house
and put it in a middle-​class area, though,” he clarified, “it would be
working class.” Coming from a “good home” referred often to ma-
terial status in relation to neighborhood friends rather than nuclear
family structure. The class status of these artists was often closer
to that of their neighbors than to wealthy desis, who would not

48 Alternative Ethnics
choose to live in these neighborhoods. Those who came from areas
that lacked strong South Asian networks had restricted access to
cultural capital, which in turn inhibited a strong sense of ethnic
belonging. At the same time, it also offered these artists and their
families some freedom from ethnic expectations.
While the families of wealthier artists tended to stay put, the
upward mobility of this second set was more drastic. They moved
to different neighborhoods and changed schools often. “Until
college,” the rapper KB explains, “I never went to any school for
more than two years.” In the 1980s Rawj and KB attended the same
underfunded high school in Richmond, which the radio producer
Asma (who also went there, but they did not know one another)
estimates was about 65 percent Black and where hip hop culture
was the norm. The two boys later transferred to separate private
schools outside of Richmond. Rawj’s family moved to a wealthy
suburb that was “like Beverly Hills with Birkenstocks,” after his
mother remarried. “That was an experience,” he exclaims: “I was
fifteen, in high school, had never been around that many White
people in my life and it was completely different!” The class and
complexion of his new ’hood was accompanied with new acoustic
tastes. “They didn’t listen to hip hop!” he said incredulously of the
students who were “on a whole different style: Pink Floyd, Nirvana,
and shorts, raggedy clothes, and BMWs.” “Somehow,” says Rawj,
who “felt like the Fresh Prince” after moving to the suburbs, “I got
out of there without killing or strangling anybody!”11
Artists such as MCs Rawj and KB, radio producer Asma, rapping
cousins Asad and Fahad from Staten Island, and the San Francisco
MC Chee Malabar all experienced the complex economic and demo-
graphic patterns that make up racially diverse and lower-​middle-​
class neighborhoods. But KB speaks for many of them when he
says, “I just got so used to moving around and I got to experience
a lot of different socio-​economic backgrounds and cultures . . . I
just had the feeling that some people were rich, some people were
poor.” These urban desis shared experiences that led to a critical
consciousness that took both race and class differences into ac-
count at a young age.
The influence of ethnic gatekeepers who wish to cover up the
“undesirable elements” among South Asians often extends beyond
ethnic enclaves to impact these more isolated families. Cases of di-

Alternative Ethnics 49
vorce and sexual transgressions among desi girls attract an espe-
cially watchful eye. “Many migrants,” write Mathew and Prashad,
“seek to re-​invent their cultural environment to preserve themselves
from the onslaught of what they see as an ahistorical and non-​
contradictory ‘American culture’” (2000: 520). Ironically, many of
the crafted requirements only serve to reinforce the ideas that many
Americans have of “Indians” as unassimilable foreigners. Stuart
Hall connects modern divisive discourses to the past. “One result,”
he writes, “is that the unresolved problems of social development
have combined with the resurgent traces of older, still unrequited,
ethnic and religious nationalisms, allowing the tensions in these
societies to resurface in a multi-​cultural form” (2000: 214). We see
this surface in problematic gender and class politics as well as the
religious divides that persist in the diaspora.
Families and communities use sanctions to regulate women’s
sexuality and marital practices as an aspect of ethnic identity, thus
closely linking gender expectations with ethnicity (Mani 1993: 34).
Asian immigrants often deem women to be the keepers of their cul-
ture, and thus ethnic identities hinge upon community-​defined ap-
propriate sexual and marital behaviors (Espiritu 2001; see also Rud-
rappa 2002). Divorce is rare among South Asians, some of whom
consider it “Western” and “inferior” (Gupta 1999: 197, 194).12 How-
ever, urban desi hip hoppers include a number of those whose par-
ents had divorced or separated. Divorce led to a decline in house-
hold income that constrained where these artists could live, and
split families were sometimes estranged from nearby South Asians
who looked down upon their situations. These factors directly im-
pacted the artists’ relationship to co-​ethnics. Rawj describes how
“all of the families that we associated with, after she got divorced,
they no longer associated with us, so that’s another reason why I
didn’t grow up around Indians. And then as far as blood family that
came here from India, there was a language barrier and there were
conflicts with the parents, so we didn’t really get too close, either.”
Desi communities give these single mothers difficulty over separa-
tion or divorce; their sanctions also trouble the artists’ sense of be-
longing to a community whose norms coincide with conservative
American “family values” discourses on heterosexuality and mar-
riage (see Das Gupta 2006). For queer and transgender artists like
D’Lo, the tests of ethnicity and sexuality can become overwhelm-

50 Alternative Ethnics
ing. For these reasons, having some breathing room away from
ethnic ties can prove to be somewhat liberatory, albeit in limited
ways, by encouraging other possible self-​expressions.
Class also does not determine whether or not a particular youth
will take a critical stance in relation to his or her ethnic community.
Urban participants, written out of emerging definitions of proper
desiness, did not fit the “typical” desi experience with regard to
their class status, geographic distance from ethnic networks, less
stable family structures, and their proximity to Black and Latino
peers. While the ethnic ambivalence of wealthier artists stemmed
from their critique of ethnic mores, urban artists faced the social
sanctions that deemed them inauthentic before they were able to
fully respond to what was expected of them.
Despite the cleavage in experiences between suburban and urban
artists, each adapted to their context. Their ethnic ambivalence
emerged for a variety of reasons, mostly tied to solidifying concep-
tions of what constituted proper desiness. Some found it impos-
sible to fulfill religious, class, gender, and regional expectations
while others were unwilling to do so. Suburban artists’ experiences
with racism reminded them of their racial difference, despite their
shared class status with classmates and neighbors. Due to their
racial liminality (van Gennep 1909; Turner 1967, 1969) as neither
Black nor White and their shifting economic standing, urban art-
ists understood the fluidity of categories and the ambiguity of their
own race and class identities. Whether or not they were to embrace
or retreat from claiming an ethnic identity would be sorted out in
college and articulated through their music. Beforehand, though,
the artists all had to contend with a shared set of ethnic expecta-
tions across class lines.

Sampling Ethnics: Shared Experiences among Desis in Hip Hop

Through an uneven process of ethnic engagement, dissociation,
critique, and rearticulation, the artists began to “sample ethnicity”
by rejecting aspects they found oppressive while taking and remix-
ing those parts that resonated with them. The artists’ relationship
to ethnicity was framed by their experiences within their homes
and at community functions and was reinforced by a sense of racial
otherness at school. It took time for them to understand both what

Alternative Ethnics 51
was expected of them and why through interactions with other
South Asians. At times, they drew from the strengths that ethnic be-
longing and social capital offered them, learning from their elders
the importance of stability, family responsibility, and education.
But the set of values developing among American desis was tinged
with the chauvinism, materialism, and exclusivity that accompa-
nied community membership. Over time, many hip hop–oriented
youths critiqued hegemonic desiness, sometimes using the same
logic that they hoped to overcome. This process was engendered by
a set of expectations about religion, marriage, economic mobility,
and what constituted an “authentic desi,” which elicited similar re-
actions among the artists.13 The artists’ dialogic engagement with
ethnic formation ultimately encouraged their move toward Blacks
and hip hop culture.
The religious hegemony of Indian Hindus, which can silence and
disparage Sikhs and Muslims as well as Christians, can be an op-
pressive force in the lives of non-​Hindu South Asians. Like other
desi youth, the artists picked up religious practices within their
families. Mothers were often responsible for exposing their chil-
dren to religious practices such as taking them to the local gurd-
wara in El Sobrante or staging a puja (a religious ritual) at home
for special events. At times the hip hop heads protested. Rawj says
of his mother that “the way she tried to push the culture on me
was through religion, and a little too much for me. So that’s why I
didn’t learn it.” Religion became an aspect of ethnic identity that
other Americans at school disparaged (see Joshi 2006; see also
Chen 2008). Non-​Christian parents often enrolled their children in
Catholic and Baptist schools, which they felt provided a better edu-
cation than public schools. As D’Lo, a Hindu Tamil who attended
school near Los Angeles, remembers: “In the books that we were
reading, they would always bash on Hindus or other cultures in that
these weren’t followers of God, ’cause this was a Baptist school.
And they were always targeting other Brown kids to convert them.
So I converted. I was like, ‘I love me some Jesus!’ [Laughs] Jesus was
my best fuckin’ friend, you know?!” D’Lo’s accommodation to reli-
gious hegemony, however comedic in retrospect, was not as easily
applied to his/her phenotypic distinctiveness. Looks, in addition
to being non-​Christian in a largely Judeo-​Christian nation, empha-
sized desi otherness and may account for the artists’ reframing of

52 Alternative Ethnics
religion in their lives. D’Lo was not dissuaded from religion or from
identifying as a Sri Lankan Hindu, a topic that takes its place, front
and center, in his/her performances. D’Lo, who writes, “Me-​proud
lover of God ~also~ as/in people,” dedicates the written word first
to God. In the poem “Legitimizing the Spirit Within” D’Lo prof-
fers a poetic dialogue between him/herself, a believer in “God as
people” and “God in people,” and an atheist man s/he wishes to
emulate “in case there isn’t a God”:
I wanted to laugh like this and tell him
That he himself is God!
That he is the example of
what every religious
or spiritually based person
wanted to be—aspired to be like

Contesting parents’ lament that their youth are irreligious, the art-
ists are less concerned than their elders about “purity” of form, and
they craft unique religious practices that fit their circumstances.
Like D’Lo’s play on his/her relationship to Jesus, other artists
also shifted ethnic definitions of religiosity and, as they grew older,
some of them remixed their practices with non-​desi influences.
The rapper Vivek and Deejay Bella (both Gujarati) have customized
syncretic practices that fuse South Asian, Caribbean, and African-​
based traditions. Both strict vegetarians, Vivek identifies strongly
with Jainism and Bella melds Sindhi Hindu religious practices
with Rastafarianism. These “unlikely crossovers,” which can be ex-
plained by historical precedents, hint at future cross-​fertilizations
that later come to characterize their lives. The British brought
Indian “coolies” to replace African slave labor in Trinidad, Jamaica,
and Guyana. Exchanges among these seemingly distinct popula-
tions led to the new fusions seen in contemporary Carnival celebra-
tions despite concerns about cultural and religious “dilution” from
racial mixing among members across these populations (see Khan
2004a, 2004b). In their youth, hip hop desis in the United States
had trouble rearticulating religion and often upheld the same logic
of fixed social expectations they later tried to work through.
The artists fell back on community descriptions of religion, eth-
nicity, and authenticity as essentialist and quantifiable entities:
they implied that “cultural purity” and “real religious knowledge”

Alternative Ethnics 53
“belonged” the most to those living in South Asia and that eth-
nicity was a quality subject to “dilution” through Americanization.
Indian parents sometimes monitored the clothes and whereabouts
of their children, “for fear they would ‘lose’ their Indianness,” ac-
cording to one Indian hip hop journalist. Many American desis
sensed their parents’ homeland nostalgia expressed through fos-
silized conceptions of ethnicity and often reproduced these dynam-
ics of authenticity in their subcultures (see Maira 2002). MC Chee,
a 1.5-​generation Indian who lives in Los Angeles, located authen-
ticity spatially within the boundaries of India and temporally in tra-
ditions of the past: “Being Indian is just like . . . that’s where I come
from I guess. I mean, I look around now—the way I’m dressed, the
way I talk, the stuff I like—it has nothing to do with being Indian.
You know? So how can I say I’m more proud to be Indian? If I was
Indian, I would be living in India, you know, wearing a dhoti or a
lungi [a wrap men wear] and I’d be praying or doing whatever that
comes with being Indian.” Thus, the artists borrowed cultural prac-
tices and essentialist conceptions from their ethnic communities.
As they sorted through their meanings over time, however, the per-
formers incorporated flexible practices into their notions of desi-
ness (Ong 1998).
Dominant expectations also coalesce around the all-​important
issues of education (attending “the best” schools), income
(wealthy), and stability (low-​risk, high-​income jobs). The artists
dealt with these norms as they did with religion: they first found
themselves subject to these requirements; they grappled with them;
they found them to be too restrictive; and they took those aspects
they found central to their self-​conception while attempting to
burst through rigid options to explore new ones. A member of the
Indian American hip hop group Karmacy, KB, described how South
Asians laud and berate particular careers, which constrains those
who want to pursue other options: “If you’re Indian, [and] every
single person that you know is a doctor or a lawyer, what are you
going to aspire to be? . . . Because if you’re an Indian kid growing
up in this country, no matter how much you don’t want to believe
it, there’s a self-​conscious mental block telling you that you can’t be
Michael Jordan.” Parents urged their music-​minded children to pur-
sue lucrative and stable careers in business, medicine, and science.
Parents who sacrifice for their children’s futures understandably

54 Alternative Ethnics
worry about the economic and personal health of their children,
yet their hopes also morph into troublesome racial and class poli-
tics. Politicians and others have latched onto the upward mobility
of Asians as the model of the proper way immigrants should insert
themselves into the nation. Access to wealth has also made South
Asians active consumers of property, including large McMansions
and fancy cars, in an economy that, dependant upon them, praises
these items as symbols of having “made it.” Desi artists remix their
competing ethnic-​economic and music-​passion obligations by get-
ting trained in medicine and computers, for instance, while also
producing hip hop music.
The notion that South Asian immigrants are often “significantly
short on progressive politics” and are bent on class aspirations
(Rajan and Sharma 2006: 14) disturbs desis bent on social justice.
Some artists say that their parents’ insularity and focus on money
is tied to their “politically liberal, racially conservative” ideas, in-
cluding those who are Democrats who may be in favor of state ser-
vices for the poor but are against affirmative action. Many parents
even discouraged their children’s friendships with other minori-
ties. Wealthy community leaders advance conservative ideas (Pra-
shad 2000; Maira 2002; Das Gupta 2006), and even some Muslims,
who tend not to gain equal representation within Indian organi-
zations, share these ideas. A Muslim woman says of her otherwise
Democrat and permissive parents that “definitely there’s a capital-
ist side to their politics. And they are probably pretty classist, too.”
Like religion, therefore, success, defined in monetary and educa-
tional terms, is naturalized as an aspect tied to ethnicity—it defines
one as an “Indian.” Prevalent discourses within South Asian immi-
grant communities couple with American conceptions of meritoc-
racy to infiltrate even the minds of those attempting to challenge
these ideas. Without an alternative framework, artists also echoed
the link between class and ethnicity. For example, one MC natural-
izes this connection in his example of a friend: “As much as he’s not
Indian, in some ways he’s completely Indian because he really feels
he’s superior toward other minorities. He’s like, ‘man, I know I got
a good job. Shit, I’m Indian, I’m supposed to succeed. There’s no way
I should fail.’”
“New cosmopolitans” (Rajan and Sharma 2006) are members of
a wealthy post-​1965 group within the South Asian community that

Alternative Ethnics 55
combines their access to privilege with a longing for their home-
land. They epitomize the model minority in many ways and foster
a “predominantly conservative, right-​wing, and unabashedly capi-
talist nexus” (14–15) that dovetailed with the rise of the New Right
during the Reagan years. American South Asians, Prashad argues,
“prefer to detach themselves from the minutiae of democracy and
to attach themselves solely to the task of capital accumulation”
(2000: 3).14 Kasturi DasGupta suggests an alternative interpre-
tation: “Arming their children with the best education, from the
best colleges, with the best academic record is seen as imperative,
if the conditions of ‘color-​prejudice’ are to be mitigated” (1997:
61). DasGupta’s connection between material success and racism
is another example of South Asian Americans’ “triple move” when
it comes to race: denying the impacts of racism upon their com-
munities, negotiating the effects of racism upon them by appealing
to class mobility and security, while embracing (not stated in this
example but present) explicit and implicit racist ideologies against
other minorities for their class standing.
This single-​minded focus on material success and high social
status points to another cleavage within “the community”: wealthy
desis often ignore and deride struggling co-​ethnics because, like
divorced and queer South Asians, they mar South Asians’ positive
reputations (see Khandelwal 2002). This dangerous confluence of
South Asian and American “values” has colored outsiders’ views of
South Asians as money-​oriented and also partially accounts for rifts
between wealthy immigrants from South Asia and more working-​
class Indians from Fiji and the Caribbean. Many second-​generation
youths heed their parents’ advice regarding their choices of college,
majors, and, ultimately, their jobs. However, desi artists, whose
very careers signal a shifting path, attempt to address South Asians’
embodiment of United States orientalist and model minority depic-
tions of “passive” Asians “without a developed social conscious-
ness” (Prashad 2000: 68).
Cultural capital is another component of constructions of Ameri-
can desiness. While over time the artists often felt distant from
other South Asians, mainstream desis also called into question
their ethnic identity because, to those living “proper” desi lives, the
artists lacked cultural capital. I asked a South Indian rapper who
immigrated to the States when he was eleven whether or not he felt

56 Alternative Ethnics
bad about this distance, even estrangement, from other desis. He
responded, “No. I think I did more when I was [young] . . . When I
needed them [when I first came to this country], they weren’t there.
You know what I mean? So now it’s like, ‘I don’t need them.’” One’s
familiarity with cultural norms and knowledge, such as language
fluency, knowing religious stories, being able to identify and cook
regionally specific cuisine, knowledge about the subcontinent, and
even looking identifiably South Asian are elements used by others
to gauge one’s “level” of ethnicity. These forms of cultural capital
are also the ways that desi artists came to understand their “lack.”
It is difficult for those without strong ethnic networks to make up
for the cultural knowledge that can be absorbed through sustained
engagement with a cohesive community. All of the performers felt
their lack of cultural capital in their adolescence and the majority
had few to no deep relationships with non-​family desis.15 They
called themselves “weird,” “atypical,” and “different” in compari-
son to mainstream South Asians and therefore needed to redefine
desiness if they wanted to claim an ethnic identity.
Some of the artists chose to alienate themselves from hegemonic
expectations while others were unable to claim these identities.
Their ethnic choices pertaining to religion, education, class, poli-
tics, and cultural capital, therefore, were not uniform. They were
surrounded by conceptions of success, belonging, and difference
described in cultural terms but often rooted in primordial notions.
Hegemonic desiness is therefore essentialist, tied to religion, na-
tionality, and ancestry. These artists adopted similar ideas about
ethnicity and religion as something one “had” or “didn’t have,”
particularly in their childhoods. College, however, would intro-
duce them to mainstream desi youth and an entirely new set of
social interactions that changed the terms of the artists’ relation-
ships with co-​ethnics and with ethnicity itself. It was there that
they were able to develop anti-​essentialist conceptions of desiness,
which they articulated through ethnic hip hop.

College: Rejecting Desis

I got [to the University of California, Berkeley] at a time when most of the
Indian population that was there was from White upper-​class or upper-​
middle-​class neighborhoods. And so I guess to them I spoke differently,

Alternative Ethnics 57
 I walked differently, I talked differently, I dressed differently, and so they
reacted to me that way. And it was a very big culture shock to me be-
cause, first, I had never hung out with Indians before and, second, I never
realized the impact that my community had had on me.
—KB, rapper from Richmond, California

Desi artists, all of whom attended college in the 1990s, were part of
the first generation to mark the presence of large numbers of South
Asians in higher education. While the majority enrolled in the Uni-
versity of California system in Berkeley, Davis, and Los Angeles, a
few attended state universities in San Francisco and Pennsylvania
and some first took classes at a junior college before moving on to
a university. There they confronted other mainstream desi students
who grafted first-​generation ideas onto their social worlds, thereby
re-​creating reified notions of ethnicity around which they formed
their social cliques and politics. Identity-​based cliques were com-
mon among desis and other minority students in college at a time
when the mission statements of American universities averred “tol-
erance” and “diversity” while they banned affirmative action. These
groups provide youth, including current college students, with a
sense of security and identity in the same way that larger organiza-
tions do for the older generation. Finding a community in which
to celebrate and share one’s ethnic identity through cultural shows
and organizations also draws these youths together (see Maira
2002: 120–32). Within these organizations, mainstream desis cre-
ate age-​appropriate norms through communities of “sameness”—
members of dominant desi cliques share ancestries, languages,
food, and their status as non-Whites. They also unofficially restrict
inclusion by appraising the ethnic “fitness” of others. Parading so-
cial, class, ethnic, gender, and sexual norms as “desi pride” reflects
“reverse assimilation,” which is seen as a “necessary response to
the bewildering conformism of college life in the United States”
(Prashad 2000: 191). In this section, I analyze how desis in hip hop
dealt with these inward-​looking social formations.
Through tense and sometimes disappointing interactions with
co-​ethnics, the artists needed to figure out how to remain “desi”
on their own terms. They, too, found ethnicity appealing, and they
drew strength from Indians’ relatively visible presence on cam-
pus. However, the organizations that students developed in order

58 Alternative Ethnics
to give groups a space on campus sometimes ended up alienating
co-​ethnics who did not conform to ethnic ideals. South Asian hip
hoppers realized that they were expected to pare down the extra-
curricular commitments and extraethnic interests that formed
the very basis of their identities. But in seeing how people socially
constructed labels through contestation they helped develop the
emerging and inclusive category “desi” to replace the label “Indian”
by engaging in debates over the meanings of South Asianness. The
presence, interests, and cultural adoptions by desis in hip hop de-
naturalized ethnicity by unlinking ancestry from culture. They
found that ethnicity was malleable; it could be contested as well as
sampled.

College Cliques and Hegemonic Desiness

Although the college years can be an exciting time they were also
disenchanting for some of the artists as familiar storylines crept
onto a new stage. Racism was again played out, but this time within
the intimacy of living conditions. A White student called an Indian
DJ a “sand nigger.” Jonny, a University of California, Davis, alum-
nus, explained that some guys in his dorm (“so white they were
pink”) nicknamed him “spot” in reference to the bindi. The Cali-
fornia native says he “was bewildered that this was the college en-
vironment and, really, disappointed.” Within the artists’ first year
at school, tensions abounded. In response, they thought to meet
other South Asians for the first time.
The easiest way to find other desis is through student organiza-
tions, and on California campuses Indian groups such as Indus at
the University of California, Berkeley, are among the largest. In
these social and cultural groups, students bond over intergenera-
tional conflicts, cultural practices, and the comfort of being sur-
rounded by sameness within a context of difference. In addition to
finding “all these people that look like [you],” students share the
pressures and an identity as the children of immigrants who sacri-
ficed so that they could attend college. The sheer numbers of South
Asians on West Coast campuses during this period made them a
zone for these youths to frame their identity as desis outside of a
Black and White binary. Meena, a middle-​class Indian American,
describes the University of California, Berkeley, as “such a big place

Alternative Ethnics 59
that you want to find people that are like you [and] have things in
common with you.” Gaining admittance into such a tightly woven
clique can be seductive. The artists hoped that being around ethnic
ambassadors—those who traveled to India, could speak the lan-
guage, and were comfortable in their own skin—might increase
their own knowledge. The artists’ explorations not only turned out
to be short-​lived, however, but also they fueled their sense of rejec-
tion and negativity; later, these meetings proved useful for recon-
ceptualizing ethnicity.
The college organizations of desi youth mirror immigrant orga-
nizations that aim to sustain culture in the context of assimilation.
Both circulate cultural knowledge; however, they also replicate
ethnic, class, religious, gender, and sexual divisions from the sub-
continent. As Jonny says, “One of the most revealing things about
college . . . was how splintered the ethnic factions could become.
It was the first time I noticed White cliques and Black cliques and
Chinese cliques and Indian cliques and lesbian cliques . . . The cul-
ture at college really causes you to become very self-​aware of your
race, [your] gender. There are a lot of identity politics involved,
too, in what you study, who you socialize with, and everything.”
Although moving toward a more inclusive “South Asian” member-
ship, Indian cultural organizations tend to represent Americanized
and affluent North Indian Hindus. Among them, “being Indian”
connotes the ethnic insularity, middle-​class consumptive practices,
and heterosexual norms advocated by the first generation (Prashad
2000: 122). Students considered active members to be culturally
more “authentic” due to their cultural knowledge and because they
socialized strictly with Indians. This in-​group of mainstream desis
establishes hegemonic desiness on campus, thereby impacting the
decisions of desi hip hop artists.
Through their interactions with mainstream desis the artists,
especially those from urban areas, felt especially “atypical.” At first
“it was kind of enriching,” says Rawj, an MC who grew up with Black
friends and who attended a junior college before transferring to
University of California, Davis. “People sort of had the same experi-
ence I had; they’re going through the same thing. But at the same
time, it made me realize why I might be a bit different. And it was
mostly because of my musical and my childhood experiences.” The
artists were distinguished by their performance of identity—their

60 Alternative Ethnics
urban hip hop style, the way they walked, and the slang they incor-
porated into their speech, all of which were organic extensions of
their past experiences. These visible and audible differences marked
deeper cleavages that would later become painfully apparent.
Even those from middle-​class suburbs felt disconnected. Accord-
ing to Radhika, who is Bengali and German, it was only upon inter-
acting with the Indian Student Association, she says, “when I real-
ized how culturally out of touch I was. I really felt like ‘oh, none of
them would really see me as an Indian because I don’t know any-
thing compared to them.’” She and Jonny were “freaked out” by
their own lack of knowledge in their interactions with mainstream
desis. They were also averse to socializing along ethnic lines due to
internalized stereotypes that South Asians are “all science nerds
and they’re geeks and I didn’t want to be like them.” The idea of
socializing along ethnic lines “repelled” Jonny, for whom the ethnic
exclusivity of the Indian student club “just didn’t seem right in a
nonfamily context.”
Desi students face a Catch-​22 when confronting tight social
cliques: students find it difficult to penetrate them, yet mainstream
desis interpret those who choose not to participate in their groups
as denying their cultural heritage, which consequently disqualifies
them from membership. Rawj, a Punjabi American rapper, laughs,
“It’s like you need to be a member of The Mob in order to make
friends! You have to be one of them.” Because they chose not to par-
ticipate, desi hip hop heads faced repercussions. As Jonny noted,
“Occasionally I’d get the evil eye from a member or two [of the
Indian student organization]: ‘sellout eyes.’” Rawj considers that
“maybe they do want to get to know people, but I don’t know. I just
found that it ends up being a status-​oriented conversation.” Still
thinking about these issues today, albeit with a lighthearted tone,
Rawj remembers how not funny it actually was: “It was terrible.”
Mainstream desis question the authenticity of nonconformists to
mark those outside of their social realms and to monitor, in place
of their parents, the sexuality of co-​ethnics.
I asked Meena, a Berkeley student, to explain the tight social
boundaries among campus desis; so rare are their interracial inter-
actions, she says, that she has to “do a double take when I see some-
one that’s not with an Indian person.” Laughing, she suggests that
“in the back of their head, [they’re thinking] ‘Oh, I might meet

Alternative Ethnics 61
my future husband here.’” College organizations cultivate cultural
“values,” including heterosexual expectations about marriages,
and become places to meet potential spouses. Meena’s specula-
tions support Sunaina Maira’s (2002) assertion that the sexual and
gender expectations of desi college youths intertwine with ideas of
ethnic authenticity. Like marriage, dating should also be endoga-
mous (although outside the awareness of parents), which regulates
female sexuality. Mainstream desis also exclude and question the
ethnic loyalty of those who do otherwise. Artists who are gay or had
relationships with other minorities were further ostracized. D’Lo
was frustrated by attempts to claim a desi identity at the University
of California, Los Angeles, as a gay Sri Lankan intent on challeng-
ing the homophobia and heteronormativity at desi events.
Second-​generation desi youths live within institutional, histori-
cal, and racial constraints. The insular social organization of eth-
nicity on college campuses is one response to racism, and it cele-
brates unique “cultural” identities that can hide racism. Exclusive
cliques predicated on ethnic sameness are important alternatives
to assimilation for non-White immigrants. Nazli Kibria highlights
the positive ramifications of the ethnic moves by Asian Ameri-
can youth within the constraints of racialization: “We see, then,
that the assumption of ethnic authenticity, while constraining in
some ways, can also provide access to certain opportunities and
resources that are part of a presumably genuine ethnic identity . . .
Authentic ethnicity, with its signaling of ethnic capital, was also as-
sociated with certain opportunities” (2000: 91–92). Yet, framed by
students as a “choice” to “self-​segregate,” mainstream desis often
impose ethnic loyalty upon co-​ethnics by demanding insularity.
Thus, identity-​based authenticity calls upon primordial notions of
identity and is dangerously essentialist, despite the sense of unity
it provides. Prashad explains that “desis seek out an ‘authentic cul-
ture’ for complex reasons, among them the desire not to be seen
as fundamentally inferior to those who see themselves as ‘white’
and superior” (2000: 157). Thus, as Maira states, “the turn to ethnic
identity and the emphasis on certain ideologies of Indianness be-
come a common strategy for Indian American youth in the con-
text of American college life”; through their experiences with co-​
ethnics, hip hop desis experience how “shifting identifications are
complicated by everyday practices of essentialization and boundary

62 Alternative Ethnics
marking” (2002: 14). This marriage of multicultural model minori-
ties to ethnic hegemony asserts one way of being desi. Ironically,
the “diversity” that multiculturalism hails ends up curtailing and
silencing its internal differences.
While some individuals find comfort in sameness, for others it
stifles. Prevalent discourses often limit the choices of nonconform-
ists who find it difficult to imagine alternatives. South Asian stu-
dents who became MCs, DJs, producers, and record label founders
critiqued insularity and were disdainful of the “superiority” that
mainstream desis expressed through desires to “maintain . . . our
cultural purity.” The distance of hip hop desis from those whom
others assume they would share a natural connection highlights
the limitations of ethnicity as the only pathway of culture. Their
“surprising” adoption of a culture that does not “belong” to them
reveals other sources of identity. While mainstream desis focused
on the incongruity of “hip hop” and “desis,” the artists questioned
presumed ethnic bonds.
Through interactions with co-​ethnics in college, hip hop desis
came to understand exactly how complicated the ethnic rules were.
Not only was one expected to be Indian and Hindu—something
out of their control—but they were also supposed to have the capi-
tal to participate in pricey desi social events. These expectations
taught artists the terms of desiness, but they began to negotiate
with them. Their contestations of second-​generation expectations
about class and consumption reveal one more example of how eth-
nicity is a bounded yet alterable option.

Middle-​Class Norms and Consumption

The guys [college desi] were very materialistic, [they] value material-
ism to an excess, I should say. And some seemed nice, but they . . . just
talked about business and being a doctor. And sometimes it doesn’t
seem that they followed their own dreams and just talked down about
poor people.—Indian American Deejay Bella

The University of California is a public school system, yet many of

its students come from wealthy families.16 Many college desis want
to fulfill their parents’ hopes of lucrative jobs and high class stand-
ing for their children. The purchasing power of college students be-

Alternative Ethnics 63
comes a defining aspect of desiness that is evident in their youth
culture and socializing. Clothing, accessories, cars, and the more
intangible aspects of style—having the right hair and body shape—
are status markers open to evaluation (Shankar 2008). Notions
of ethnicity are classed: Abercrombie and Fitch, a popular brand
with Asian American youth, is also widely regarded as “yuppie”
and middle class, irrespective of one’s background.17 Yet why can
someone wear a yuppie “White” style and still “be Indian,” while
individuals wearing baggy jeans and the latest kicks are considered
sellouts? With their twenty dollar cover charges (not to mention ex-
pensive drinks and parking rates) the high cost of Indian student
parties excludes even moderately middle-​class youth. But even the
wealthier hip hop heads who could afford these events did not nec-
essarily wish to because of differing tastes.
In the piece “Part 3: Sri Lankan Boi,” D’Lo writes of his/her father
as follows: “It never bothered him that I was one of few in my home-
town city of Palmdale, California who listened to hip-​hop, walked
and dressed in hip-​hop cultural attire (baggy jeans and t-​shirts)
from the time of its mainstream birth.” People read desis by in-
terpreting their stylistic choices, which, as for many youth, are in-
formed by peer groups and class status. Rawj says that his Indian
friends later confirmed that they did not initially think he was “one
of them” because of his style. “I didn’t dress in Abercrombie and
Fitch or [wear] whatever everybody else was wearing. I had baggy-​
ass pants, my hat backwards, headphones on, and glow-​in-​the-​
dark shoes.” (“Well,” he humorously reconsidered, “they weren’t
glow-​in-​the-​dark, but you know what I mean!”) Desi youths also
evaluate gender and ethnic roles based on style, and desi hip hop
artists often felt judged by their peers. D’Lo’s aesthetic was closer
to the hip hop-​inflected clothing that Maira (2002) calls “hoodie,”
which includes baggy jeans in contrast to the skin-​revealing and
tight-​fitting clothes that Maira in turn calls “hootchie.” Main-
stream desis’ complex and close monitoring of self-​expression
exasperated some desi hip hoppers, thereby challenging their at-
tempts to find a comforting group away from home.
Desi social life may also alienate working-​class individuals who
cannot afford to participate in events. Some artists from urban
neighborhoods argue that the class privilege of mainstream sub-
urban co-​ethnics sheltered wealthy desis from the starker reali-

64 Alternative Ethnics
ties faced by urban residents and from the harder time those urban
desis might therefore have had in adjusting to college. As KB says,
“I saw a lot of bad stuff that really gave me a perspective on life.”
His young friends were moving out of their homes, dropping out of
school, and getting jobs to support themselves. “I’ve seen people
get shot,” he told me. As a result, “coming to college, I think I had
a very different perspective on life than most Indian kids that grew
up in the suburbs. A lot of stuff that concerned them that they were
worried [about] on a day-​to-​day basis, I guess was sort of petty.”
South Asian American scholarship has only begun to respond to
these kinds of class cleavages that affect second-​generation youth.
Karan, an Indo-​Fijian from Hayward, California, abhors the
ethnic and class elitism of desis whose parents migrated directly
from India (his forceful critiques cross over to attack the crass con-
sumerism of corporate hip hop). While flipping through hip hop
magazines (the advertisements fueling his anger) and exchanging
witticisms about rap album covers in Telegraph Avenue’s Rasputin
Records store in Berkeley in the early 2000s, Karan exploded into
one of his tirades. He was disgusted that another Indian Berkeley
student complained to him about her “meager” starting salary of
$50,000. Referring to my status as a social science graduate stu-
dent, he asked me, “Why aren’t there more Indians like you and me
out there? They’re only concerned with money!” Karan’s aversion
to materialism and the pursuit by desi students of “stable” (busi-
ness or medical) careers stems from his own family’s material cir-
cumstances and his liberal political perspective. Karan expressed
the ideas of many Indo-​Fijians and Indians who immigrate to the
United States from the West Indies who are bothered by Indian im-
migrants’ distain for their diasporic histories and current circum-
stances. In addition to the triple migrants, the non-​Indian artists
proud of their ethnic heritage, like D’Lo (Sri Lankan) and Dinesh
(Nepali), faced additional challenges finding comfort in main-
stream cliques.

Indian Hegemony and Non-​Indian South Asians

Everyone who knows a Sri Lankan, knows how much pride we got . . .
But we gotta, cuz ain’t no one ever really included us in the South Asian
diaspora.

Alternative Ethnics 65
 We’re a small island with big issues, thus, we come off as having
“short-​dick” complex.
This is why when someone lists off North and South regions of the
motherland, somewhere in the back of the room, one of our people
speaks up and says,
“hey, you forgot Sri Lanka.”
—D’Lo, “Loving the Fart that India let Off the Side of its Ass . . .”

The numeric and ideological dominance of first-​generation Hindu

Indians is reflected in the organization of college life, which
presents a conundrum for non-​Indians. In order to be more inclu-
sive, Indian cultural organizations began changing their names
to represent South Asians in the early 2000s. This shift, however,
proved to be symbolic rather than actual. These exclusions both-
ered both non-​Hindu, non-​Indian artists and Hindu Indian artists
who refuted the confines of constructed desiness. Their experiences
illustrate some of the obstacles to a developing panethnicity.
As a fiercely proud Sri Lankan, D’Lo did not know much about or
associate with Indian Americans at the University of California, Los
Angeles. “Yeah, this was hardcore: I didn’t have any Indian people
in my life. When I went to college and was meeting North Indi-
ans, I was like, ‘Wow. You all are some com-​plete-​ly different people!’
. . . I didn’t know shit about India until I went to college. I thought
that Indians were mostly South Indians: if they spoke Tamil, they
were our people. But still there was [this] hardcore [sense that]
we were Sri Lankan. I didn’t even know that the Sinhalese people
were the majority. You know? And that’s all that was said. We were
Sri Lankan. We were Tamil.” Since college cliques encourage sepa-
ration and restrict cross-​cultural sharing, Indians’ hegemony ob-
scures South Asian ethnic, migration, and class diversification.
Non-​Indian South Asians are often invisible and misrecognized.
D’Lo, who is sometimes misidentified as Trinidadian, recalls that
“people didn’t even think that I was Indian. Occasionally I would get
asked, but it was very seldom.” D’Lo wrote in a poem that invisi-
bility might compel one to “return home” to Sri Lanka, or even a
substitute, in search of recognition:
She still goes unnoticed walking though city streets
And her silence makes her almost invisible.

66 Alternative Ethnics
 And invisibility, she realizes, is the one condition under which
an urge to visit the mother land, or even Cuba, would manifest.

As in this poem, some of the artists eventually went elsewhere,

away from a category and their presumed cohort.
Dinesh, a Nepali engineer, highlights the South Asian panethnic
tensions in his California college by stating that he “had a choice
of blending in as a desi” but “decided not to do that” because he
had many nondesi friends. Internal power imbalances that silence
some groups make it difficult to sustain panethnicity, yet panethnic
identity was one way that desi artists engaged with ethnicity’s flexi-
bility. Generations can change the grounds upon which various
groups differ as well as find affinity. Yen Le Espiritu highlights the
“changing scope of ethnic identities, as linguistically, culturally,
and geographically diverse groups come together in the interest of
panethnic, or all-​ethnic, solidarity . . . We also need to look at the
qualitative transformations of what constitutes ethnicity, that is,
changes in who belongs to the ethnic groups” (1992: 2). While the
first generation finds comfort in their ethno-​national identities, the
second generation may find an additional shared identity, as South
Asians, across ethnic specificities due to their experiences in the
United States, the conflation of various subcontinental ethnicities,
and the racial lumping imposed upon them. The artists needed to
acknowledge rather than smooth over the internal cracks of nation
and religion that prevented an even melding across differences.
National differences become more complex in the case of non-​
Hindus, as desi life in America often takes shape around religion
(see Purkayastha 2005; Joshi 2006). Indo-​Fijians were even spa-
tially distinct by settling in California cities like Hayward and San
Jose and attending community colleges. Non-​Indian South Asians
and Indians from Fiji and the West Indies are an important compo-
nent of this project because they form a notable presence among
the already small numbers of South Asians in the United States who
produce hip hop music. I discuss in later chapters the central ap-
peal that hip hop holds as a voice for the underrepresented and
voiceless. In fact, it may be their relative invisibility in the larger
South Asian community that accounts for their involvement in and
greater identification with hip hop as a vehicle for representation.
As the artists see it, ethnic tensions point both to the importance

Alternative Ethnics 67
D’Lo incites audiences with the content of his/her rhymes and
striking image. Photograph courtesy of David Beeler.
of historical, socioeconomic, and racial differences between White
and racialized groups (Hall 1991; Leonard 1992) and to differences
within panethnic categories like “South Asian American” (see Espi-
ritu 1992; Valdez 2009). These intraethnic divisions rooted in natu-
ralistic and blood-​based assumptions spill beyond their borders to
inhibit the development of panethnic (and, ultimately, racial) iden-
tities. Mainstream college desis employ multiculturalism to under-
stand differences across racial categories, which they reformulate
as “cultural” distinctions. (However, when pressed, they often fall
back on racist stereotypes.) But to explain divisions within South
Asian America, desis, including the artists, retreat to the very dis-
courses multiculturalism attempts to hide: biological group dis-
tinctions. Dinesh says, for instance, “I am Nepali and there’s no
way I cannot be Nepali,” a feeling that “comes out because of things
I talk about naturally.” However, as the potentials of panethnicity
began to open up for this generation, the artists turned toward
other sources of information that would enable them to uncover
these processes.
The artists, particularly those who were not Hindu, Indian, and
middle class, sensed their position somewhere between “Indian”
and “panethnic” spaces. In South Asian and Ethnic Studies classes
they learned to theorize racial and ethnic group making within the
context of power and history (Palumbo-​Liu 1999). This helped them
understand their identification as ethnically specific “Nepalis” and
“Sri Lankans,” for instance, who simultaneously wanted to develop
a broader panethnic identity. They began to take part in this dia-
logic process of category construction by filling in the categories
of “South Asian” and “desi” with new meanings.

Maintaining Desiness Outside of Desi Cliques:

South Asian American Panethnicity
I’ll never say “I’m Indian” but I’ll say “South Asian.” I say “desi” because I
use it as an understanding of a broader community of South Asians but
also including Bhutan, Burma, etc. I see it as a second-​generation term.
—Dinesh, Nepali American

The desi artists maintained their claim to ethno-​national bonds,

but they were also taking a central role in crafting an emerging

Alternative Ethnics 69
South Asian, or desi, panethnicity. Their desire to expand ethnicity
to become more inclusive of difference was central to their growing
articulation of anti-​essentialism and the portability of ethnicity—
they felt they could “take it with them” rather than having to per-
form in front of like-​minded individuals. South Asian American
panethnicity often operates as a racializing category that develops
as a result of shared experiences among the United States born
(Espiritu 1992); however, the artists’ attempts to bridge divides
were motivated by external factors (racialization) and internal intra-​
ethnic dynamics. Their turn outward does not signify a doing away
with meaningful internal differentiations—those exist simulta-
neously. They put this model to work by expressing themselves out-
side of ethnically inscribed social circles; this was a political move
as much as it was one of self-​preservation.
Dinesh identifies as both a Nepali and a desi because, he says of
the latter, “it’s also a political reality, especially in the days ahead”
(referring to 9/11). He feels “that collective self-​identity is impor-
tant, and as a second generation [desi] who’s been active in com-
munity action, I have a sense of responsibility.” He distinguishes
ethno-​national specificities (i.e., “I am Nepali,” “not Indian”), but
also finds a panethnic “second-​generation” identity useful because
these multi-​scalar identifications exist simultaneously. Thus, differ-
ence exists within, not instead of, a shared overarching identity. This
ethnographic finding supplements broad-​scale sociological sur-
veys that attempt to quantify the one way that members of the new
second generation identify (Rumbaut 1994).18
Political realities also pushed some artists away from mainstream
desis toward a broader “progressive” constituency. D’Lo, who also
took college classes on South Asia, nonetheless felt disillusioned
and says, “I just feel like, them Indians, I’m cool on them. I was
almost equally as racist toward Indians as I was to White people.”19
Having faced racism from Whites, s/he finds desi parochialism
equally oppressive. Other hip hop heads submitted to dominant
notions of South Asians as apolitical and defined themselves ac-
cordingly. For example, in describing an Indian graduate student
who, like Karan, enjoyed discussing politics and was aware of world
events, the Indo-​Fijian stated, “You know, he’s not really Indian.”
“Real Indians” are not invested in politics. Another response was
to rearticulate the meanings of desiness to include political activ-

70 Alternative Ethnics
ism through the category of “desi.” D’Lo who “had been living this
reality as this gay woman who really thinks this world is fucked
up,” and who felt Indians “weren’t concerned with shit,” expanded
his/her social circles and his/her sense of belonging.
Despite “leaving” desi groups, the artists were not rejecting their
ethnicity. They realized ethnicity was not simply something to be
expressed through identification with others, but it was a knowl-
edge and sense of self located within themselves. They increased
this knowledge through their studies by taking comparative social
science and humanities classes that informed their thinking. Inter-
disciplinary ethnic studies courses taught them a range of method-
ologies for crafting knowledge and provided them with the back-
grounds of various minority groups. They learned theories about
how racialization works and how people construct categories, like
“Latino,” in the same way they were constructing the meanings of
“South Asian” on campus. D’Lo was “learning more about India
finally, [and] I took this class on the South Asian diaspora and it
was talking about what was going on in New York at the time, with
the rallies around the [South Asian] cab drivers and the protestors
against all of that. So [we] had a [course] reader: this was my bible
into the world of the Indians.” The artists majored in both tradi-
tional fields (medicine and business) and “less typical” ones in
interdisciplinary studies, political science, and ethnomusicology.
Thus, claiming some space away from hegemonic social circles
gave them room to explore untraditional majors and career paths.
A few have since gone on to postgraduate work: D’Lo went to audio
engineering school; one of Karmacy’s members attended business
school and another went to medical school; Chee received his MFA
in 2007 in creative writing and fiction. While the artists all deep-
ened their commitments to hip hop after graduating from college,
some simultaneously pursued careers in professional fields (medi-
cine, engineering), while others focused on beefing up their musi-
cal skills. These professional decisions enable them to fund their
musical careers.
Trips back “home” also fueled their sense of desiness and allowed
them to be ethnic without having to socialize just along those lines.
As Radhika, who is Bengali, says, “I think what really helped was by
going to India. I saw how many million ways you can be Indian and
it’s okay, you know?” The artists informed their politics and world-

Alternative Ethnics 71
views through classes and travel that pushed them to develop inclu-
sive panethnic groups. By “leaving” the mainstream set, these desis
found room to develop their own ways of being. It also motivated
them to continue to try to engage with desis, this time on their own
terms because of the salience that their definitions of ethnicity held
for them.
Rather than “looking back” to the homeland for their social loca-
tion as many first-​generation immigrants do, these youths create an
identity and a home in the United States that is local and transna-
tional (Espiritu 1992; Purkayastha 2005). As KB says, for example,
“I was never really interested in a ‘South Asian’ identity, but more
of a ‘South Asian American’ identity.” He identifies as an “Indian
American” but also advocated for a shared South Asian American
experience. As he further notes, “The thing is when we come here,
we are all sort of in this melting pot. No one cares that I’m from
South India, he’s from North India, or he’s from Maldives: we all
look the same.” In looking back at college from the vantage point of
2002, he saw his understanding that desis across ethnicities share
an identity confirmed in the responses to South Asians after 9/11.
A South Asian American identity “in essence, does exist,” KB ex-
plains, describing the process of racialization “in the sense that
people see a picture of bin Laden on TV and they go attack a Sikh
man. That’s a South Asian American identity.”
Racialization may enable panethnicity but hegemonic desiness is
exclusive and can block this development. The artists’ interactions
with co-​ethnics in college reinforced their earlier ambivalence
toward ethnicity with its cleavages and inequalities. However, they
eventually recognized and soon became a part of the processes of
meaning making. One response to the insularity and conservatism
of ethnicity was panethnicity. As rapper KB states, “Americans cre-
ated the word South Asian. It never existed before America.” Yet
they were motivated to engage critically with these ideas, refusing
to simply let others do the defining. In college, KB harnessed the
political nature of one category to develop a forum for subconti-
nentals to talk across divides: “I figured, we have this word ‘South
Asian’ that some way unifies us, it encompasses all of us. There’s
absolutely no question.” These reconfigurations are emblematic
of hybridity in the sense that “hybridization does not necessarily

72 Alternative Ethnics
mean decline through the loss of identity. It can also mean em-
powering existing identities through the opening of new possi-
bilities” (Laclau in Hall 2000: 236). Thus KB engages with the dia-
logic process of identity formation through choice and imposition
by identifying ethnically and panethnically. College-​aged hip hop
desis harness the malleability of ethnicity to expand the contours
of desiness, thereby making them available to future generations.
One of the most potent forums for expressing alternative desiness
is through the platform of hip hop music. It was in college, after
all, when some of the rappers picked up the mic in public, melding
music and activism, to take up the specific challenges of claiming
desiness and crafting inclusive and progressive communities across
ethnic, religious, and class differences.

“It’s Either Us or Bollywood!”

Expressing Ethnicity through Hip Hop
When I got to [the University of California,] Berkeley, I started rapping at
[the Indus] culture show and I guess I got a pretty good response. They
were all politically oriented rhymes about issues that we were facing in
the community . . . Second-​generation identity, or first generation, or
one and a half—creating a South Asian American identity, appreciating
what our parent’s generation did. The first year I did it, the name of the
song was “Claiming to Be a Nation of Peace.” The chorus was,
Claiming to be a nation of peace
What did Gandhi die for?
All we got is a nation of war . . .
How are our children supposed to learn
That a temple or a mosque is not a place to burn?20
Down to the ground like they see on TV
’Cause that’s what they’re gonna see
Believe me.
And that was like . . . halfway in the second verse and the whole audi-
torium stood up and started clapping. A standing ovation from three
thousand people in the middle of a song, and I was just like, “Whoa!”
And that was the first time I performed live in front of a very big crowd. I
was stunned. I mean that was such an adrenaline rush! When I left college

Alternative Ethnics 73
 I always told people that that [show] was what I’d always miss the most:
that culture show performance.—KB, Indian American MC

Nearly a decade after the event KB reenacted these lyrics with pas-
sion as we sat at a Starbucks in Fremont, California, where he now
lived. This story like many others refutes others’ interpretation of
desis in hip hop as misguided individuals who reject their ethnic
communities. Artists like KB who feel a strong sense of ethnic iden-
tity used their music before, during, and after college to talk about
their distinctive positions as sons and daughters of immigrants. He
and his fellow Karmacy rappers later articulated an ethnic identity
that spotlighted the unique experience of being South Asian in the
United States on their album The Movement. In the 2000s, their songs
drew on their bicultural knowledge and connection to their par-
ents’ homeland and appealed to Asians across ethnicities. They pro-
duce what I term “ethnic hip hop” by demonstrating ethnic pride
and engaging with South Asian America through a Black art form.
Fueled by contentious relations with co-​ethnics and dedicated to
creating a space in which to express their own take on ethnicity,
some desi MCs infuse hip hop music with distinctly immigrant nar-
ratives. They express alternative desiness through hip hop, thereby
altering South Asian and Black cultural formations.
Hip hop was central to these performers’ newly developing pan-
ethnic identities, and through it they could illustrate commonali-
ties across bloody religious and national divisions on the subconti-
nent by quoting Gandhi, for instance. Their conscious lyrics backed
by social actions reflect a legacy of South Asian activism framed by
the importance of history and political expression through artistic
flair (DasGupta and Das Dasgupta 2000). They offer an alternative
to naturalized divisions among groups in a nonconformist and un-
expected format, all while doing so, in KB’s case, at an event that
quintessentially represents hegemonic desiness.
The artists sample those aspects of ethnicity they find to be im-
portant and express them through hip hop. Ethnic hip hop broad-
casts the components of a critical ethnicity: it highlights history
and the diasporic migrations of South Asians; it employs tropes of
movement and travel that link the MCs to the “motherland”; and
the rappers claim membership within transnational communities
through linguistic and sonic choices. It is through hip hop, there-

74 Alternative Ethnics
fore, that they are able to express their commitment to co-​ethnics
and craft a diasporic sensibility, or a sense of connection to broader
communities across national borders. They also use hip hop as a
mode through which to transfer their cultural knowledge to the
next generation. Thus hip hop is a manifestation of their ethnicity,
and through it these artists act as cultural brokers across genera-
tions of South Asians.
In contrast to ahistorical cultural explanations of group differ-
ence, desi MCs contextualize their present circumstances through
copious references to the past, including family, ethnic, and Ameri-
can histories. Whether United States born, like some of the mem-
bers of Karmacy, or from India, like Chee Malabar of Himalayan
Project, these rappers pay close attention to family narratives that
appeal to broader immigrant audiences. Within one song an artist
may refer to India, to being a South Asian, and to their immigrant
parents, thereby revealing their multiple and overlapping identifi-
cations that speak to all second-​generation youth. They use hip hop
to articulate diasporic identities, and thus Black popular culture
adapts to reflect the experiences of recent arrivals. The American-​
born MC Rawj, a member of the Bay Area–based Feenom Circle,
describes the metaphoric journey he took to become familiar with
his ancestry on the track “Masters Too”:
The moon and sun could neither reach my birthplace,
My mother held me in the cold,
Blankets protected my face,
A child born with no knowledge of his blood line,
But in time realized the throne is mine.

Raised by his mother in Richmond without a strong ethnic com-

munity, Rawj lacked knowledge about Punjab where his parents are
from. However, he learns ethnic pride (“the throne”) over time and
“returns” to the nurturing fields of his mother’s birthplace, signal-
ing his connection to a newly discovered homeland evoked by the
falling rain:
The few drops of water fell on my face,
Returning me to my peoples’ birthplace,
The dirt embraces me, not pullin’ me under,
Barefooting on fields which birthed my mother.

Alternative Ethnics 75
The ties of young desis to their parents’ (often unspecified) home-
lands is part of an immigrant sensibility that helps them contend
with local tensions in panethnic ways. Rawj connects two genera-
tions across space and time as he goes full circle, returning him
to the subcontinental soil that nourishes rather than drowns him.
South Asian Americans draw upon transnational connections as a
uniting force against established ethno-​national tensions in South
Asia and the United States. “Along with their global awareness,”
Bandana Purkayastha writes, “they use their transnational family
experiences to ‘mark off ’ their own versions of difference, and to
build mechanisms for rejecting some of the more racist interpre-
tive frameworks used to maintain boundaries against them” (2005:
68). Through this learning process Rawj comes to consider people
of his mother’s birthplace as his own “peoples,” thereby reflecting
many of the artists’ connections to South Asia despite the diasporic
conditions of their birth. Gaining cultural knowledge further de-
velops this link.
Lyrics such as those about parents’ hopes and dreams that at-
tend to family and immigrant histories and highlight movement
populate ethnic hip hop tracks. Like Rawj, Chee uses hip hop to
reflect upon his time growing up between Baroda and Kerala in
India before coming to San Francisco. Himalayan Project’s track
“The Middle Passage,” for which the album was named, invokes a
bluesy and thoughtful tone with the help of a saxophone’s mellow
drawl and a slow beat. Chee begins by reflecting back but, unlike
many mainstream desis, his is an unromantic nostalgia:
I came from a gray slum in the earth’s far corner,
Where men are hemmed by superstitions, celestial stars warn ya,
’89 they was aligned, and we moved, to California.

His immigrant parents placed their hopes and expectations upon

him although they may have been complicated by class struggles:
11 years old; I was the immigrant poster child,
diligent, broke, uh, forced to strive,
in the course of life I’ve seen dreams through my folk’s
hopeful eyes . . .

Chee’s description of immigrant hopes and generational concerns

reverberate across time and immigrant communities. Those Latino

76 Alternative Ethnics
 Album courtesy of Chirag Menon.

and Asian youths from immigrant families can relate to these lyrics,
particularly as Chee does not mention exactly where that “gray slum”
was located. Other artists, like the members of Karmacy, use multi-
lingual raps to reveal universality across categories.
Karmacy performs a unique ethnic identity that samples ethnic
and sonic quotations within a hip hop framework. Many young desi
fans of hip hop have never seen the actual melding of these forces
before attending a Karmacy show. The group’s effort in cutting and
mixing accomplishes several things. First, it highlights the con-
structivist processes of meaning making by jarring audiences with
the seeming dissonance of ethnic identification through a racial-
ized artistic expression. Second, it encourages audiences to inter-
pret the references, thereby creating a temporary community of
South Asian, East Asian, and Latino youths. Karmacy has crafted

Alternative Ethnics 77
and offers to the third generation what they, themselves, had been
missing. These MCs, like all the artists, came to know themselves
better through hip hop. In return, they offer a new, relevant, and
fresh image of immigrant ethnicity.
The songs by Karmacy that are multilingual have elicited perhaps
the greatest responses by Indians in India on blogs and Web sites.
The ability of Karmacy’s members to not only rap but do so in their
mother tongues as well as in Spanish evokes the strength of their
ethnic identifications and their familiarity with Mexicans, who
represent a major population in California. Hip hop is not a sub-
stitute for ethnic literacy—indeed, it is yet another language they
have learned. Karmacy uses multilingualism in the same way that
Kid Frost, the members of Cypress Hill, and other California-​based
Latino rappers who rhyme in Spanglish do to express their mul-
tiple affiliations. Karmacy is unique among the desi artists for pro-
ducing an album that includes lyrics in five languages. Their song
“Blood Brothers,” performed by Nimo and Swap in Eng­lish and
Gujarati, may resonate with the hundreds of thousands of Guja-
rati immigrants in the United States; it also strikes a chord with
members of other immigrant families who may not understand the
lyrics but who identify with bilingualism. Even young people who
live in India have accessed Karmacy’s music online and have left
the group messages about how “dope” their songs are. The themes
in “Blood Brothers” and other Karmacy songs reflect the chang-
ing demographics of Los Angeles, which is home to some of the
groups’ members as well as the location of their label Rukus Avenue
Records. While some lyrics make broad connections across immi-
grant groups, others speak to the specific experiences of America’s
South Asians.
The four MCs of Karmacy “go classically to India and bring it to
your room” by rapping in Gujarati and Punjabi and through the use
of multiple references of traveling or “going on a passage” to India.
The performers mix various cultures in their live shows; the rappers
perform alongside a live dhol player and they even incorporate bhara-
tanatyam movements, a South Indian dance mostly performed by
women that includes ornate hand and foot movements along with
facial expressions.21 Their incorporation of various performers, in-
struments, and influences along with their thematic scope is a pan-

78 Alternative Ethnics
ethnic and even pan-​racial expression of unity across groups that
may at first seem distinct but are, in fact, commensurable.
In 2002, Karmacy gave an exhilarating featured performance at
Los Angeles’s Artwallah in an outdoor daytime concert attended
by a sea of South Asians.22 On that typically sunny day, the mostly
young and hip Brown attendees browsed through merchandise
sellers’ wares exhibited in small tents while others took in the art
exhibit. Many had never heard of Karmacy at that time (this has
since changed), but those more eager gathered in front of the stage
where Nimo, Swap, Sammy, and KB grabbed their mics as the DJ,
a young Black man with dreadlocks, a long-​haired Sikh drummer,
and Gurpreet “the Tabla Guy,” warmed up. Casually dressed, the
rappers looked like many other attendees of the event, although

Album courtesy of Sammy Chand.

Alternative Ethnics 79
they wore some markers of hip hop style. As usual KB wore a cap,
and he wore jeans and a Karmacy T-​shirt partially covered by an
unbuttoned printed short-​sleeved shirt. Nimo, representing South-
ern California, sported a Los Angeles Lakers’ basketball jersey with
matching sweatpants and sneakers, while Swap donned baggy
khakis and a T-​shirt. Sammy, bald with a goatee and earrings, was
also informal, dressed in a Rukus Avenue T-​shirt and pants. Their
clothing suggested that these were artists familiar with hip hop
fashions but not in the exaggerated ways that many people inter-
pret wannabe hip hoppers to have. The men’s pants were not ex-
cessively baggy and they did not smatter their language with Black
vernacular or wear oversized gold chains. One could also intuit
their (differing) familiarity with Blacks through demeanor, includ-
ing body language, gestures, and word choice and pronunciation.
The rapping intonation and flow of KB suggested his Richmond,
California, roots; he was relaxed and rocked his head to the beat.
Sammy, who lives in a wealthy neighborhood in Los Angeles, had
a rhyming style that, like his on-​stage movements, was more stac-
cato as he pronounced each word.
“Passage to India” is perhaps the group’s most popular and well-​
known song, and the crowd began to swell once they began their
rhyme. It’s a party track, and as soon as the familiar chords of the
sitar rang through the speakers followed by a drum beat and the
sweet whine of a violin the four rappers had the crowd nodding
their heads:
Passage to India, here come the Rukus for your ears
Comin’ on down, bringin’ it to you from this Western hemisphere.
We come from Californ-​I-​A through the San Francisco Bay
Trekking from the Himal-​A-​Y-​A, to I-​N-​D-​I-​A!

Standing close to one side of the stage a young Black woman, nod-
ding her head to the beat, turned to me and said as if pleasantly
surprised, “They sound good!” The chorus alternates between Hindi
and Eng­lish, urging the audience to “come on come on, we’re going
to Hindustan, we’re staying in this country. Passage to India, Pas-
sage to India.” The second verse begins with classical bharatana-
tyam beats: “Dha ding, dha dha ding, dha ding da,” and in response
the audience shouted encouragements as Nimo half-​seriously

80 Alternative Ethnics
simulated a dancer in mid-​turn, his neck shifted from side to side
and his hands twirled in an arch overhead and to the side.
The Artwallah festival, along with a similar event named Dias-
poradics, offer the perfect opportunity for rappers to captivate a
South Asian audience. The artists pick up hip hop to take their audi-
ences with them on a collective journey to India, thereby reversing
the travels their parents once took in the 1960s and 1970s. Kar-
macy’s rappers identify as the children of immigrants (Sammy, a
Punjabi, came to the United States via Eng­land) and participate in
transnational communities through their themes and styles. The
video filmed for the song foregrounds the message of travel to and
within India by globally linking South Asians.23 In the video we see
the streets and sights of Bharat (India) through the window of a
moving vehicle. Interspersed are images of the artists at work in
their Los Angeles studio, the process which literally takes them
to India. Their images of the homeland are less about untarnished
idealizations of the past than they are aimed to signal the ongoing
relationship of many of these artists with their ancestral homes.
In transmitting their culture to the younger generation through
a Black art form Karmacy talks back to the segmented assimila-
tion scholars and first-​generation aunties and uncles who feel that
South Asians who affiliate with hip hop and Blacks have “lost their
culture.” Sammy told me that he and Swap performed at an event
hosted by a Sardar Patel organization in Los Angeles in the early
2000s.24 As soon as their track came on during the sound check,
the elderly audience responded quite sourly—telling them to turn
the sound down. Realizing that it would not be very effective to
jump into a rap song with its booming bass line, Sammy decided
to explain their “rap shap” music to the “aunties and uncles in the
crowd.” Sitting on the edge of the stage, he grabbed the microphone
and said, “Listen folks. You know, we are responsible for keeping all
the beliefs and all the issues and all the civil rights and everything
that you guys preach about. We are, believe it or not, passing it on
to everybody else out there. It’s either us or Bollywood. Take your
choice! That’s how it’s going to happen.” Here and in their music,
Karmacy engages South Asian Americans in dialogue by translating
first-​generation struggles for “civil rights” and other beliefs and
issues to “everybody else,” including the next generation.

Alternative Ethnics 81
 The content of Karmacy’s rhymes also has something to teach
the first generation—namely, how to articulate their experiences
with, and anger about, racism. Their lyrics offer historicized and
racialized excavations of South Asian immigrant experiences,
thereby providing a different take on ethnicity. In contrast to the
“feel good” party vibes that the quartet is most well known for,
their song “Outcasted” ponders what emerges once they uncover
South Asians’ experiences with racism. Produced and recorded by
Sammy, the forcefully delivered track rests on a deep, head-​nodding
bass line and the strumming of a guitar. The female vocalist Saila
marks each chorus with vocals reminiscent of the old Hindi records
that our South Asian parents play when they miss home.
Following the line “I was outcasted” repeated twice, Nimo jumps
onto the track and quickly notifies his audience about the effects of
being shunned at the very start of his life. He begins:
I was outcasted, banned by the age of my birth.
From the eyes of this planet I was only worth
2 cents.
Like a dirty bastard that ever fell on this earth . . .

In the next verse, Swap flows along the same vein of racism:
So I grab the mic and pre-​medically meditate.
And as you segregate, I contemplate
The meaning of my race.
You delineate a road for me to take
A path for me to follow.

Swap, who at the time was in his residency to become a doctor (he
“pre-​medically meditate[s]”), might use the term “race” instead of
“ethnicity” to refer to his background because it rhymes. But the
effect is one that places his struggles within a broader historical
context of segregation. Despite their early exposure to discrimina-
tion, both Nimo and Swap follow with their own resistance. Nimo
explains that, while “banned” from the start, he nonetheless strives
by gaining knowledge and unearthing silenced stories. Refusing
an ostrich-​like strategy of burying these differences, the artists
are forthright about their non-White status in revealing how eth-
nicity is formed through power dynamics that discriminate against
others. Coming to terms with unspoken truths leads some artists

82 Alternative Ethnics
to adopt ethnic pride in response to their devaluation. In doing so,
they turn ethnicity—being Indian, for example—from something
that was once the basis for childhood and college racism into a
form of empowerment and self-​articulation.
Only in time, within minds,
Ever learned what I learned.
That my people and color will rise from the roots of our dirt.
And all of the gold on this planet’s not equal to all that we’re worth.

In contrast to mainstream desis, MCs draw upon their cultural

roots to explicitly voice rather than deny their interactions with dis-
crimination and exclusion. Their lyrics emphasize the concurrent
processes of racialization and the development of ethnic pride. Hip
hop, a cultural form produced within the context of racism, pro-
vides them with the vocabulary and mode to express these ideas.
Gaining pride “as an Indian,” Nimo becomes defiant, “deleting
everything that gets in my path if it’s a nuisance.” Nimo’s refer-
ence to his people rising from the “roots of our dirt” is similar to
Rawj’s verse about how his newly found self-​knowledge returned
him to the fields of his mother’s birthplace. Through hip hop, these
rappers apparently came to grips with previous conflicts they might
have faced about their identities. After voicing the egregious nature
of the past, they move on to embrace being desis. Swap, for ex-
ample, resists the expectations others have placed on him, “comin’
up” as a South Asian:
I say, “no, it’s crazy.” Hard for you to swallow
The truth because it hurts that I’m comin’ up.
South Asian from my birth,
Living life on this beautiful earth.
What you get is what you see,
But do you get what you see?
I’m on a quest for the real reality.

Karmacy offers the mostly South Asian audience at Artwallah a

well-​articulated and nicely packaged ethnic identity that contrib-
utes to the range of artistic expressions of desi politics featured at
the event, including sculpture, comedy, dance, and paintings (see
Mani 2001). Songs from their compilation CD Passage to India and
debut album The Movement make use of multiple languages, instru-

Alternative Ethnics 83
ments, and themes; they use Indian instrumentalists in live shows.
Passage to India is described by KB as “a very South Asian album,”
which resulted from “tailor[ing] a lot of the songs . . . to have a
more South Asian feel.” Karmacy provides listeners with a pride-
ful panethnic identity that is relevant to youth today because it is
sampled to incorporate popular desi and American youth refer-
ences.
Ethnicity is not so plagued a concept that we must do away with
it; individuals sample ethnicity just as the artists mix and mash up
their identities, and thus we can deconstruct and reappropriate the
ethnicity model to speak about “new ethnicities” (Hall 1991). Kar-
macy’s music illustrates theories applicable to understanding new
desi identities—identities that are deeply historicized and based on
contextual understandings rather than lazy attributions of group
difference to culture. The artists are attuned to power and socio-
historical forces and remind us to incorporate these perspectives
in our analyses. Ethnicity “acknowledges the place of history, lan-
guage, and culture in the construction of subjectivity and identity,
as well as the fact that all discourse is placed, positioned, situated,

Image courtesy of Sammy Chand and Rukus Avenue Records.

84 Alternative Ethnics
and all knowledge is contextual” (Hall in Hutchinson and Smith
1996: 162).
All of the MCs claim space for alternative desiness by using hip
hop to engage in dialogue within South Asian America. Ethnic hip
hop alters conceptions of desi youth as culturally circumscribed or
fully Americanized. Instead, these artists work out their conten-
tious relations to and rightful claims of ethnic identity by creating
communities through Black popular culture. Music is central to the
cultivation of some new ethnicities and hip hop’s desis exemplify a
“politics of ethnicity predicated on difference and diversity” (Hall
1992: 258). Hip hop provides a language that can tackle inequality,
power, and systematic forms of oppression that shape immigrant
youth’s American identities. Desi artists use Black popular culture
to craft ethnicity that places difference and diversity within, and not
outside, the context of history and power. It pushes youth to under-
stand that despite the logic of multiculturalism, “difference makes a
difference” (Davis 1996: 48; italics mine).

Rewind—Conclusion
Through collaborative and contentious relations with co-​ethnics,
the artists inherited, rejected, and refigured ethnicity. Their sensi-
tivity to racism dissuaded them from aspiring to be White, but their
frustrating encounters with desis turned ethnicity into a charged,
rather than comforting, option. People often interpret minorities
who do not express a “strong” racial identity as oreos, coconuts,
twinkies, and other colorful edibles that imply that they are “white-
washed.”25 But what of the troubling intra-​ethnic dynamics that
can lead to contentious attitudes about ethnicity? Americans have
branded South Asians in hip hop who are critical of hegemonic
desiness and White racism with even stranger “race traitor” fruit
metaphors, such as rotten coconuts and bruised bananas (Sharma
2001). These confused responses emerge from our undertheoriza-
tion of why relatively privileged individuals identify with those who
are considered undesirable.
Hip hop desis confront hegemonic desiness, which emerges
among South Asian immigrants contending with their new status
as minorities. First-​generation immigrants who conceptualize
themselves in the context of their country of origin differ from

Alternative Ethnics 85
their United States–born children who face more immediate local
contexts. Second-​generation youth, who are of but not bounded by
the United States nation, forge emergent identities by juggling and
sampling compelling forces, including their parents’ hopes and co-​
ethnics’ expectations of proper desiness. They also reject particu-
lar aspects, including social insularity and class and status norms.
Even in the 2000s, years after matriculation, the artists were still
concerned about their relations with other desis even if their own
paths had moved them beyond the trials of college. In 2001, Rawj
explained, “I have this whole issue with Indian identity. Some-
times I think a lot of us really don’t know ourselves so we go to the
standard protocol, which is to be close minded and we over delve
[into our ethnic identity]. But maybe that isn’t too healthy to do.
I’ve always had concern over Indians. Like there’s actually certain
norms that are expected. I could have said it back then [in college],
too, ‘Yeah, I’m just as Indian as these fools, so what if I do this
or that?’ But I was probably trying to employ a broader sense of
it.” It is probably the case that, with some distance, the artists are
now able to claim they are “just as Indian as these fools,” whereas
earlier it was difficult negotiating being an Indian who wished for
expanded social boundaries.
College posed old challenges reconfigured and each artist faced
rejection by and of mainstream desi groups. Students debate authen-
ticity and rightful claims to ethnicity. In awkward encounters desi
hip hoppers produced and contested normative second-​generation
“Indianness” by reshaping older identities into novel ones just as
a DJ mixes two preexisting recordings to create a new track. Co-​
ethnics rebuffed hip hop desis, who in turn learned to carry their
ethnicity within themselves rather than collectively through homo-
genous social groups. Although the performers felt marginalized at
just the time ethnicity and identity appear so critical to youth, their
blooming musical and political commitments pushed them to con-
front ethnic identity politics through direct engagement.
Ethnicity may be both a powerful positive force in the lives of im-
migrants and a restrictive set of expectations that delimit the pos-
sible range of options. One has to socialize ethnically, align with
the proper clique, have some knowledge of one’s parents’ coun-
try and language, date within the group, and even wear the “right
clothes.” Artists did almost none of this by choice or circumstance

86 Alternative Ethnics
but dominant discourses inhibited their ability to articulate other
possibilities. However, the artists realized that the very develop-
ment of norms revealed the plasticity of ethnic identity and of cate-
gories. The artists, urban and suburban, disrupted ethnicity as the
default identity of the new second generation by creating inclusive
panethnic communities. In the process, they challenged assump-
tions of “sameness” and “difference,” of alienation and belonging,
often through song.
Ethnic hip hop illustrates immigrant stories and diasporic sen-
sibilities. Lyrics detailing family histories within historical and
global narratives call forth this sense of belonging to extranational
communities. The artists make links across time and space; ethnic
knowledge leads to a growing attachment to their parents’ home-
lands that connect to their own experiences as post-​1965 American
minorities. Through hip hop, these desis name the discrimination
faced by South Asians and turn knowledge into a source of pride
and empowerment.
The internal group dynamics of ethnicity is only part of the story.
The artists’ dissociation with central aspects of ethnicity leads to
their openness to other communities. How did these desis first
come into contact with hip hop and what do their engagements
with Blacks look like? How does race and racism operate distinctly
from ethnicity and how did the artists negotiate their status after
9/11? The artists found few models within their own communities
to help them with these issues, thus they turned to those who could
help. In the next chapter, I discuss why the artists choose to affiliate
with Blacks, a group that many mainstream South Asians consider
most different. These identifications provide an intriguing recon-
ception of race and space of desis in American racial hierarchies.

Alternative Ethnics 87
 2.
Making Race
Desi Racial Identities, South Asian and Black
Relations, and Racialized Hip Hop

I was just baffled. I had never thought about politics, I had never thought
about race. That [rotten coconut] conversation basically changed my life
. . . I totally backed away from the Indian community. I [thought,] “Ah,
these people don’t accept me. The Indian community is like this, and I’m
like this, so I’m an outsider.” And so I basically tried to hang out with the
Black community . . . because I knew that, and it worked for me. And
they accepted me—which the Indian community didn’t.—KB, Indian
American MC
We often operate with too simplistic a notion of “belonging.” Sometimes
we are most “spoken” by our attachments when we struggle to be free of
them, quarrel with, criticize or dissent radically from them. Like parental
relationships, cultural traditions shape us both when they nurture and
sustain us and when we have to break irrevocably with them in order to
survive. And beyond—though we don’t always recognize it—there are
always the “attachments” we have to those who share our world with us
but who are different from us.—Stuart Hall, “Conclusion: The Multicul-
tural Question”

This book is about the “attachments” that, to paraphrase Stuart

Hall, some South Asians in America have to those who share their
world with them but who are different from them. Why would
some South Asian youths spend their lives producing Black popu-
lar culture, loving Black men and women, and living in Black com-
munities, particularly when we expect them to behave otherwise?
Ethnicity is just one of several meaningful identities that hip hop
desis develop, and their ambivalence toward it leads them to other
communities of belonging. They claim racial identities: as people
of color undergoing discrimination, they identify with Blacks and
form lifelong relationships with Black people. By sampling they re-
cast meanings of ethnicity and race—overlapping yet distinct phe-
nomena—through relations with co-​ethnics and other minorities.
Thus, instead of imagining ethnicity as a chosen and malleable self-​
expression and race as a “problem” fixed and imposed by others,
they find that race provides a sense of self-​efficacy and empower-
ment. By claiming their non-White status, the artists reconcile their
racialization by others with the affiliations and politics that they
themselves have elected. They engage in making race: changing the
nature and meaning of existing racial categories by producing their
own versions.
These South Asians’ lack of ethnic networks and opposition to
ethnic expectations make the identities and worldviews of some
Blacks appealing. As members of relatively voiceless and deracial-
ized communities of South Asians, performers are drawn to the
visibility of the dominant American minority, particularly in col-
lege. Their experiences with racism and awareness of class and
racial differences in the United States left them with questions to
which co-​ethnics did not provide satisfying answers. Blackness
serves as a model of an explicitly racialized response to this void.
Desi artists from urban areas grew up alongside Blacks and
together they created hip hop culture, while those from suburban
White communities first came into contact with hip hop through
an evolving obsession with music. Often calling themselves “not
really Indian” or “outsiders,” both sets of desis introduce hip hop
and Black people to South Asian America at the same time that they
attempt to represent who South Asians are to their Black peers. In
college, the artists developed a critical awareness of power but they
had to form their own curriculum, so to speak, as few discourses
explained their sense of cross-​racial connection. They learned
about the South Asian and Black interconnections that many South
Asians gloss over and other Americans hardly know. Sustained

Making Race 89
interactions with Black male and female peers during the artists’
early and college years through which each learned more about the
other complemented their artistic development. This perspective of
connections across differences informs their music through which
they present racial and political identifications.
The artists reflect on South Asian and Black commonalities while
they analyze their specificity as Brown, and not Black, Americans.
Because neither ethnicity as “Pakistani” or “Indian” nor the racial
identity of “Black” can fully articulate their emerging selves, they
sample from their peers’ cultural practices and worldviews but
apply them to their own situations and histories as South Asians.
Desi hip hoppers redraw the lines of “sameness” and “difference”
that define identity-​based communities through their bonds across
categories. Ethnicity as sameness obscures internal divisions and
can enhance and inhibit a sense of communal belonging; the
opposite can be said for communities of difference. Why do these
desis find “family” in Black communities and how do they articu-
late these bonds? I highlight the impacts of Black men and women
upon desis’ production of hip hop and their solidarities across con-
structed divides.
The cultural distinctiveness and non-Black status of Asian immi-
grants allows them to sidestep race, or so it seems. Thus, engaging
topics of race and racism appears to be a matter of choice, even if
the experience of racism and of being racialized is not. Identify-
ing racially for desis—or acknowledging how one’s body becomes
marked in ways that are enacted upon by those in power in order
to devalue difference to support White supremacist and capitalist
gains—can be disadvantageous since it evokes one’s non-White
status. In the first section of this chapter I analyze the prevalent
racial politics of mainstream first- and second-​generation desis
that frame why some desis turn to hip hop for alternatives. Many
desis experience racism, yet few adopt explicit racial identities, so
what would lead some to turn away from the relative privilege of a
deracialized status?
Although many Americans have thought of South Asians as cul-
tural rather than racial beings, race and racism are central to desi
lives. Race organizes social structures in American society in em-
powering and disempowering ways (see San Juan 1992; Chang
2000). In the second section of this chapter I illustrate how sus-

90 Making Race
tained interactions with Black peers and hip hop’s messages ex-
posed urban and suburban desi artists to perspectives uncommon
in their ethnic communities. Desis use this information to frame
their racial self-​conception and their unique understandings of
South Asian/Black relations as one of linkages rather than as only
contentious. I conclude with examples of desis’ “racialized hip
hop,” or traditional-​sounding hip hop music, that speak to issues
commonly considered “Black” rather than South Asian and that ex-
press the artists’ negotiation as Brown men and women living in a
post-​9/11 America.
The cross-​racial identifications of hip hop desis are not rooted
in ephemeral, theoretical, or romantic notions of connection; in-
stead, they are based on their knowledge of the historical and
global forces that have shaped how South Asians and Blacks came
to the Americas. Through their critical awareness of power, cross-​
racial interactions, and hip hop music, these desis engage with dif-
ference; they construct communities based on shared interests of
music and politics not circumscribed by ancestry. They create racial-
ized hip hop to articulate a global race consciousness that links
individuals across time, space, and racial categories. By making
race—taking an active part in the process of racialization—indi-
viduals stake out new racial meanings that can become the foun-
dation of empowered non-White identities from which individuals
build cross-​racial alliances.

The Meaning of Racism and the Meaningfulness of “Race”

The identities of desi hip hoppers are paradoxically fixed and am-
biguous and they shift from the margins to mainstreams of mul-
tiple communities (see Okihiro 1994). Tied to other South Asians
as a group marked by sameness, they also bond with Blacks and
broader communities of color. Scholarly analyses of the “prob-
lem” that South Asians have posed to American legal construc-
tions of race illustrate their racial ambiguity and the fallacy of bio-
logical conceptions of race (Koshy 1998; Lopez 2006). Today desis
find themselves at a unique juncture. Some harness the productive
power of their racial ambiguity—arising from a history of changing
census classifications and their status between Black and White—
in order to distinguish themselves from either pole, or else align

Making Race 91
with the privileged, White, position. Other groups occupying “the
racial middle” also have these options, but individuals respond to
their stations in life heterogeneously, beyond “whitened” or ethnic
identities (O’Brien 2008). It is true that many Asian Americans have
internalized dominant racist ideas and dissociate with other native-​
born minorities and their working-​class counterparts (Leonard
1992; Singh 1996; Prashad 2000; Kim 2003.) But what of those who
tackle the ambiguity of their otherness by attempting to solidify
(but never fix) its meaning by evoking race as an empowering iden-
tity and racism as a shaping but not determining force? Concep-
tions and deployments of Blackness and its markers are central to
this process. How is it, I ask, that some South Asians strategically
deploy their ambiguity relative to “races” that people imagine are
more fixed, and how does this allow them to relate to a number of
groups? Their liminal position grants these desis the opportunity
to shift from being marginal outsiders to central spokespersons
within South Asian, Black, and hip hop communities.
These stances highlight another central contradiction: they illus-
trate, on the one hand, the fixity and “realness” of race while, on
the other hand, they reveal the slipperiness and potential transcen-
dence of racial categories. Decision-​making groups have imposed
ideas about where South Asians fit in the racial hierarchy of the
United States, but desis also inhabit these spaces self-​consciously.
In employing a double consciousness (Du Bois 1903) they interpret
how others read them through their structural understanding of
how the powerful have constituted race relations. Like biracial and
other ethnically ambiguous people, desis can harness the power of
their ambiguity. They engage the malleability of race to construct
emergent identities and meanings through strategic essentialism
(Spivak 1995) and strategic anti-​essentialism (Lipsitz 1994).
Two primary factors lead to the responsiveness of these desis to
their Black peers’ perspectives on race and class dynamics in the
United States: their sense of otherness in American society evident
in the racism that they and those around them face, and the rise
of hegemonic desiness and discourses of ethnic exceptionalism
(itself a response to the former). Problematically, the latter reaction
leads to forms of racism among minority groups. First-​generation
race politics frames second-​generation options and inspires some
to search for alternatives. For some desi youths, including these

92 Making Race
artists, South Asian anti-​Black racism leads not only to their am-
bivalent relationship to ethnicity, but also pushes them to become
anti-​racist (see Das Gupta 2006). Hip hop desis learn how and why
racism operates and their awareness of global and historical pro-
cesses that link communities of color leads them to connect the
ways that South Asians are racialized to the mistreatment of Blacks.
These links encourage their opposition to manifestations of racism
that extend beyond their ethnic communities. Blackness would
thus appeal to those looking for empowering responses to dis-
crimination without succumbing to assimilation or further advo-
cating racism.

First-​Generation Race Politics

You don’t identify with people worse off than you are. You make your
deals, if you can, with those who have more, because you hope one day
to have more yourself. (Russo 2007:13)

Second-​generation desi youths come to understand their status by

attempting to reconcile Americans’ notions of South Asians with
their parents’ ideas about who South Asians are. In attempting to
fit favorably within their new nation predicated upon a Black and
White binary, immigrants often align themselves on the side of
Whites and maintain a deracialized identity detached from racial
concerns. This racial maneuvering sans explicit racial engagement
trickles down to their United States–born children who, in their
own desires to fulfill their parents’ dreams, adopt many of their
elders’ problematic ideas. Ultimately, desis are ill-​equipped to deal
with racism while they advocate racialist ideas about non-White
others.
The racial attitudes of the first generation toward Blacks and
about race more generally stem from their dissonant experiences as
immigrants. For postcolonials from elite families in South Asia that
were members of the majority group, becoming recast as racial-
ized minorities can be troubling. They often see group difference
in biological terms, thereby evoking transported notions of caste,
blood, and purity forged within the context of subcontinental his-
tories, including British colonialism. “Such conceptions of race,”
Nazli Kibria writes, “which are so different from the principles

Making Race 93
of U.S. racial thinking, have helped South Asian Americans to re-
main ideologically disengaged from the U.S. racial order” (1998:
72). Immigrants’ self-​conceptions from their homeland intersect
with the Black-​White paradigm of race in the United States, which
emphasizes the devaluation of Blacks (Rajagopal 1995; Prashad
2000, 2001). Some assert that Asians can access Whiteness because
Americans consider them to be culturally distinctive, or ethnic, and
therefore potentially assimilable, whereas the position of Blacks in
the American imagination is racial and therefore more fixed: “The
‘exotic’ east lends itself to certain mystifications, whereas the his-
tory of slavery in America, while certainly secured in part by ideo-
logical imagining, has nonetheless embedded blacks more con-
cretely and determinedly in the material” (Palumbo-​Liu 1999: 87).
South Asians focus on what they came for—job opportunities
and golden futures—yet class aspirations link with conceptions of
race. As Vijay Prashad explains, “Desis realize they are not ‘white,’
but there is certainly a strong sense among most desis that they are
not ‘black.’ In a racist society, it is hard to expect people to opt for
the most despised category. Desis came to the United States and de-
nied their ‘blackness’ at least partly out of a desire for class mobility
(something, in the main, denied to blacks) and a sense of solidarity
with blacks was tantamount to ending one’s dreams of being suc-
cessful” (2000: 94). Thus, even on the heels of the race-​conscious
movements of the 1960s and 1970s, South Asian parents across
class lines, like other immigrants, encourage “American” values
about work and money among their children. But in agreeing with
the foundations of the model minority myth, South Asians comply
with White supremacy: “With blacks at the bottom, there is every
indication that any migrant has a good chance both of being above
the nether end of society and of experiencing some mobility. Rec-
ognition of this fact illustrates the acceptance of structural racism
against blacks in U.S. society” (163).1
“It’s hard to live as a negative, positive, derivative,” pens Rawj
in the rap song “Masters Too” on Feenom Circle’s Souled Separately
album. The relative wealth of Indian Americans may shield them
from the more blatant forms of racism (Kibria 1998: 73; Prashad
2000), but it continues to impact them. “In order to celebrate the
triumph of American democracy,” writes David Palumbo-​Liu, “it is
necessary to have a racial other whose success bears witness to the

94 Making Race
legitimacy of such basic notions as upward mobility. Yet even an
assimilation into the elite classes cannot erase the mark of racial
difference and the psychic and cultural differences that are as-
sumed to accompany it” (1999: 212). “Positive” stereotypes about
Asians as “mysterious” and “mystical” only signify one form of
racism (Prashad 2000).2 Superstudent and computer geek stereo-
types reveal that Black and White Americans consider Asians “eter-
nal foreigners” rather than White, despite the presence of Asians
in the United States as early as the 1700s.3 The “eternal foreigners”
status is likewise ascribed to Latinos, whose land in what is now
the southwestern United States was stolen from them. So although
South Asians consider themselves to be “cultural” beings not vic-
tims to racism, Orientalist conceptions still rule American minds,
existing simultaneously with depictions of Black inferiority.
Racial evasions are striking given the anti-​Asian backlash in the
1980s.4 The general racial politics of South Asians in the United
States comprise a complex denial and assertion of racism that
second-​generation youth must confront. The United States offers
non-Black immigrants some rewards that intersect with cultural ex-
planations that deny racism and heighten divisions among minori-
ties. The choices of South Asian parents to not discuss their racial
identities and racism undeniably impact the lives of their children.

Impacts upon the Second Generation

It would not be an overstatement to say that most South Asians
in the United States consider Blacks to be their antithesis. How-
ever, American-​born desis comprehend the process of alienation
that they and other minorities face, and American racial politics
often registers with them more than it does for their immigrant
parents (Visweswaran 1993: 307). Discrimination sometimes mo-
tivates desi youths who, in Kibria’s words, “may find it more nec-
essary than their parents did to confront directly the dynamics of
U.S. racial thinking” (1998: 73) in order to develop friendships and
coalitions with other minorities (Singh 1996: 98).5 This is partially
due to parents’ unfamiliarity with United States–based racisms
(Lessinger 1995: 136). But this does not mean that most desis claim
racial identities in common with other non-Whites.
Notions of racial difference held by elders have filtered down to

Making Race 95
desi youth and are reinforced by colorblind, culturalist, and multi-
cultural discourses in the 1990s. Some Indian Berkeley students, for
example, claim that Indians fare better in school than other groups
because of their family values. In the same breath, these students
conflate cultural and biological explanations of difference: Blacks,
one male student says, have better ball handling ability than others,
are “naturally” more sexually promiscuous, and yet lack the cul-
tural impetus for schooling. As such, desis often partake in cultural
racism (Balibar 1991), whereby “culture” substitutes for biological
notions of difference despite the fact that other Americans subject
South Asians to this same form of racism. South Asian youths also
call upon their class status as evidence of hard work rather than
analyzing the impacts of structural and historical factors. Thus,
hegemonic desiness and national discourses about difference in the
United States reinforce one another to inform South Asians’ racial
politics.
The social and geographic distance between South Asians and
Blacks has exacerbated desis’ misinformation, including in diverse
college settings in California in the 1990s. Even where cross-​racial
interactions may occur—in dorm rooms, classes, and at events—
the divide seems so great and the desire to overcome it too little.
Most desi youths get their information about Black people from
images permeating all forms of information and interpret them
through prevailing understandings. For example, Amit, an upper-​
middle-​class mainstream Indian student at UC Berkeley and a self-​
described “wannabe emcee,” explains his blossoming love of hip
hop. At Berkeley, he was making impressive dual efforts to become
involved in the separate Indus and hip hop scenes. He bravely par-
ticipated in a freestyle battle and even attempted to start a “South
Asian hip hop group” (it never got off the ground). Amit loves hip
hop, was raised in the Bay Area (known for its multiracial mix), and
attended one of the most diverse universities in the nation. But at
the end of our interview, he confided, “Yeah, because, you know,
socially and personally, I never knew a Black person. Not one. Not
even today.” Amit’s interests and experiences echo other ethno-
graphic depictions of desi youth.
Many South Asians across generations perceive Blacks to be an
uneducated group that is prone to violence and that should be kept
at a distance (see Leonard 1992; Singh 1996; Prashad 2000). This

96 Making Race
may seem like an unduly harsh assessment, yet the prevalence of
these attitudes argues otherwise. The MCs’ own parents have at
times commented on the “undesirable” elements in Black commu-
nities. As one artist noted, “I do think a lot of members of my par-
ents’ generation have . . . derogatory notions of other races without
having firsthand experiences with it, which bothers me.” In their
childhoods, these Brown MCs would face their parents’ prejudices
when they brought Black friends into their homes: “Don’t bring
these people to my house,” said one mother. “There was always ten-
sion. Always, always,” said the rapper Rawj who grew up in a Black
community. Despite this pressure, Rawj formed a hip hop group
with Black and Filipino peers because he didn’t find the anti-​Black
sentiment to be an “intelligent argument” backed by reasoning.
Like other non-Black second-​generation youths, the artists chastise
their parents’ ideas about race, specifically their anti-​Black preju-
dices.
While critical of their elders, the artists generally describe their
parents as “relatively liberal,” and they are deeply conscious of the
sacrifices their parents made for their futures. As KB reflects: “I
think they’re more scared than anything else. [It has] just got to
be so hard [for them] to come over here and make a life for them-
selves. They’ve just done so much for the youths’ futures.” Hesitant
to call their parents “racist,” desi artists contextualize their elders’
choices. In college courses, they learned that South Asians entered
the nation in 1965 because of civil rights gains and Black protests
that helped enact changes to immigration restrictions. While the
artists were more forgiving, I concur with Prashad’s (2000: 91)
critique of desi anti-​Blackness as an attempt to curry favor with
Whites by demeaning other minorities despite the fact that some
Indians are darker than some Blacks.
These ideas are linked not only to desires for upward mobility
but also to colorism, or the practice of favoring fairer over darker
skin tones, among Asians and in Black communities. Skin color—
just one aspect of racial identity—“remains an inescapable bar-
rier” for diasporic South Asians (Ballard 1994: 299), thus challeng-
ing assumptions that middle-​class desis are (becoming) “just like
Whites.” The fact of their racial uniform (Takaki 1989) also upsets
some South Asians’ desire to disengage from racial matters (Ki-
bria 1998: 72). Min Song says that possibilities “of forming alli-

Making Race 97
ances, willingly or unwillingly” between, for example, South Asians
and Blacks, arise out of America’s confusion between race and skin
color (1998: 87). As Sucheta Mazumdar states, “While foreign-​born
South Asians may be able to overcome color prejudice to some ex-
tent, through unusually high levels of professional training typi-
cally acquired abroad, they cannot be certain that their U.S.-born
sons and daughters will fare as well. Like the dilemma facing the
black bourgeoisie . . . they cannot escape identification with people
of the same skin color who, as part of the working class, are more
directly assaulted by the cruder manifestation of racism” (quoted
in Song 1998: 87). In India there is a diversity of shades of skin yet
Indians are thought to be one group in a racial sense (Kibria 1998).
Thus, color may be separated from race in contrast to the confla-
tion of the two in the United States. A number of Black men and
women in the Bay Area felt that South Asians should share their
attitudes about America because some are “darker than us,” and
they were puzzled that desis expressed anti-​Black prejudices. Yet
race obviously refers to more than skin tone. Racism, too, is not
restricted to hue; ruling elites racialize groups differentially, which
reaffirms South Asians’ sense of cultural uniqueness in contrast to
both Blacks and Whites. Still, the non-White racial ambiguity of
desis can sometimes be foundational to interminority alliances.
Many first- and second-​generation South Asians thus lack a vo-
cabulary for analyzing race within their ethnic communities and are
exposed to dominant United States conceptions. As a result, some
youth have adopted White normativity that is revealed innocuously
enough in their conflation of “American” with Whites and a belief
in the Black and White binary. Desi youths impose many of these
ideas upon other South Asians in their attempts to understand why
some people seem different. So many of the artists recall that they
“felt bad” because they seemed to “fail” in college interactions
with mainstream desis that were dripping with repercussive expec-
tations. As Richmond’s KB says, “A lot of times I’d be on campus
and these random Indian guys [would ask], ‘Why do you act Black?’
Or, ‘Why do you talk Black?’ . . . Part of me actually felt bad because
they were basically saying, ‘Why don’t you act Indian?’” The accu-
sation stuck. Like his reaction to his being called a rotten coconut,
he thought about it, was bothered by it, and flipped the logic of

98 Making Race
the statement by challenging its thesis. In his senior year of col-
lege, KB realized that “they weren’t asking me, ‘Why don’t you act
Indian?’ They were asking me, ‘Why don’t you act White?’” In re-
sponse, he recalls—laughing—he started asking them, “Why do
you act White?!”
Desis are bothered both by the racism they face and the anti-​Black
attitudes of co-​ethnics. As MC Rawj rhymes in the song, “Masters
Too,” “If it’s me vs. you, then we all goin’ to lose.” They learn that
racial denials by South Asians stem from an unawareness or unwill-
ingness to see the mutually and relationally constitutive relations
between colonized Blacks and Asians (Hesse and Sayyid 2005); they
are distinct and overlapping shades of one another (Okihiro 1994).
At the same time, it is difficult for immigrant parents to understand
how their children’s process of becoming “American” can include
notions of Blackness. Hip hop desis have to develop a different
racial paradigm in order to address the questions that plague them.
So, despite cautionary tales against Blacks, both Americans’ racism
toward South Asians and South Asians’ anti-​Black sentiments lead
some youths away from the designated culture of their ancestry to
adopt a culture rooted in the experiences of their other. Sustained
interactions with Blacks form the foundation to the performers’ re-
articulations of race and race relations. Desis who became hip hop
artists met Blacks and hip hop at different stages of their lives, de-
pending on their childhood backgrounds.

First Contact with Blacks and Hip Hop:

Desis from Minority Neighborhoods
One question I haven’t addressed is how did I end up doing [hip hop]? I
think just by personality, or by education, or just my whole consummate
being here on earth. I’m just an expressive person and this is probably the
only form of expression, the first form of expression presented to me. I
didn’t have this background of who my forefather was or my culture. So
I feel like it chose me.—Rawj, Feenom Circle MC

MC Rawj points to the totality of his being to explain his embrace

of Black expressive culture. Along with personality and taste, his
family and childhood background in Richmond, California, pre-

Making Race 99
sented hip hop culture to this desi as a youth. For urban artists
like Rawj, their racial otherness in America and relations with co-​
ethnics intersect with their love of music and interactions with
nearby Black peers in post–civil rights America. When, where, and
how the artists first met Blacks and encountered hip hop culture
depended on where they grew up. Desi artists from less wealthy
and more racially diverse urban neighborhoods made strong friend-
ships with local Blacks, Mexicans (in California), and Asians, in-
cluding Filipinos. The rappers and their youthful posses were part
of the hip hop generation born in the 1970s around the time that
Afrika Bambaataa learned to spin records, the Jamaican transplant
Kool Herc was playing break beats at parties, and the Sugarhill
Gang’s vinyl “Rapper’s Delight” hit the streets. These Black and
Brown boys hung out together on the city streets of California and
New York, the fertile ground from which the latest in a legacy of re-
sistant Black arts and cultures arose. They played basketball at the
park and then played the dozens (or verbally battled in good spirits)
on their way home. This environment and its residents exerted their
influence on young desis to be hip hop. As a result, these youths
began crafting their own rhymes, practicing in private as they spent
hours listening to LL Cool J, Eric B. and Rakim, and Doug E. Fresh
in the 1980s. These are the desis who grew up to become perform-
ing MCs with albums for sale, including Chee, Asad, Fahad, Rawj,
and KB, and they join Puerto Rican, Filipino, and Chinese youth in
the creation of hip hop.
These atypical desis, like some Nuyoricans, lived among Blacks
and, racialized as non-Whites living in neglected areas, felt under-
represented (Flores 2000; Rivera 2003). But the situation of desis
differs from that of Puerto Ricans in the South Bronx who are tied
with Blacks by “a history of joint ghetto experiences” (Rivera 2003:
114) and by “history and lived experience” (115). They do not claim
that “it’s almost like we’re the same race” (MC B-​Unique, quoted
in Rivera 2003: 114), as do some Blacks and Puerto Ricans. South
Asians do not share the histories of slavery that Puerto Ricans and
immigrants from the Caribbean do with American Blacks, and the
overall class profile of South Asians is substantially higher than
their Latino counterparts. Even the families of less wealthy desi
artists faced upward mobility and eventually moved out of Black
neighborhoods. Nevertheless, their childhood experiences with

100 Making Race

Black boys and girls in their city neighborhoods were too formative
to be forgotten.
Urban desi youths, who are often the only desi on their block,
found in their local Black communities a surrogate for missing
ethnic networks. Instead of identifying ethnically, they were more
open to the cultures that surrounded them and thus became part of
the hip hop generation (Kitwana 2002). Chee Malabar’s San Fran-
cisco school teachers, for example, placed him in classes for Eng­lish
as a second language. He decided that he could learn Eng­lish by lis-
tening to rap music “because all the kids around my way, that’s
what they listened to,” and he began rapping with local kids, whom
he initially thought were African immigrants. Dinesh, who grew
up in what he describes as an “inner-​city” area in northern Cali-
fornia and whose mother was the sole breadwinner, posits that
his lack of an extended Nepali family enabled his desire to identify
broadly: “Maybe I don’t hate Blacks because we didn’t have an ex-
tended family to poison us that way.” These desis enjoyed the room
to befriend Blacks and engage in Black cultural production. Dinesh
developed a “connection” with “different cultures” that “overrides
race,” and Rawj says that by the time he got to college he knew more
about Black culture and history than “his own.” Black urban youths
involved with hip hop did not find their Brown friends’ participa-
tion in the culture to be odd. Rather, they embraced them as they
did later when their desi friends also became performing artists,
because they both came from the same ’hoods and shared passions
and predicaments.
Interracial contact exposed desi youths to a range of Black resi-
dents—young and old, thriving, surviving and struggling, men
and women with diverse attitudes toward local issues. This taught
these desis an obvious yet often diminished fact of the heteroge-
neity of “Black America.” Black friends’ families treated these bud-
ding Brown MCs “like a son.” They could hang out in Black friends’
homes and were privy to domestic banalities and occasional beefs.
Desis also brought their friends into their own homes, where they
ate and witnessed family dramas translated into other languages,
and realized that some Indians came from single-​parent homes.
These intimate interactions introduced both parties to class, racial,
and cultural differences and commonalities. Socializing in this way
also exposed youths to things not provided within their own homes.

Making Race 101

First, despite being Brown and being aware of their “Indianness,”
for example, they became part of race-​based communities of sup-
port where families cared for each others’ children. Second, within
these families and at family functions at their peers’ homes they
heard different ways of discussing the world.
These desis lived near Oakland, the home of the Black Panthers,
and Berkeley, home to a campus of radicals. Some members of their
local Black communities expressed an explicit Black conscious-
ness as they spoke about history and oppression, which contrasted
with desi family conversations focused on studies, marriage, and
careers. Working-​class residents of the Bay Area theorized neolib-
eral economics, police surveillance, and crack as part of a historical
legacy of oppression against Blacks. Minorities in these neighbor-
hoods also did not interact daily with Whites or face the kinds of
racism that artists from wealthier and Whiter areas did. These desis
grew aware of institutional racism through housing segregation,
underfunded schools, and a lack of viable jobs (see Lipsitz 1998).
They saw their Black friends respond to racism through expressions
of racial pride that engaged with race directly. Urban desis bring
these perspectives to college where the exclusionary racial and class
admission and enrollment policies cause them to find the concerns
of middle-​class desi students “petty.” In college, they studied South
Asia and merged their Black peers’ perspectives with their immi-
grant experiences and transnational ties.
Just before college, however, the desi artists and some of their
Black high school friends began to diverge and found that they were
“headed for different paths in life.” They saw firsthand the ways
that police, just one form of institutional and state power, singled
out their Black peers.6 Some close friends began dropping out of
school, went to prison, or died. These troubled waters inspired
some artists to live life fully. On the track “Misunderstanding,” MC
Rawj rhymes:
sending shots to my peoples behind prison doors,
oppressive gates got our thirst unquenched,
soul pours out of poisonous containers
drums and words the only remainders
starving youths the reminders
that some of us need to be the truth finders.

102 Making Race

This MC sees these realities as the result not of his friends’ poor
choices but rather due to historical and institutional practices
that target people of African descent with a specificity that South
Asians had thus far avoided. Rawj says these diverging paths were
“all environmental” and were related to the unequal distribution
of resources rather than to inherent racial or cultural attributes. In
speaking of his transfer from his public high school in Richmond
to a wealthy suburban school, Rawj points out, “I’m at this top-​
notch prep school and they were going to a school that I almost
failed [out of, in the] ninth grade, with no funding, no teaching, no
opportunity. Really it’s the whole nature and nurture thing, I mean
but it was all nurture. It was the fact that I was in a stimulating
environment and they weren’t.” They became even more aware of
this split in college where these desis became part of an “overrepre-
sented” group of Asians whereas the enrollment of Black students
suffered from the neoconservative backlash in the 1990s.
Desis from cities like Richmond sometimes attended community
college or summer bridge programs for incoming students before
transferring on to a university. In contrast to mainstream desis’ dif-
ficulties in bridging racial divides, urban hip hop desis seemed to
befriend Black students quite easily. “It just so happens that those
were folks that I met,” Rawj says of the “large group of cats,” mostly
Black, that he encountered through basketball and classes and
hung out with at community college. “I won’t be uncomfortable, but
I won’t make an effort, either. It’s just who you meet and how you
interact. Maybe I needed help with homework,” he says, flipping the
model minority myth on its head. Urban South Asian youths sig-
naled to other students their former familiarity with Blacks through
cultural references, styles, and interests. This included the way that
Chee and Rawj, for instance, interacted and spoke and the way they
wore their clothes. Further, their modes of interaction, conversa-
tional topics, and interests also communicated their commitment
to Black music. Atypical desis already understood that they did not
have to be Black in order to develop close friendships with Black hip
hoppers. How one represents oneself and one’s commitments and
interests is critical in hip hop–based communities. Hip hop, with
its own set of cultural references, is central to these interactions
and the creation of multiracial social groups in college.

Making Race 103

 Black friends and hip hop culture came together in college for
urban desis who found comfort in this set of hip hop heads that
encouraged their artistic development. Particularly for some desi
men, this was their first time exhibiting their rhyme skills in pub-
lic ciphers, or circles of rappers, along with Black male students
(others had grown up rhyming in public). As one half of Himalayan
Project, Chee had been composing poetry since the eighth grade,
practicing his rhymes in private. His freestyling debut happened, he
says, in his sophomore year in college where “kids from the inner
cities and kids who were having a hard time [were] all clumped
together, so we’re all close.” A DJ threw on instrumentals over
which other boys were “just reciting shit they had written. I didn’t
have anything memorized.” Inspired, Chee “just started freestyling,
and they were taping it.” Fellow battle rappers were surprised by his
skills and assumed he was rhyming from memory: “Oh shit, when’d
you write this!” they asked, when in fact he was just “spitting it off
the top” of his head.7 Submitting oneself to peer evaluation through
public rhyming can be treacherous since freestyles can become ver-
bal battles in which non-Black MCs take a tongue lashing as out-
siders; ciphers are also male-​dominated spaces in which women
must work particularly hard to insert themselves.8 For Chee, how-
ever, this paid off and he was validated for his impromptu rhyming
ability and masculine boasting. These tests in front of others of the
hip hop generation encouraged Chee to develop a thick skin and
rhyme excellence, thereby leading to his status as a confident MC
who performs across the country.
The musical paths of these MCs are shaped by their childhoods
in which they developed diverse social groups bonded by hip hop,
which became their culture of identification over ethnicity. In time,
these Black and Brown youths became like family and urban desis
became members of their local Black communities while also being
cognizant of important distinctions. From these stories it makes
sense that some desis from urban areas would become attached to
hip hop in the 1980s, just as it did for Puerto Ricans in the Bronx.
On the other hand, what accounts for the musical obsession of
suburban middle-​class desis who grew up in predominantly White
neighborhoods like many of their second-​generation compatriots?

104 Making Race

 First Contact with Blacks and Hip Hop:
Middle-​Class Desis in White America
I hear a lot of these South Asians, and they grew up in the suburban areas,
but they identified as White. My reality was different, you get what I’m
saying? . . . Already I was experiencing hard-​core racism at my school.
My high school was 95 percent White but my friends were all the other
5 percent. I didn’t know any of the other White kids in high school. I was
militant. I hated White people . . . It came from me understanding that
something wasn’t right.—D’Lo, MC, poet, activist

D’Lo is a Sri Lankan poet and performer who identifies, accord-

ing to the flier of one of his/her shows, as “Gay, Hindu, Hip Hop.”
While these monikers together make him/her unique among the
desi artists, D’Lo’s experiences growing up in “SriLancaster” just
north of Los Angeles mirror those of the other desi audiophiles
from mostly White middle- and upper-​middle-​class areas. D’Lo
was highly aware of racial demographics, experienced “hard-​
core” racism, created multiracial minority social groups, and had a
sense that all these things put together (along with his/her gay and
emerging transgender identity) led to D’Lo knowing that “some-
thing wasn’t right.” It is D’Lo’s retrospective on White people (“I
hated White people”) that may seem the most shocking: desis don’t
often say (or feel?) such things. Yet this view, stated or not, is the
key to what leads some musically minded desis away from both
Whites and ethnic identification. The hip hop music that came on
the airwaves and across television stations in the 1980s and 1990s
“saved” these suburbanites by explaining the processes that they
were undergoing. Once they were in college they searched out peers
who shared their love of hip hop.
Differing sets of discourses about difference, race, and racism
circulate within racially diverse urban areas and mostly White
wealthy neighborhoods. Where could those from White neighbor-
hoods find articulations of their frustrations if not at home and
in their communities? Artists from these areas like Lancaster in
the Los Angeles region and Fremont in the Bay Area may resemble
the “model minority” image, but racism was a defining feature in
their lives, a force that affected their life paths and perspectives (see
Radha­krishnan 1994: 223; Purkayastha 2005). In high school, these

Making Race 105

artists learned the histories of Blacks in America, but it wasn’t until
college, when they knew Black students in numbers, that they saw
this strong minority identity as an appealing response to racism
that could adapt to fit their circumstances. Unlike those who grew
up around Black youths, suburban desis felt like American minori-
ties in contrast to their neighbors. As one Fremont-​raised Gujarati
said, “Going to elementary school, it was predominantly White, but
I was always with the others: the Asian kids, the Black kids, and
that’s always been my thing.” These middle-​class youths attempted
to sort out with minority friends the racist encounters that oc-
curred within settings that elided discussions of race in the 1980s.
If, overall, South Asians deny the effects of racialization, their chil-
dren bear the costs of this strategy. In kids’ homes and schools,
what is discussed is as important as what is assumed and silenced.
Desi parents wrestled with their children’s growing engagement
with Black music and friends and generally did not support their
desires for alternative—artistic—futures. Interminority exchanges,
some elders feel, may stain the reputations of their children (does
that imply that the cultural lives of their children are malleable and
fragile?).
Suburbanites like Jonny and Bella came to hip hop through an
evolution of musical tastes that ranged from the Cure to Fugazi,
and from ska to bhajans (Hindu devotional songs). Hip hop did
not initially spring from their suburban streets bordered by well-​
manicured lawns. It came to those living outside of urban centers
powerfully and visually through the television, urban and college
radio stations, and their local record stores in the late 1980s and
early 1990s. D’Lo had access to only two pop radio stations; s/he
found hip hop through Yo! MTV Raps, the premier MTV hip hop
showcase that started in 1988. “That was my connection to any-
thing else. Like I always knew about N.W.A.9 I knew everything
about the upcoming West Coast [rap scene], Ice T . . . I knew all that
shit . . . I was listening to BDP [Boogie Down Productions]. I was
listening to Poor Righteous Teachers . . . Pete Rock. I was listening
to Special Ed! Like I loved that shit!” D’Lo and others took hip hop
seriously and were home schooled by rappers, their rhyming pro-
fessors. At home, D’Lo did his/her homework and “became a stu-
dent of hip hop.” These suburbanites, with their reduced access to
live, spontaneous, and consistent rhyming as occurred on some city

106 Making Race

streets, shied away from rapping. Instead, wealthier artists became
involved in the technical aspects of music production and went on
to become DJs and producers in contrast to the urban artists who
flexed the oral skills that required less capital.10
A number of researchers outside of the United States have ana-
lyzed the appeal of Black music for non-Black youth. In Eng­land,
Black musical forms help White youths sort out critical class and
racial issues where working-​class Whites and Blacks sometimes
collaborate through musical productions (Hebdige 1979). Accord-
ing to Paul Gilroy, reggae in particular reveals “how popular culture
has formed spaces in which the politics of ‘race’ could be lived out
and transcended in the name of youth” (1991: 167). He further notes
that a “political relationship between Afro-​Caribbeans and Asians
on which the future of black Britain may depend is being created
in these cultural encounters” (218)—a factor that also bears out in
what I see between some desis and Blacks in the United States.
Suburbanites were much like mainstream desis from wealthier
families, except that they, like other desi activists and “unruly immi-
grants” (Das Gupta 2006), were not content to follow the path di-
rected by their co-​ethnics. Disturbed by the inequalities they faced,
they became avid hip hop heads before commercial interests told
them to because they were drawn to its beats, wordplay, and mes-
sages. After high school, they made a beeline to the college radio
station where they met like-​minded individuals, including Black
students also into hip hop, and remixed versions of their multi-
racial childhood peer groups.11 At the radio station, bonds over
musical ideas and hip hop (the students would listen to music for
hours) were fortified by shared access to records, technology, and
the airwaves. Jonny, who had a weekly hip hop show for three and
a half years and became the musical director of two other shows,
benefited from these resources. Hip hop, the college radio station,
and the social circles comprised of “likeminded individuals” pro-
vided a necessary alternative to the racism and ethnic expectations
that continued to plague them. Music formed the basis for social
bonding and ideological development; the college radio station
provided the location. Jonny may have felt like an outsider to other
social groups, but “it really clicked with me there” at the station,
he says. “Being involved with hip hop gave me my first setting in
which I had a lot of Black friends.” Jonny, Bella, and Asma, a Mus-

Making Race 107

lim Indian radio producer, each bonded at their stations with other
music lovers expressing “music as identity,” or the notion of how
music, rather than race or ethnicity, defines one’s peer group (Frith
2007: 10–12). Over time, all of the artists’ investments in hip hop
culture led to increasing interactions with Blacks, which in turn af-
fected their growing racial consciousness as they examined issues
like contentious policing practices.
Black friends, whether from childhood or later in college, be-
came important peers with whom urban and suburban hip hop
heads developed a growing and shared understanding of the world.
Black peers, some of whom expressed themselves through hip hop
music, helped the artists come to better understand themselves as
racial beings. Blackness, the “single sign of alterity,” modeled one
politicized and proud response to their distinctions as minorities
(Baker et al. 1996: 5). Not just concerned about “their” people, hip
hop desis were indignant about the impacts of racism upon Blacks.
Blackness, which rearticulates difference as empowering, connotes
neither a free-​for-​all identity nor the stereotypical and racist images
promulgated in the popular media about Black youth. Instead, it
partially refers to those political and historically attuned ideologies
that resonate for the desi youths who find it applicable to them-
selves.
At times Blackness means something more expansive, thereby
signifying the experiences of all racially marked bodies enacted
upon by domination and resistant against it. This sense of the term
explains the adoption of Blackness by marginalized populations
across the globe, including New Zealand’s indigenous Maoris and
the Brazilian residents of favelas (Green 1997; Basu and Lemelle
2006). Blackness as racialized political consciousness therefore
intersects with but is distinct from the performers’ identifications
with desiness as diasporic ethnicity. They use their music to rebut
mainstream attempts to reduce the meanings of “Black” to racist
conceptions. Desi artists model rather than mimic this most visible
and vocal resistance to White supremacy through a critical aware-
ness of racism. However, they mix it with a critical ethnicity that
addresses their diasporic sensibility and transnational ties.
The artists stand on the margins of ethnically and racially cir-
cumscribed communities. Denigrated by Whites, they disagree
with national discourses that deny inequalities; but the responses

108 Making Race

of those Black peers who embrace hip hop do resonate. In college,
Brown performers incorporated a racially informed consciousness
into their self-​conceptions as ethnic beings. Aware of their liminal
status in relation to co-​ethnics, Blacks, and Whites, they sample
the race consciousness and counterhegemonic messages of hip hop
lyrics and fuse them with an immigrant perspective. The ambiguity
of South Asians is a potentially productive force—one the artists
learned to explore over time.

Multiple Racial Affinities:

Outsiders, Slippery Signifiers, and Strategic Ambiguity
At one level, the observation that identity or subject positions are com-
plex and nonfixed is banal. But the important thing is that politics is
usually conducted as if identity were fixed. The question then becomes,
On what basis, at different times and in different places, does the non-
fixity become temporarily fixed in such a way that individuals and groups
can behave as a particular kind of agency, political or otherwise? (Dirks,
Eley, and Ortner 1994: 32)

Desis in hip hop resemble “sliding signifiers” whereby other Ameri-

cans consider them to be at times White and at other times Black.
The artists negotiate the liminal spaces between groups that are
continually changing in membership and meaning. Although ideo-
logically we often consider categories to be fixed, who and what
comprises desi or hip hop America are in flux. By staking their
claim to hip hop, seen as a Black sphere, and by maintaining dis-
tance from other desis despite their ancestry, these individuals dis-
entangle the conflation of blood and ancestry and question auto-
matic and natural senses of belonging.
Hip hop desis epitomize ambiguity, shifting relations, and mul-
tiple racial identities. As shifting “insiders” and “outsiders” across
communities, their identities are informed by their overlapping yet
distinct experiences with Blacks. Desi performers’ slippery loca-
tions betwixt and between (Turner 1967) emphasize context in the
process of identity formation; their lives suggest important distinc-
tions among the concepts of race, ethnicity, culture, and belonging.
Their identities uphold theories in Mixed Race studies that advocate
the possibilities of belonging to several races at once while simul-

Making Race 109

taneously combating the very logic of racial categorization. Ulti-
mately, they fail—or perhaps refuse?—to provide us with one fixed
response to the question “What are you?” According to the Mixed
Race studies scholar George Kich, “people without the experience
of resolving ambiguity, of moving from marginal status to center,
or of expanding definitions beyond traditional constraints in order
to really see what in fact exists often cannot adapt competently to
marginality or to ambiguity, much less to a person who embodies
ambiguity” (1996: 273). And what of the possibilities of those who
are ambiguous and who draw upon that condition strategically in
ways that advance unfixed notions of “race,” tied not even to ances-
try? Often contradictory and unclear, hip hop’s desis draw upon es-
sentialism (Spivak 1995) and anti-​essentialism (Lipsitz 1994) stra-
tegically to signal their racial affinities.
The artists respect the boundaries between themselves and Blacks
not as limiting but as sites where “differences” are meaningful but
not absolute. By claiming racial identities as Brown people, these
South Asians pry open the hegemony of Blackness as the sole sig-
nification of otherness within the United States. Desis identify with
ideological aspects of Blackness that emphasize oppositional poli-
tics as an alternative to normative discourses, and slavery informs
this understanding. But in crafting racialized desiness they supple-
ment this with information about South Asia. This combination en-
courages them to emphasize the relationality of racial categories
(Kim 1999). Yet this unresolved process still leaves open the ques-
tion of their racial status. This is in part because South Asians do
not fit comfortably within existing racial categories, and in part a
result of the unrooted way they live their lives.
The ethnic, racial, and hip hop communities across which these
artists navigate operate like concentric interconnected circles of
separate yet overlapping communities of belonging. Instead of re-
solving the tensions that arise from rigid norms within each group
by planting their feet firmly in one, these performers maneuver
across contentious social groups by way of their identifications as
South Asians proud of their heritage and as hip hop artists down
with disenfranchised groups. Their identities signify shifting and
comparative levels of distinction and connectedness, including
ethnic specificity, pan-​ethnic South Asian identifications, and pan-​
racial minority identities.

110 Making Race

 Like multiracial and ethnically ambiguous individuals, desi art-
ists negotiate having race “done” to them as they take an active role
in “doing race” by informing people’s perceptions of who they are
(Williams 1996). In many cases, their performances underscore
the inadequacy of existing categorizations. One strategy they use
to temporarily tie themselves to another group is through identifi-
cations that imply allegiances. For instance, although immigrants
come from multiple backgrounds, they can choose to share a set of
concerns with others. They employ “strategic anti-​essentialism”
when they take on identities that signify a group seemingly unlike
themselves (Lipstiz 1994). In challenging our expectations by play-
ing with their phenotypic and categorical ambiguities in unexpected
ways, they push us to investigate their motives for race crossing
(Wald 2000). At other times they incorporate essentialism to strate-
gically fix themselves to impact how others read them (Spivak 1995).
For example, in being conscious of the way their bodies are read
by others (i.e., Du Bois’s double consciousness) they take on racial
cues of Middle Eastern peoples—shaving their beard in particular
ways or wearing kufis—to identify with them as a statement against
racist policies that harass this newly re-minted racial-​religious
group. Thus, desis in hip hop employ a range of strategies that put
their ambiguity to work in order to belong to and express political
allegiances with targeted groups. However, the slipperiness of race
also makes it difficult for South Asians to claim one racial category.
The artists often identify as “outsiders,” and belonging and alien-
ation describes their social interactions. On the one hand, they ar-
gue that they are not desi, based on what they look like and who
and what they know; on the other, they assert that desiness resides
within them despite outward expressions. They are less ambivalent
about being a part of hip hop but still consider themselves out-
siders to those circles of Blacks who produce the culture. Nonethe-
less these performers identify with people across boundaries de-
spite being subjected to evaluations of their authenticity by others.
The artists dislike categories and labels—they do not want to be
placed in boxes, and to do so would be a difficult endeavor. As a
result, they find it difficult to describe their lives sufficiently using
existing categories. Jonny, a Californian Indian who moved to New
York, never seems to anchor himself to any one community, and
perhaps this is a conscious strategy. As a hip hop journalist he is

Making Race 111

attuned to the racial politics of the hip hop industry, but his per-
spectives often contrast with those of the desi rappers. In one
of our lengthy email exchanges he explained, “Oddly, I view the
Black experience from the classical American perspective, which,
I guess, is a White lens. I certainly couldn’t understand it from a
Black lens, so I think there is no other third perspective.” This ar-
gument raises at least two immediate points: Why can Jonny and
other South Asian Americans have access to a “classical American”
(i.e., White) perspective but not a “Black” one? Second, can there
be a non-Black minority perspective?12 Some of the other artists—
particularly those who had grown up in Black communities, un-
like Jonny—identify as “minorities” whose views contrast with the
“White perspective.” The Black or White option seems too limit-
ing even in his own analysis as later he distinguishes his experi-
ence from that of Whites in the hip hop business. He states that
“Indian isn’t necessarily the establishment,” because most rap art-
ists are young Black men whereas the label owners and executives
tend to be White men. Jonny’s phenotypic ambiguity (his sense is
that he does not look Indian) and his non-Black, non-White iden-
tity disassociates and associates him with various segments of the
industry. At the same time, he employs rigid notions of “White”
and “Black” but identifies as neither. He explains that he has “ac-
cess and flexibility in some ways that aren’t afforded White males.
In an ‘us versus them argument,’ because of my non-Whiteness, I
can very conveniently side with the ‘us.’ But it does have its limits
in that I’m also not Black, so I can’t be absolute in any of my argu-
ments.” His inability to be absolute and his references to what he is
not signal the incompleteness of existing discourses of race. Jonny
may appear to be trapped within the racial categories he finds him-
self exterior to, and he experiences life liminally.
Jonny deals with a different set of expectations regarding race
compared to the other artists in part because many hip hop writers
are not Black.13 But he shares with other desis the sense of in-​
between sliding. Perhaps Jonny is being evasive by employing a
particular understanding of race politics in the United States when
he says, “To Whites, I [can] say ‘I know more about the Black ex-
perience than you do.’ To Blacks, I [can] say, ‘I’m not the one who
oppressed you.’” However, I think he illustrates our American in-
ability to comprehend race as a whole by resorting to racial binaries

112 Making Race

when that paradigm is incapable of describing contemporary rela-
tions. Further, Jonny’s conundrum results from both Americans’
dis-​ease in speaking about race and the ineptness of the categori-
zations themselves, which leave South Asians without a racial iden-
tity (this is why we often hear Asians and Latinos referred to as
who they are not). Jonny’s rationalization illustrates the sliding and
constructed nature of racial identities and yet it also relies on es-
sentialist notions of what “Black” and “White” are. Racial identity
is fluid and constructed for all individuals, but the history of race
relations in the United States allows some groups greater flexibility.
These kinds of slippery and triangulating experiences challenge old
binaries and caution against new renditions of a Black/non-Black
polarity (Lee and Bean 2007).
Like people who claim multiple heritages, desi artists’ identifi-
cations are situational (Williams-​Leon and Nakashima 2001). Ac-
cording to Teresa Williams, “No other social reality than that of
racially mixed people questions the one-​dimensional racial struc-
ture upon which America has founded and built its national iden-
tity” (1996: 193). But the conditions and possibilities facing mixed-​
race people extend beyond this population to include all groups.
When the performers reject expected scripts to take on those that
appear to be “unexpected,” they remind us of the malleability of
identity. Thus, seemingly “monoracial” or even deracialized South
Asians actually have also, like biracials, “learned to ‘do race’ with
twist and turns, stepping in and out of the racial molds prescribed
to [them] by the larger society that projects race onto [them]”
(208). For South Asians there is also no single choice to the ques-
tion of racial categorization since they may exist within, across, and
above United States classifications that do not accommodate shift-
ing allegiances.
Individuals who choose to stand at the crossroads of commu-
nities challenge the racial and ethnic identity politics of groups.
Not only do these artists disavow the narrow expectations of ethnic
authenticity while laying claim to desiness but also they battle the
commonsense notion that rappers must be Black as they gain repu-
tations as credible MCs. In their position as the only desi in pre-
dominantly Black events such as at hip hop clubs or at Oakland’s
Juneteenth celebrations commemorating the abolition of slavery,
they confront their difference as non-Blacks. However, their pres-

Making Race 113

ence also expands the Black attendees’ conceptions of who belongs
in these spaces because desis’ non-Whiteness and engagement with
the event can be bonding. In such interactions the artists consider
themselves “non-Black minorities,” and they relay their perspec-
tives as immigrants to Black peers while feeling comfortable as
non-Whites in Black spaces. However, when they rap at concerts
that attract college-​aged mostly White and Asian American crowds,
or when they are harassed by police, they identify as “non-White
minorities.” These identity acrobatics are complex and contradic-
tory. They disrupt expected associations, such as the idea that pris-
ons and profiling are “Black issues.” One Indian American, for in-
stance, who taught in underfunded schools in a Southside Chicago
neighborhood, cofounded with a Black friend a hip hop record
label with an antiprison agenda that signs conscious Black rappers.
Desi hip hoppers also perform markers of Blackness by adopting
a particular style or mannerism, such as Chee’s hip hop–inflected
speech, without claiming to be Black or erasing distinctions. The
MC Vivek illustrates another, contrasting, strategy of identi­fication.
Vivek, an MC from Connecticut whose story begins this book, is
sometimes (mis)identified as a Black man and his Black peers often
treat him like “one of their own.” This is due in part to his appear-
ance (his brown skin, closely cropped hair, and clothing), manner-
isms (hand gestures and body movements), and long-​term social
and professional familiarity with Blacks. He exudes positive energy,
especially if you catch him on the dance floor of a reggae club like
Oasis in downtown Oakland. But even after strangers who are Black
“find out” that he is not Black, they accept him as a brother because
of his attitudes and commitments. Like one earlier conception of
Blackness in Britain, Vivek’s Blackness is a political identity that
stems from his experiences as a non-White American and his com-
mitments to justice (he has worked with Human Rights Watch) in
Bangladesh and Sierra Leone. Vivek is like the British Asian mu-
sicians for whom, as Rehan Hyder notes, “the identification of a
wider ‘political’ category of black was something that most of the
Asian musicians bought into at various times and was linked to par-
ticular contexts; there was no sense of contradiction felt by simulta-
neously inhabiting black and Asian identities” (2004: 165). As part
of being an MC, Vivek’s active support and engagement within local
Black communities, including his founding of Umoja (an educa-

114 Making Race

tional organization) and cofounding of Timap for Justice (an orga-
nization that provides legal services for poor Sierra Leonians14),
encourage some Blacks’ acceptance of him as Black-​as-​political.
Vivek’s formal political commitments to Black communities at
home and abroad are not unique among the artists who use hip hop
to express broad ideological worldviews. They comment on race and
politics together in tracks like Himalayan Project’s “1964,” a deep,
mature, and well-​produced track on the album The Middle Passage.15
In his verses the rapper Chee Malabar performs multiple identities
as an immigrant tied to other communities of color. He covers top-
ics traditionally found in message or conscious rap while inserting
a new perspective.16 The song’s title refers to the year that President
Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act—just one year prior to the Im-
migration Act of 1965 through which the artists’ parents arrived
in the United States. Chee begins with a description of poverty in
India and moves on to a discussion of race, South Asians in the
United States, and social movements in the 1960s, and he con-
cludes on a pessimistic note about the future. The song opens with
a soulful low-​toned saxophone and is awash with the sound of slow
waves coming ashore, a light guitar strum, and a drum beat:
What’s goin’ on America, it’s your least favorite son,
You know the one, some beast mixed with East Indian rum,
Hemmed, condemned to rent slum tents in dense settlements

In an uncharacteristically calm voice, Chee sweeps through a series

of social issues beginning with his people’s past (and present) ex-
periences of being cordoned off, colonized, and “condemned to
rent slum tents.”
See my melanin’s akin to a felon’s sins in this, civilization,
Where dead presidents replacing the God’s you’re praising,
Jesus? Nah, it’s just g’s, churches is worthless, it’s a circus,
Clowning around ain’t where the work is.

Chee speaks about the plight of Brown people living in this “civili-
zation” that criminalizes people of color (i.e., “my melanin’s akin
to a felon’s sins”). He uses the term civilization ironically by point-
ing out our enslavement to the prominence of money (“dead presi-
dents” represent dollar bills; “g’s” are “grands” or dollars in the
thousands). And it is money, he avers, that has replaced the role of

Making Race 115

religion—even churches have become profit-​making enterprises,
as Chee once pointed out to me as we drove through Brooklyn.
We migrant workers, descendents of slaves,
Ascended to a stage, beyond brave,
Rendered a plague, civil rights came and went,
And what’s left?
A few tokens molded hopin’ they symbols for progress and for the
rest,
It’s stress, no checks, credit debts is societal death,
So what’s bread?
I ain’t gotta tell you that it’s kneaded (needed) dough,
What we even breathin’ for,
Where most of us live, if it ain’t the slugs or drugs,
The air’s sure to kill ya.

Chee lists a barrage of stresses that even the Civil Rights Movement
failed to assuage, including the elements most urgent among poor
urban communities: slugs (bullets), drugs, and debt.
I breathe the oxygen, cough a lung,
Sit and think for my people hope my freedom songs get sung.

“My people” is who Chee raps for and hopes for. This phrase de-
notes an inclusive, broad community—one that arches above dis-
tinct ethnic and racial communities. In these moments, hip hop
desis envision, cultivate, and perform a global race consciousness.
In an almost existential despair, Chee concludes by hoping that his
own “freedom songs get sung,” over forty years after the signing of
the Civil Rights Act.
Using their racial ambiguity, these American desis adopt shifting
identifications and allegiances. Despite the seeming fixity of race,
Brown rappers alter meanings in their daily practices and lyrics
by employing Black as political ideology. Their strategies to con-
tend with race and racism illustrate the dynamics and possibilities
open to all Americans, not just ethnically ambiguous or multiracial
people, to inspire new theorizations of race. Black peers are central
to the emerging self-​conceptions of these budding hip hop artists.
But it was by historically contextualizing the relationships between
South Asians and Blacks that they were able to fully understand

116 Making Race

the conflicts—and possible alliances—within contemporary inter-
minority relations.

Drawing Global-​Historical Connections

Between South Asians and Blacks
History is rich and complicated and diverse . . . I always see commonali-
ties, but also lots of differences. History is the complexity of life.
—Vivek, desi MC and activist

Class and social distance make it difficult for most mainstream

desis to grasp the links between South Asians and Blacks. Arun,
a New York City DJ who remixes Hindi songs with hip hop beats
for desi audiences, is skeptical of the connection between South
Asians and Blacks. As he explained to me in an email, “To try and
draw a connection between 1) a culture that was brought here as
workers/slaves and is plagued by drugs, poverty, lack of educa-
tion, etc. and 2) a culture that was brought here as doctors/pro-
fessionals/students and is plagued by high incomes, stability, and
success is somewhat absurd.” Arun diagnoses the model image of
Indians as a problem (repeating the term “plagued,” perhaps using
it ironically the second time) while advancing two of its central
and problematic assumptions. First, he homogenizes both groups,
erasing nonprofessional South Asians and middle-​class Blacks and
associating “hip hop” with all Blacks rather than with a particular
generation or segment of Black America (or with other groups).
Second, he poses South Asian and Black predicaments as incom-
mensurably opposite cultures. The multiculturalist logic of these two
claims is mutually reinforcing. In contrast, desis who became hip
hop artists claim an immigrant-​identified minority status informed
by Blackness. Four factors shape this conception: first-​generation
ideas, desis’ racial otherness in America (and racism), their inter-
actions with Blacks, and their commitment to hip hop. Relatively
unknown links between Blacks and South Asians across time and
space frame this identification.
While cognizant of important group cleavages, desis express new
ethnicities (Hall 1991) through Black popular culture by highlight-
ing in their music the historical, cultural, spiritual, musical, and

Making Race 117

political linkages between South Asians and Blacks. These prece-
dents inform the “surprising” unities that we witness in their lives
today. Brown performers harness the power of “Afro Asia,” de-
scribed by Fred Ho and Bill Mullen as “a strategic intersection for
thinking through an internationalist, global paradigm . . . as well
as an anti-​imperialist, insurgent identity that is no longer majority
white in orientation” (2008: 2–3). High school history texts cover
Black history cursorily; the story of South Asians is virtually un-
known. Yet, as Amritjit Singh urges, “South Asians have much to
learn from African American history about how they are being ac-
culturated in North America” (1996: 94). Artists unearthed silenced
histories through research, self-​exploration, and dialogue. As cul-
tural workers, according to Henry Giroux and Patrick Shannon,
they “mobilize knowledge and desires that may lead to significant
changes in minimizing the degree of oppression in people’s lives”
(1997: 5).
History helped explain the artists’ sense of alienation from the
status quo and their attachment to Blacks. Their identifications are
founded upon “the mutual influence of and relationships between
members of the African and Asian diasporas in the Americas”
(Raphael-​Hernandez and Steen 2006: 1), particularly the British
colonials’ displacements of these groups. While many immigrants
call upon elitist and lofty legacies in their homelands in order to
represent themselves as respectable newcomers, these desis reject
such pasts. Instead, they speak of British colonial expeditions in
India by linking them directly yet distinctly to Whites’ enslavement
and inhumane transport of Africans to the Americas. These con-
ceptions of exploitation are not fixed geographically (“over there”)
or temporally (“back then”). In further studies, they uncovered
how British colonials indentured the Chinese and Indians as re-
placements for slave labor; some Chinese even came as “coolie”
labor to the southern United States (Jung 2006; see also Yun 2007).
Today, Indians and Africans constitute sizable and sometimes op-
posing populations in some West Indian nations, including Trini-
dad, Guyana, and Surinam. Artists historicized other connections.
Non-​Indian performers refer to ethnic strife in South Asia: D’Lo
is deeply troubled by the civil war in Sri Lanka, and the Pakistani
MCs Humanity and AbstractVision recall the traumas of Parti-
tion, the separation Pakistan from India in 1947 when India gained

118 Making Race

its independence from the British.17 Further, middle-​class artists
call upon links to bridge their distance from working-​class com-
patriots. These remembrances reveal race to be historically consti-
tuted and forged through power relations but articulated in locally
specific ways. Legacies of colonialism, imperialism, and labor ex-
ploitation tie them to other minorities, but groups have been differ-
entially racialized. Analyzing the overlapping processes of racializa-
tion enables a perspective that highlights the relational formation
of minority identities. That is, Blackness and Asianness have not
only been constructed in relation to Whiteness but also have devel-
oped in relation to one another. These theories inform the lyrics of
these artists, who use hip hop to advance a global racial perspective
that contests multiple racisms and offers a model for solidarity.
Chee Malabar, who along with the Chinese American MC Rain-
man make up Himalayan Project, presents an especially illustra-
tive persona to his listeners. Chee and Rainman’s albums include
Himalayan Project (1997), Wince at the Sun (2003), and Broken World
(2007). The title of their project from 2002, The Middle Passage, refers
both to V. S. Naipaul’s (1962) scathing indictment of West Indians
as colonial mimics and to the legacy of cross-​Atlantic slavery. The
title choice acknowledges the meaningfulness of slavery to Blacks
and expands its symbol (the Middle Passage) to postcolonial non-​
Blacks. Like Naipaul, Chee lashes out with his words, but his target
is the United States and its history of racism, exclusion, and capi-
talist exploitation of the poor. Over the course of eleven tracks, he
articulates a complex self-​portrait by positioning himself in rela-
tion to former slaves who now inhabit a racist and problem-​filled
America, a country that maintains power and privilege through a
de facto system of exclusion and discrimination. He tackles these
topics through both a macrolevel analysis of political and economic
corruption and his individual experience as an immigrant who, as
noted in the song “Nuttin Nice,” “came off a plane, with Brown
folks’ hopes seeped in [his] veins.”
Chee’s hyperopic vision attests to several pasts. Some lyrics go
back to his personal history (“since [he] leapt from Mrs. Menon’s
[i.e., his mother’s] stomach”) while others reach farther back to
comment on macrohistorical factors, as in the song “Nuttin Nice”:
“I stalk the stage, gauge my mood, I came from caged slaves in
servitude.” Sometimes calling himself a “Tamil Tiger/slash/rap

Making Race 119

Album courtesy of Chirag Menon.

writer,” the rhymster identifies with “terrorist” organizations like

the Tamil Eelam, a nationalist group in Sri Lanka fighting against
the government for an independent nation. Such cross-​national
recognitions highlight Sri Lankans’ migration from India, and he
denaturalizes “race” and “nation.” Chee links exploited immigrant
workers within South Asia (the British brought South Indian Tamils
as bonded laborers on Sri Lankan tea plantations) to the global mi-
gration of Indians to the West Indies and the United States (“caged
slaves in servitude”). The parallels with the exploitation of Africans
are obvious.
Other Asian American rappers have made similar connections,
such as the Chinese American rapper Jin who compares the refu-
gee experience and slavery in his song “One Cry.” Some scholars

120 Making Race

restrain from celebrating these cross-​racial moves, including Oliver
Wang who cautions: “Some Asian Americans romanticize the Afri-
can American experience and believe that their participation in hip-​
hop brings them closer in solidarity with African Americans” (2006:
157). Wang rightly argues that hip hop is not the ideal site for posi-
tive Black and Asian relations in the absence of actual interactions.
But the involvement of these desi rappers reflects years of intimate
interracial relations and signifies their appreciation for shared and
distinct experiences rather than a wishful desire for such things.
These desis are like the young New York Dominican activists who
adopt, as Ana Aparicio notes, a “strategic manipulation of histori-
cal memory, racial politics, and identity shifts” (2007: 197). Unlike
Dominicans, however, the diasporic narratives by desis do not en-
able them to call upon an African ancestry denigrated over time;
they call instead upon denigrated subcontinental identities and
pasts.
Despite their distance from colonialism Brown rappers raise
its specter by sampling it with critical commentary to make pan-​
racial and pan-​ethnic ties because they find it informs their cur-
rent status. As the product of an intercaste and religiously complex
union, Chee uses rap lyrics to situate the communal conflict be-
tween Hindus and Muslims within the context of British coloniza-
tion and post-​independence attempts to modernize India. In “Post-
cards from Paradise,” a poignant, slow-​paced song, Chee, who is
from South India, utters melancholic remembrances of the slum
overlooked by his own housing area:18
So two gods can’t live in the same alley, side by side,
Religious riots, firebrands scar a black night,
Flashback to a past life.
Fatehgunj Housing sphere’s overlooking thatch and shoddy made
dung huts,
Shantytowns sprout then, stick out like gout.
Politicians talkin’ ’bout “forward progress NOW,”
So these beautiful folks had their huts burned to the ground

Though developers burned down the slum houses, Chee finds that
the residents are resilient, coming up like a “rose grows through
cracks of concrete.”

Making Race 121

 But genius lies in all things simplified,
They’d take cow shit, mixed it with grass, a few twigs,
Exposed to the sun, it hardened once plastered to a few bricks,
Add some sweat and you have a makeshift apartment . . .

Poor Indians use an innovative material, dried dung, to re-​erect

their homes, as is the case with my own paternal family in their
village. These gritty images sully orientalist stereotypes, as Chee
notes:
Follow the stark stench of humans, fume and disease,
Where my peoples get by simply on ritual beliefs,
It’s steeped deep in what the British did before they flee,
Left more than just Eng­lish literature, cricket, whiskey and tea;
Psychological damage, famines, but we managed,
’Cause even a rose grows through cracks of concrete,
And a lotus floats hope in the stream of the Ganges,
There’s love here, but hate too, for that you can blame karma,
And nah, we just ain’t Deepak Chopra and our famed martyr,
So why would you wanna travel any place farther?
You can come-​leave-​reassured, your world’s a safe harbor,
So here it is, the picturesque postcard you chase after,
Complete with Taj Mahals, camels, and snake charmers.

Chee flashes back to a less popular British remnant than literature

and cricket and the Chopra-​like images tourists desire: the colo-
nials left a legacy of conflict, with repercussions among Ameri-
can Hindus and Muslims today. Despite what remains of that day,
Chee’s India is far more varied and interesting than the one with
snake charmers and Taj Mahals, which remain the backdrop of
postcards from a “paradise” (or images in National Geographic) that
this MC does not recall from his childhood.
Just as hip hop celebrates multiple aspects—artistry, creativity,
perseverance—of Black life in America despite structural ob-
stacles, Chee celebrates India in nonessentialist visions. His anti-​
orientalist portrait of the difficulties of daily life foregrounds the
causes and consequences of conflict. Hip hop becomes the perfect
vehicle for this lyrical analysis by artists who prefer to address na-
tional leaders concerned with liberation over the “Indian spiritu-
ality” that travelers seem intent on finding (see Prashad 2000). An-

122 Making Race

 While MC Chee Malabar creates racialized hip hop, he also performs
for desi audiences. Photograph courtesy of Preston Merchant.

other MC, Vivek, also speaks of his bond with young and old Blacks
by stressing the historical and political moorings of these groups.
He simultaneously considers African and African American history
as part of his own while also viewing Indian history as distinct.
The artists merge their historical knowledge with samples of po-
litical ideologies, including those of Marcus Garvey, Babylon, in-
dentured servitude, imperialism, and Rastafarianism. While many
American youths across races are unaware of past Third World radi-
calism, Martin Luther King Jr.’s visit to India, and international dia-
logues about liberation, Vivek wrote his senior thesis on the shared
political ideologies of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and
Mahatma Gandhi.19 Yuri Kochiyama, a Japanese American activ-
ist, spoke about the impact of Malcolm X, whose head she cradled
when he was assassinated: “I think that most important is the im-
pact he made about the awareness of . . . knowing oneself . . . and
to know one’s history, one’s heritage. And then, to link it with poli-

Making Race 123

tics” (1994: 131). As she further noted: “Malcolm said ‘the struggle
of Vietnam is the struggle of all third-​world people,’ capsulizing
that Asian and third-​world people’s fight was against foreign domi-
nation, imperialism, and colonialism. He had great admiration for
Mao and Ho Chi Minh” (133). The desi artists sampled Malcolm X’s
speeches on their albums as he indicted India’s colonization by
comparing it to slavery: “Excepting the African slave trade, no-
where has history recorded any more unnecessary bestial and ruth-
less carnage than the British suppression of the non-​White Indian
people” (quoted in Mullen 2004: xiii-​xiv). The desi artists’ conversa-
tions with their politically oriented Black peers re-​create legacies of
Afro-​Asian dialogue. As Chairman Mao stated in a speech delivered
in 1963, “I wish to take this opportunity, on behalf of the Chinese
people, to express our resolute support for the American Negroes
in their struggle against racial discrimination and for freedom and
equal rights . . . I call upon the workers, peasants, revolutionary
intellectuals, enlightened elements of the bourgeoisie, and other
enlightened personages of all colours in the world, white, black,
yellow, brown, etc., to unite to oppose the racial discrimination
practiced by U.S. imperialism and to support the American Negroes
in their struggle against racial discrimination.”20 Remixed strains
of a former global radicalism, popular among Du Bois and Mao
and later picked up by civil rights and Black Power activists (Mullen
2004), exist today in the music of desi artists. The artists know
that Martin Luther King Jr. was moved by the words of Gandhi, the
father of Indian independence. As King stated: “As I read, I became
deeply fascinated by his campaigns of nonviolent resistance. As I
delved deeper into the philosophy of Gandhi, my skepticism con-
cerning the power of love gradually diminished, and I came to see
for the first time its potency in the area of social reform” (quoted
in D’Souza 2003: B7). Recounting his trip to India, King said: “We
were looked upon as brothers, with the color of our skins as some-
thing of an asset. But the strongest bond of fraternity was the com-
mon cause of minority and colonial peoples in America, Africa,
and Asia struggling to throw off racism and imperialism.”21 Black
radicals were also influenced by the ordinary Indians in their lives,
perhaps represented today by hip hop’s desis. Angela Davis, in her
compelling autobiography, writes of her friendship with Lalit, a

124 Making Race

foreign exchange student: “It was my friendship with Lalit more
than anything else, I supposed, that helped me understand con-
cretely the interconnectedness of the freedom struggles of peoples
throughout the world.” As Lalit described the “incredible misery of
his people in India,” Davis writes, “I found myself constantly think-
ing about my people in Birmingham, my people in Harlem” (1988:
120). Some Asian Americans at the turn of the twenty-​first century
not only learn from and sample these exchanges but also continue
the legacy of Afro-​Asian activism.
Desi artists also cull diasporic cultural and spiritual crossovers
among, for example, Indians in Kenya and Uganda or African
Sidis in western India (see Baker, Diawara, and Lindeborg 1996;
Hawley 2004). Thrice-​displaced South Asian and African migrants
to Eng­land in the latter part of the 1900s created hybridized music
that emphasized Black British experiences (Gilroy 1993; Sharma,
Hutnyk, and Sharma 1996; Hutnyk 2000; Hyder 2004). In the United
States, this is beginning to take shape in the burgeoning bhangra
scene, in desi hip hop, and in mainstream hip hop’s appropriation
of South Asian styles and songs (see chapter 5). Like their British
compatriots some desis are fans of reggae music; these artists find
that its sonic resistance parallels that of hip hop. Deejay Bella and,
to a lesser extent, Vivek, were entrenched in the Bay Area reggae
scene and felt connected to Caribbean Islanders as fellow diasporic
peoples with cultures and roots in another homeland. Reggae also
represents Indians from the Caribbean who identify with their
island nations without affiliating much with Indians from the sub-
continent. These various South Asian youths in America have af-
finity for reggae and Rastafarianism and also find value in strains of
Afrocentric thought expressed in nation-​conscious rap. The multi-
cultural production of these forms parallels the artists’ music- and
identity-​making processes. Such diasporic knowledges illustrate a
broad conception of community that informs new identities and
social formations that the rappers, DJs, and producers express
through music.
The British Asian performer Apache Indian creates bhangra-
muffin music (influenced by reggae and bhangra) and, like hip
hop’s desis, gives shoutouts to revolutionaries ranging from
Gandhi to Bob Marley (Lipsitz 1994: 131). Like Wang, George Lip-

Making Race 125

sitz warns against overly celebratory interpretations of intercultural
mixing, but he also emphasizes that “the very existence of music
demonstrating the interconnectedness between the culture of im-
migrants and the culture of their host country helps us understand
how the actual lived experiences of immigrants are much more dy-
namic and complex than most existing models of immigration and
assimilation admit” (119). And just as “popular music affirms the
positive qualities of the unity forged in part by negative experiences
with British racism” (128), hip hop affirms the shared experiences
of South Asians with Blacks in the United States. It also affirms
their extranational ties. Some of the artists have been to the Carib-
bean with their friends from the islands and know of the possible
links between Indian sadhus (holy men) and Rastafarians in Jamaica.
Prashad (2002) cites the possibility that it was from Indian workers
that Rastafarians learned of dreadlocks and smoking ganga (itself
a Hindi word for marijuana). Thus what we commonly know as
“Black” is in fact composed of a variety of influences, just as desi-
ness is created through intercultural exchange.
The mixed populations and cultures of places like Trinidad and
Jamaica express the artists’ own affinities and musical passions
and they pay attention to innovative musical crossings outside the
United States. Energized by the established bhangra and Asian
music scene in London, the politicized rapping of British Asian
groups like FunDaMental and Asian Dub Foundation is inspir-
ing to the artists’ own processes. Chutney soca, an “Indianized”
form of African soca music in Trinidad, is yet another example
of what emerges at the nexus of South Asian and Black remixing
(see Manuel 2006; Niranjana 2006), and in their own context desis
in hip hop elaborate the sonic parallels of hip hop and bhangra
music. Sammy, a Punjabi who lives and runs Rukus Avenue Records
in Southern California, describes how the bass in hip hop echoes
the dhol drum used in his native music (he incorporates both in his
musical productions). “Bhangra,” says Dinesh, a Nepali whose best
friend is a biracial Black and White man, “was so much like hip hop
it was great and [it] led to community camaraderie.”22 But as Hyder
notes, desis in hip hop, like South Asian bands in Britain, “have
not simply transported traditional sounds from the Indian subcon-
tinent and relocated them to the UK but have adapted and trans-

126 Making Race

formed them to form part of the array of cultural influences that
are experienced and negotiated in their everyday lives.” These syn-
cretic musical forms across the South Asian diaspora “reflect and
inform the expression of contemporary expressions of ethnicity
and identity” (2004: 151; see also Gopinath 1995). Hip hop desis,
however, are prone not to create “remix music,” or a fusion of hip
hop beats with Indian lyrics, and “ethnic hip hop” would not fall
under this category either. Instead, it is important to the artists that
they maintain the familiar sonic and rhythmic format of hip hop
while incorporating multiple influences into their lyrics, thereby
injecting desi perspectives into a recognizably Black art form.
Because of this choice, audiences often think that desi rappers
like Chee and Rawj “sound Black.” The writer Judy Tseng responds
similarly to the Chinese American MCs Mountain Brothers because
their “lyrics do not explicitly refer to an Asian American identity,
but instead present a critique of society from a perspective shared
by other people of color” (2007). Desis who share this critique cre-
ate “racialized hip hop,” a subgenre that incorporates rhymes about
allegedly “Black” issues, including an analysis of structural and in-
stitutional forces that affect minorities, from prison and poverty
to politics and policing. In this case, the artists use it to uncover
racism and oppression that affects not only “their” (ethnic) group,
but also its harm to others they consider family. They arrive at this
perspective because the historical, political, cultural, and sonic
links I have described impact the artists’ contemporary identities as
people of color.
Police brutality, so rare a topic among professional desis (even
since 9/11), fills the texts created by the desi artists (see Omatsu
2000). One such example is D’Lo’s poem, “Police Brutality” (1997),
which begins with an event with a multiracial cast of characters
playing baseball, America’s favorite pastime, and joins it to past
injustices. A police officer shows up in the midst of the event with
another kind of bat in hand. As D’Lo flows:
Listeners heard the screams
and saw in the beams of light
the primary colors of
Red, Blue, Black and White
But no fight was put up,

Making Race 127

 They shut up.
As they saw Alicia and Rodney and
Poor lil’ Abner
Get their bodies massacred.
It occurred to be a helpless situation
Of tribulation.
Scared adults
Protect themselves
From “Peace” officers.

D’Lo strings together the violence faced by Black and Brown, men
and women: starting with Alicia Soltero, a Mexican woman beaten
by police in Riverside, California, not far from the city where a few
years earlier Rodney King was also beaten by police officers. D’Lo
then sweeps to the East Coast in New York where the Haitian im-
migrant Abner Louima was assaulted and attacked by police offi-
cers in 1997. In considering these three victims as a part of rather
than apart from those whom s/he considers “his/her people,” D’Lo’s
activist efforts go hand in hand with his/her music. D’Lo was part
of the Artists Network of Refuse and Resist and was active in the
911 anti-​police brutality organization in defense of the imprisoned
Black Panther Mumia Abu-​Jamal. This poet has long been con-
cerned about what happens to marginalized groups due to D’Lo’s
early experiences with racism and homophobia.
The rapper KB’s verse in “Outcasted” clarifies how critical think-
ing about the past inflects the music of today’s desi MCs. Further,
hip hop is not just a vehicle for exposing hegemonic renditions of
history that have become common sense; rather, it is the desis’ ve-
hicle to counter prevailing narratives by filling in the blanks and
re(w)rapping history. Desi MCs sometimes become the rhyming
griots that so influenced them in their youth. As KB firmly raps:
To all the menaces
Kicking their subtle prejudice,
Addressing us with stereotypical references.
And still oppressing us
By filling the syllabus
With lessons of how they got the best of us
In ancient fisticuffs.
Malicious messages taken from history texts

128 Making Race

 And such, are locked in mental prisons
For unprecedented sentences.
Supposedly what I’m supposed to be and what was meant for me,
Is told through the odyssey
Of my ancestry.
Instead, I choose to separate
Destiny and heredity
And bomb everybody’s perception of our identity.
By dropping these intellectual properties
With prophesies
To challenge the traditional inequalities of men.
So, if the world remembers me
Then hopefully they’ll let it be my legacy.
You’ll have properly pushed pens.

In some ways KB’s rhymes are both a lyrical reflection and exten-
sion of his critical consciousness. Growing up in Richmond in the
1970s and 1980s, he was aware of “subtle prejudice” and was later
profoundly shaped by the incident in college in the 1990s, related
in chapter 1, of being called a “rotten coconut.” He illustrates the
shifts in racism as it changes its skin while its inner workings stay
the same. How other desis read KB and how the media depicts South
Asians make him question the limitation that “what I’m supposed
to be and what was meant for me” is circumscribed by “the odys-
sey of my ancestry.” He took classes in college that taught him of
“malicious messages taken from history texts,” which spurred him
to create his own major detailing how strongly the media shapes
“people’s perceptions of our identity.” The desire by KB to under-
stand the world and its inequalities, the courses he took in college,
and his embrace of message rap are representative of the other art-
ists who also aim to drop “intellectual properties with prophesies
to challenge the traditional inequalities of men,” although he does
not include women in this line. Like the others, he “choose[s] to
separate destiny and heredity,” squashing master narratives as his
“legacy.”
These examples of racialized hip hop aim to build bridges, which
is rare within communities that tend to disidentify with Blacks.
The artists also came face to face with the global events that hard-
ened interminority rifts. The aftermath of 9/11 revealed the struc-

Making Race 129

tural links between Blacks and South Asians, but it has also en-
trenched discourses that naturalize group difference that divide
South Asians, Arabs, and Blacks (see Maira 2006). In the realign-
ment of racial politics following 9/11 some Blacks have banded
together with other Americans against “Muslim-​looking peoples,”
the new target of racial profiling and unfair detention practices. The
artists use hip hop in this changing racial climate to remind others
what they have long been stating: that discrimination, racial profil-
ing, and incarceration affect all groups and not just one.

Post-​9/11 Links and Racial Realignments:

“Soundtrack to the Brown Experience”
Since 2001, Black and Brown people have both reaffirmed and sev-
ered their relations.23 After 9/11 the responses at the state level and
more generally to people from the Middle East and those mistaken
for them, including the South Asians in this project, reflect the
consolidation of the longer-​term racial projects (Omi and Winant
1994)—namely, global racial projects—that homogenize members
of these groups as fundamentalist non-​Christians and terrorists.
This in effect solidifies their status as different, if not dangerous,
foreigners in the minds of many Americans. Hindu Indians in the
wealthy suburb of Fremont, California—also home to numerous
South Asian computer industry millionaires and some desi art-
ists—responded negatively to their conflation with Muslims by
posting American flags on their doorways and by stating, “We are
not Muslims, we are not the enemy.” The post-​9/11 moment also
distinguishes South Asians from both East Asians and the category
of “Asian American” and has led to the rise of a new and specific
Brown referent distinct from that of Latinos. The racial profiling,
detention, and hate crimes that targeted these individuals co-
incided in particular ways with the long-​term and well-​documented
experiences of American Blacks. However, it distinguishes Brown
youths from Blacks as the state imputes their bodies with different,
but overlapping, meanings.
Although anti-​Muslim sentiment has a long history in the United
States, South Asians are no longer shielded by their pre-​9/11 invisi-
bility and racial ambiguity. Negative responses to Brown people and

130 Making Race

the wars in the Middle East that now include South Asia have been
painful muses for the artists, some of whose lives have altered dur-
ing this time. Hate crimes and surveillance create dissonance with
the formerly “positive stereotypes” of this “model” group, protect-
ing not even those who attempt to distance themselves from Mus-
lims. Orientalism has reared its head to cast those who “look like
terrorists” as threats to the nation that must be expelled, “disap-
peared,” and stopped (Fernandes 2006). According to the theory
of racial triangulation (Kim 1999, 2003), shifts in the status of one
group affect the status of others; we see this in the racialization of
“Muslim-​looking” people, whereby their demonization reinforces
White superiority. It may not raise the status of Blacks in the eyes
of White Americans, but their attention is temporarily displaced
from Blacks. At the same time, a new (Brown) target may make fer-
vent patriotism appeal to those Blacks who bond with other anti-​
immigrant Americans.
Since 9/11 and the ensuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the art-
ists have been self-​conscious about others reading them as Middle
Easterners. Some, particularly those who live in New York City, have
had to reckon with police misconduct. These MCs, including Chee,
D’Lo, AbstractVision, and Humanity (the latter two of whom are
Muslim men), have transformed trauma into fodder for their art.
Because they are aware of past histories and the injustices faced by
Blacks (i.e., they understand how “race” operates through racism),
they attribute their harassment to the same mechanisms of surveil-
lance, incarceration, and state-​sanctioned violence.
Himalayan Project’s second and third albums, The Middle Pas-
sage and Wince at the Sun, reflect Chee and Rainman’s concern with
America’s wars abroad and the rising anti-​Muslim and South Asian
xenophobia at home. Generally disturbed by American politics,
Chee turns his words into sound bombs “of scuds whizzin’ past an
Arab’s tunic.” The song “Rebel Music” is about both targeting poli-
ticians and defining commonalities among oppressed groups. In
an angry yet earnest voice, Chee responds to naysayers who do not
believe in the existence of politicized and informed rappers:
Someone once said, America’s a Melting Pot,
The people at the bottom get burned,
While the scum always seem to float to the top,

Making Race 131

 Ack, send seven shots from glocks at Trent Lott,
They ain’t upset that he said it, they mad he got caught,
Might as well use the constitution as toilet tissue,
’Cause ain’t shit changed since 1964, duke.
De-​facto segregation exists, dissident voices, diluted then muted,
Through the strategic placements of polls and voting booths, and
Since we don’t sit, where decisions get made,
I wouldn’t piss on a burning bush to extinguish the flames,
Axis of evil, Jihad and crusades, so who’s sane? (Hussein),
Saddam got napalm and thangs, while we build nukes, talkin’
disarmament.
To you my religion is seen as voodoo,
Fuck you, I’ll consider Christ when your pope is Desmond Tutu.

As with D’Lo, Chee’s community is a broad one—spatially, racially,

and temporally. He locates this war within a longer trajectory of
global and national racisms against non-Whites. Chee identifies

Album courtesy of Chirag Menon.

132 Making Race

with India (the country from which he migrated), crosses religious
lines by denouncing anti-​Muslim hatred (he is not a Muslim), and
expresses his anger through the voices of notable Black figures,
such as Malcolm X, on his albums.
The performers’ ideological links between the past and present
and between global and local politics stem from interactions with
the state that link their bodies—resuscitated by historical oriental-
ist stereotypes as dangerous fundamentalist others—to the “War
on Terror.” Artists like Chee also go a step further to point out racial
crossovers, as Chee does in the song “Silent Scream”:
. . . as the cops lurked the station
Searchin’ for a brown-​faced cajun
Baggin Arabs, blacks and South Asians

On his solo rapping project Oblique Brown, produced by Zeeb, Chee

zeroes in on the harassment he faced in New York City. He re-
counted to me how his mother urged him to at least place a sticker
of the American flag on his car since he would not agree to shave
his goatee. She was afraid that the police and others would mistake
him for a “Muslim.” They did. In the title track “Oblique Brown,”
Chee draws from the response of one police officer who pulled him
over:
“What! Hold on Osama, don’t be so near sighted”
Before I snatched the ticket, the cop got excited,
Clutched his glock and screamed, “Don’t even budge bitch”
Thought he’d call Tom Ridge to tell him “flip the color switch.”
A white boy rock a beard, he’s considered rugged
And if I sport one, I’m a threat to the public,
“What you got in the trunk? Any guns, drugs explosives?”

Sarcastically, Chee responds, “Nope, got some cd’s though you can
keep as coasters!” The rapper interprets the situation through the
framework of racial profiling:
Yup, guess I’m America’s worst nightmare,
’Cause I’m young, brown and look Middle Eastern, yea
“Now get out the car, hands up knees on the floor!”
I said, “My sister went to Seton Hall I know about the law”
He’s like, “Dude, your face is probable cause!”

Making Race 133

The officer assumes that similar-​looking people must share char-
acteristics, in this case a penchant for terrorism. Calling upon
his educated sister does not help his case. Racial profiling, which
usually leads to arrest for the “offense” of “Driving While Black,”
now targets those “Driving/Flying While Brown.”
As the song moves on it links unjust policing to a lineage of mi-
gration for exploitable labor and the war in Iraq.
Wonderin’ why, we crossed the dark waters,
With its past: slavery, exploitation, slaughter . . .
(Laughin’) Laughin’ and treatin’ us like savages
But America’s built on inhumane pain
And I bet you felt safe when the FOX news came,
“Uday and Qusay Hussein Slain”

Mainstream discourses such as those on the FOX news network

lump Chee’s Brown face with those of Hussein’s murderous and
executed sons. His identity is slippery both in his self-​identification
and in how others position him. It means that although he is not
a Muslim, institutional power may act upon him on the basis of
phenotype as if he were. However, Chee and the others did not have
to wait until a particular incident exposed them to these injustices
firsthand—they knew this well before 2001 because they saw and
heard about such things from their young Black friends. The ten-
tacles of the law enforcement apparently “Protect (some) and Serve
(others),” thereby inhibiting the mobility of multiple Americans
(see Gilmore 2007), and not just Blacks. And Chee also recognizes
how various non-White groups become affiliated with race-​specific
crimes while Whites grant themselves humanity and heterogeneity
despite the terrorists among them:
If you black you sell crack, if you brown you down buildings,
Timmy McVeigh did the same shit, Y’all killed him
But you ain’t trample the rights of your white civilians
Didn’t harass ’em or ask ’em for Passports, Visas,
Didn’t freeze their assets, no search no seizures.

Underlying this vamped up state of surveillance was a religious

president who conjured the very system of othering: he decried the
practices of “non-​Christian fundamentalists” while he prayed in
the oval office.

134 Making Race

 While Bush is up on stage, quotin’ Jesus,
While the sons of the slums cuffed up on trumped charges,
’Cause we look different, talk different, labeled as Jihadists

Chee’s organic intellectualism takes root in a particular world-

view that weaves together war, religion, migration, racialization,
policing, and capitalism. In his analysis, the interdependence of
this ecosystem underlies the global dominance of the United States;
White supremacy is the root of inequality. He nestles his individual
experiences as a Brown immigrant male growing up with a diversity
of friends on the West Coast and living as a Muslim-​looking adult
in millennial New York within these macro-​level processes. They
shape his sense of self, as he raps in his song “Malawho”: “Brown
man in a White world, live it through Black music.”

Conclusion
Some desi hip hoppers who grew up with Blacks and lived in Black
neighborhoods come to identify as minorities and understand race
politics within a White versus non-White framework. They merge
aspects of ethnicity that they feel strongly about with models of
racial pride expressed among their Black friends that exemplify a
resistant response to racism. Yet all of the hip hop desis understand
that while they can take on some of the perspectives of Blackness,
they do not claim a Black identity. They are drawn to sample from
various sources, in part due to the liminality of South Asians as
neither Black nor White, which emphasizes to them the fluidity of
categories. Some desis harness this ambiguity productively through
strategic essentialism and strategic anti-​essentialism. Informing
these strategies are the multiple global-​historical connections be-
tween diasporic South Asians and Blacks that the artists actively
uncover. This knowledge infuses their rhymes.
Current events, particularly those following 9/11, illustrate the
artists’ perspectives that the past is implicated in the future. They
find that power relations historically produce contemporary prac-
tices, such as the policing and profiling of non-Whites and other
forms of unjust state violence upon Black and Brown bodies. Desis
in hip hop consider Blacks and South Asians as neither opposi-
tional nor distant groups. Past and present historical, cultural,

Making Race 135

religious, and political connections increase the artists’ bond with
Black peers and their commitments to broader international com-
munities. While they are committed to their ethnic communities on
their own terms, they also continue their work as culture brokers
across constructed color lines by producing racialized hip hop.
This ethnography highlights the role of racism in South Asian
American lives. Race-​focused studies analyze power and inequality
that powerful groups inscribe institutionally within past and
present societal structures. This approach is also a defining feature
of the music made by desi hip hop artists, who highlight struc-
tural and historical relations. Motivated by racism, the performers
understand structural relations due to their study of history and
institutional power, and therefore they see their connection and re-
lationality with another uniquely racialized group. They highlight
the paradox central to Mixed Race studies scholarship that, in the
words of Williams, “identity formation is complex, interactive, and
ever-​e volving, yet racial designations have been created and em-
ployed to simplify, sort, and rank individuals into fixed, exclusive
categories” (1996: 202). These desis use hip hop to shift from racial
categorization to political identification that transcends insular
identities based on identity politics. Alterity, instead of primordial
or blood ties, may form the basis of emerging multiracial commu-
nities. As Jan Weisman notes: “The continued adherence to such
[a nonblood-​based] identity by a steady or increasing number of
individuals can in fact lead to the societal recognition of such new
forms of identification” (1996: 158). Desis who remind us of the
interplay of agency and structure actively create new panethnic and
pan-​racial communities in the United States rooted in social jus-
tice.
Biological understandings of race hold that race predetermines
behavior, whereas hip hop desis understand race as a social pro-
cess that they can contest. Race is not so predetermining as to
limit or erase agency (Giddens 1984). Given their racial ambiguity,
South Asians have room to identify across constructed and material
differences, taking advantage of the space between constraining
structural forces and their individual agency. They sometimes use
essentialist racial conceptions, which can slip into dangerous reifi-
cations of the notion of race as real (Lipsitz 2007: 43), in their at-
tempt to offer something more complex in their rhymes. Hip hop’s

136 Making Race

desis harness the productive power of community building through
creative and collaborative musical relations. Music is central to
identity production and it has the ability to unite seemingly dis-
parate individuals through lyrics and beats that speak to common
experiences (Frith 1996: 111). As Hyder states, “Although music
arouses a sensual pleasure on the part of both the listener and per-
former, it is also a means of cultural dialogue; a medium through
which issues of politics and identity can be articulated and devel-
oped” (2004: 32). Hip hop is the form through which the desi art-
ists shore up alternatives to essentialist and insular identity politics
as they perform new knowledges that merge ethnic and racial iden-
tifications across time and space. They inform listeners of silenced
histories that link Blacks and South Asians and that become foun-
dational to pan-​racial identifications.

Making Race 137

 3.
Flipping the Gender Script
Gender and Sexuality in South Asian
and Hip Hop America

Because, though I am Tamil,

I am silver piercings
Am hip-​hop
Am boy
Am bald
—D’Lo, male-​identified queer MC and poet
Discourse can be both an instrument and an effect of power, but also a
hindrance, a stumbling-​block, a point of resistance and a starting point
for an opposing strategy. Discourse transmits and produces power; it
reinforces it, but also undermines and exposes it, renders it fragile and
makes it possible to thwart it.—Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality

America’s differential and relational sexualization of Asians and

Blacks over time has shaped contemporary gender and sexual poli-
tics within desi and hip hop America—communities that frame
the everyday dynamics between South Asian and Black men and
women. This chapter examines how desi hip hoppers contend with
the gender and sexual norms of the various communities to which
they belong. Desi performers create new second-​generation identi-
ties by sampling ethnic and racial influences, and they draw from a
range of gender and sexual identities as well. Sex, love, and music
are linked in the artists’ lives as they evaluate expectations, obliga-
tions, and passions: who they love crosses over with what they love;
what they love is deeply implicated in who they love. My analysis of
the engagement in hip hop by South Asians centers on their inti-
mate and professional relationships with Black and South Asian
men and women. The artists’ desires and attempts to reconcile pro-
fessional and romantic aspirations for love and art highlight the
undertheorized impacts of Blacks on the formation of alternate
desi gender roles and sexualities.
In extending my account of desis’ disruption of ethnicity and
innovative racial claiming, I analyze in this chapter how desi men
and women negotiate the gender and sexual politics of hip hop,
of mainstream society, and of their insular immigrant communi-
ties. I reveal how, or even whether, these men and women incorpo-
rate particular gendered and sexualized aspects of “Black culture”
into their self-​conceptions, and I show how this is accomplished
in ways that may be surprising. I offer alternative interpretations
to the existing literature on the appeal of hip hop for non-Blacks
through my ethnographic account of non-Black and non-White,
female and male, straight and gay hip hoppers. Theories devel-
oped about Whites and hip hop do not apply equally to their Asian
counterparts. The scholarship is often critical of Whites’ desire for
a racialized sexuality that expresses distanced and insincere com-
plexes of fear and desire. Using this explanation, many Americans
interpret Asian American men’s interest in hip hop as a desire to
overcome their emasculation. My examination of South Asian mas-
culinity, however, troubles this move and rejects the conflation of
desis with both Whites and East Asians.
Female artists, in particular, confront desi and Black notions of
respectability along with misogyny and gender double standards
(McBride 2005). Hip hop scholarship, in addition to overlooking
Asians, has also paid inadequate attention to women, particularly
non-Black women (cf. Rivera 2003; Chatterjee 2006; Nair and Ba-
laji 2008). Black female scholars, many of them part of the hip hop
generation, have foundationally recounted the presence of women
in hip hop and illustrated how female artists, particularly rappers,
challenge the sexual stereotypes of Black women. I too depict how
women negotiate misogyny and sexism, and I highlight hip hop as
a culture with empowering models for women’s sexual agency, even

Flipping the Gender Script 139

for non-Blacks. Two of the desi female artists, one of whom is a gay
MC and the other a heterosexual DJ, claim hip hop identities and
clear the way for pro-​womanist spaces within the predominantly
Black, male, and straight world of the music industry, and they do
this despite their marginalized gender, racial, and sexual statuses
as Brown women in hip hop. Related to this, I address whether or
not the male artists also partake in dismantling or maintaining gen-
der hierarchies of oppression.
By culling insights from Hip Hop studies, South Asian American
studies, and Afro-​Asian studies I highlight in this chapter the role
that Blacks play in contemporary sexual and gender formations of
Asians in America. Analyses of South Asian and Black relations me-
diated by Black popular culture expand our understanding of Asian
American gender roles, sexuality, and intermarriage with Whites
(e.g., Espiritu 1997; Koshy 2004; cf. Hall and Turner 2001; Thorn-
ton and Gates 2001). The majority of the artists have been in roman-
tic relationships with Black partners—including African Ameri-
cans, Africans, and Caribbean Islanders—despite South Asians’
anti-​Black prejudices and parents’ desires for cultural continuity.
Racism and a love of hip hop frame the desi artists’ professional
and romantic choices and these converge in their emerging race
consciousness. However, female and male artists reflect different
relationship patterns that speak to the differential ways that gender
intersects with sexuality among American South Asians.
The artists draw from sexual and gender references provided by
their Black peers that are found within hip hop culture seemingly
outside the repertoires of mainstream desis. They are often absent
in research as well: ethnic studies literature on interracial relations
privilege these populations’ relations with Whites. The artists, like
all Asians in America, forge their sexualities within the nexus of
historical processes (e.g., immigration legislation) and ideologies
(e.g., conceptions of Asians as sexual deviants). For instance, the
desi women in this project are aware of their desirability by men
across color lines. Their interactions in hip hop clubs with Black
men who orientalize them and compare them with Black, rather
than White women, for instance, reorient the factors that schol-
ars have determined shape Asian Americans’ and African Ameri-
cans’ self-​conceptions of beauty, desire, and competition. How-

140 Flipping the Gender Script

ever, I also distinguish between the American racialization of South
Asians from East Asians as it impacts their sexual lives.
Analyzing the artists’ negotiation of interracial relationships
and the hip hop industry calls attention to interactions between
South Asians and Blacks that, despite historical precedents, schol-
ars have largely avoided (cf. Prashad 2001; Bald 2008). The lack
of attention paid to Asian/Black relations, particularly sexual and
romantic ones, insinuates their impossibility in our imaginings
of racialized sexuality. Yet surely desi artists represent a larger co-
hort of Asian Americans who find models of sexuality and gender
roles within Black popular culture and through their interactions
with Blacks. Their experiences confound interpretations of “Asian
American sexuality” as emasculated males attempting to access the
virile hypersexuality of Black masculinity or as exotic Brown women
who embark on rebellious escapades through temporary trysts with
Black men. Instead, the complex negotiations between Black and
Brown partners attempting to fulfill ethnic and racial obligations
while pursuing musical passions highlight the veritable minefield
of complex allegiances and expectations that push apart and pull
together young Americans in a nation highly conscious of “differ-
ence.” Ultimately, we find that the influences of Blacks and Black
cultural formations upon the emergent identities of Brown youth
extend beyond the realms of ethnicity and race, fear and desire.

These Are the Breaks:

Two Brown Women in a Black Male Business
I wanted a male perspective, so I asked a desi MC what he thought
about the position of women in hip hop. “Wow,” he said, which he
followed with “um.” He paused, but then stated, “Within hip hop,
I think women have a very good place, a very solid place. Very good
form for representation.” For clarification I asked if he thought
that women were already in hip hop or that there was the potential
for women to be in hip hop. “I think they’re there. The doors are
open for them.” At the same time, however, he acknowledged that
“it’s a very tough place for women to be in hip hop.” And he went
further to add, “I think a lot of women end up selling themselves
into the stereotype”—referring to one conception of women in hip

Flipping the Gender Script 141

hop as sexually available. The women agree that hip hop is a very
tough business for them especially when, as in the case of D’Lo, the
female-​born artist identifies and performs as a male. In our conver-
sations the desi female artists and I ambled through dense thick-
ets of gender, race, desiness, music, and sexuality only hinted at
by this male MC. As women familiar with Black urban club culture
and passionate about hip hop, we bonded by going together to con-
certs, clubs, and other events where we faced similar interactions
with Black men and women.1 We navigated and analyzed the com-
plicated gender and sexual dynamics of this highly masculine and
heteronormative culture.
Straight and gay South Asian female hip hoppers illustrate how
the historical sexualization of Blacks and Asians in America in-
forms the artists’ musical passions and progression today. These
women’s conceptualizations of their range of sexual and gendered
choices counter the more “traditional” thinking of fixed options
within South Asian communities. While much literature on Asian
American gender and sexuality either leaves out or assumes South
Asian Americans, femininity within South Asian communities is
viewed as something to be guarded and is tied to upholding re-
spectable ethnic traditions and mores. Perhaps more neglected is
desi masculinity, which is usually seen as both exceptional of Asian
American manhood (i.e., not following the line of Asian Ameri-
can emasculation) or as typical (the emasculated South Asian tech
worker or the comedic foreigner like Apu on The Simpsons) and tied
to economic stability. In fact, hip hop provides sexual roles that
resonate with these women who have few models of desi femininity
available to them that speak to the United States–based context of
their lives. Additionally, being a woman shapes their musical pro-
ductions and has led to struggles in business interactions.
Their sampling and expressions of gender and sexuality are cre-
ative second-​generation responses to the limitations of American,
South Asian, and Black ethnic and racial politics. Despite the tricky
maneuverings required by these dynamics, the strong gender iden-
tity and passion for music by Deejay Bella and by the poet-​activist-​
MC D’Lo, the two female-​born artists in my study, lead them to use
Black popular music—putting their gender politics on the dance
floors in club spaces—to intervene in male-​dominated places. I
intersperse their stories in the text of this chapter to illustrate how

142 Flipping the Gender Script

some artists negotiate the business while expressing desi gender
and sexual identities that sample Black masculinities.
The hip hop industry promotes the commodification and sexu-
alization of women, the idea of women as extraneous accessories,
and heteronormativity. These ideas operate in and beyond the
videos and lyrics of some kinds of commercial rap to infiltrate the
experiences of women in all levels of hip hop. Hip hop historians
and the culture’s major players have silenced women’s contribu-
tions by relegating them to a few token paragraphs in the extensive
volumes of hip hop production (cf. Pough 2004, 2007; Sharpley-​
Whiting 2007). We see how gender and sexuality mediate the ex-
periences of non-Blacks in a highly racialized domain; taking part
in predominantly Black productions leads to unexpected racial-
ized expressions of desi gender and sexuality. I begin my examina-
tion with a brief biography of the musical careers of Deejay Bella
and D’Lo before detailing the gender politics of Brown women in a
Black male dominant field.

The Technician, Deejay Bella: Marginality, Sexuality, Positivity

No one’s listening to me . . . It’s not right to work so hard and not go
anywhere. Women are not seen as being bomb ass DJs blowing a party
up.—Deejay Bella

Bella spins records for music-​loving crowds, making them dance

until the wee hours. In a phone conversation one night she told me
that she wanted to meet more women in the business. She chatted
about people’s conceptions of DJs: “You think of a guy. I’m not the
type, right! I’m sort of petite, right?” She laughed, “Nobody’s going
to carry my records for me,” and then ended with an upbeat, “but
it’s all good.” These devoted artists deal with overlapping and con-
flicting sets of expectations that are often brought together in their
homes. Bella, a manager-​level environmental engineer by day and
a DJ in every other moment of her life, leads an exhausting sched-
ule. Her home displays the signs of her true calling: there is no
TV in her Oakland apartment, just hundreds of records stacked in
crates from floor to ceiling across an entire wall of her living room,
spilling into her walk-​in closet, just as a professor’s books might.
Where there are no records, the walls are papered with famous

Flipping the Gender Script 143

reggae artists’ autographed posters. Other walls are adorned with
family photos, and as a strict vegetarian Bella has cleared a place for
a puja (prayer) area in the kitchen. How did this suburbanite from
Las Vegas become so involved in the Bay Area Black music scene?
Bella likely inherited her audiophilia from her father, a Guja-
rati immigrant who was a guitarist in a rock band in India. In the
early 1970s he created a small studio in their Las Vegas home where
Bella would play records as her father taped all his music on a reel-​
to-​reel recorder. They “always had music,” she noted, because her
father listened to music while he worked. In addition, her mother
listened to prayer music on the weekends, and Bella and her sis-
ter also danced the garba (an Indian dance from Gujarat). Mostly
self-​taught, she had figured out how to play the organ and then
moved on to play the violin in elementary school. Then she began
her own record collection with money she earned from babysit-
ting. Bella’s interests intersected with those boys at high school
who shared her depth of knowledge and penchant for particular
artists. After graduating from high school and heading to college
in the early 1990s, she was also well on her way to becoming a hip
hop and reggae aficionado—a niche that has captivated her interest
for almost two decades. The investigative nature of her interest led
to the evolution of her musical tastes. Always historicizing music,
Bella says, “It’s the roots of the music” that are important, as she
searched for the original versions of songs not played on the radio,
including punk, ska, reggae, and hip hop. Her sense of the power
of music eventually deepened to become her life.
Like other artists from mostly White areas, Bella expanded her
musical repertoire at the radio station at her Bay Area university.
She became the station’s promotions director and was responsible
for reviewing music, arranging time slots, raising funds, and net-
working.2 Venturing off campus, armed with her own pair of turn-
tables, the sophomore began to volunteer at break beat sessions
in an alcohol-​free Black cultural space in East Oakland. She then
became entrenched in the Oakland-​Berkeley-​San Francisco Black
music scene, which was dominated by local producers, promoters,
and DJs—most of whom were men.3 Bonding with some of the
prevailing DJs of the time who were doing a lot of “good political
and social music work” helped her develop her own sound. As an

144 Flipping the Gender Script

Deejay Bella, with a career spanning almost two decades, spins at a
4th of July event. Photograph courtesy of Deejay Bella.
accomplished DJ, who has now also produced and recorded origi-
nal music, by 2000 Bella was a recognized member of the reggae/
dancehall/hip hop scene and her name graced nightclub fliers and
the events section of local papers. As she began to book her own
gigs, this petite Brown woman had to find her place in an arena en-
meshed with gender and racial politics.

D’Lo, the Crossover: Gay, Hindu, Hip Hop

Everything that I’ve ever done [in music] has been a stru-​g-​gle.
—D’Lo, poet, MC, activist

D’Lo is the only female-​born desi artist in this project who produces
and performs poetry and music for a living.4 A mutual friend told
me about this “female Sri Lankan MC” who had been the opening
act for the political rapper Michael Franti and performed on Russell
Simmons’s Def Poetry Jam in 2003. I first met D’Lo in 2002 dur-
ing a visit to New York City when s/he invited me to a spoken-​word
event organized by the 911 pro-​Mumia anti-​police brutality orga-
nization that s/he worked with (“nine-​one-​one, not nine-​eleven,”
D’Lo clarified).5 The MC’s invitation, a return of an earlier page I
had sent, went as follows: “Hey woman, why dontchu stop by? It’s
real casual and all. Just meet me there and we can kick it. There’ll
be some other desis there, too, so don’t worry.” (D’Lo later confided
his/her relief that I wasn’t what s/he thought I might be: the [main-
stream] type who needed to be around other desis to feel comfort-
able.) I was surprised by his/her voice—s/he sounded “straight up
like a hip hopper dude,” I wrote in my field notes. I went so far as to
rethink what I was wearing, worried that it might be overdressed
and too feminine. But I kept on my dress and Indian wool shawl
and headed on foot toward the Baptist church on 31st Street that
cold October night. Inside, it was a laidback scene of about twenty
people, mostly young and racially heterogeneous, including a few
Blacks, a larger number of Whites and Filipinos, and four desis in-
cluding D’Lo and myself.
Luckily, I had not missed D’Lo’s performance. As s/he limped
(s/he had just been in an accident) to the front of the audience, I
was struck by his/her style: s/he looked like a boy. D’Lo seemed
to be influenced by the geographic and racial context of his/her

146 Flipping the Gender Script

 D’Lo’s multiple ambiguities force audiences to check their assumptions
about race, gender, and sexuality. Photograph courtesy of Bernie DeChant.

youth, borrowing from the styles of Chicano and African American

youths from Southern California. D’Lo wore what I learned was his/
her uniform: super-​baggy jeans, a T-​shirt covered by an oversized
plaid jacket buttoned only at the top (or, alternately, a baggy hooded
sweatshirt) that hid any trace of his/her female body (or brand
names), and black lace-​up boots. Over his/her head, shaved bald as
s/he mentions in the poem that opens this chapter, D’Lo sported
a blue bandana, and s/he also had pierced ears and wore a nose
ring. D’Lo claimed the stage, and our attention, with bold gestures
and bolder statements. Boisterously cracking jokes with hip hop-​
inflected slang in a girlish drawl, s/he used sweeping arm gestures
reminiscent of male MCs to emphasize his/her points. D’Lo crossed
all kinds of boundaries and broke all kinds of expectations—racial,
gender, and sexual. But I came to learn that underlying all of D’Lo’s
identities was his/her commitment to social justice through politi-
cal activism and art, always infused with knowledge and comedy.
With a brilliant smile, D’Lo commenced with an NYPD joke:

Flipping the Gender Script 147

 “Knock knock!”
We all replied, “Who’s th . . . !”
“BAM!!!” s/he yelled before we could finish our response.

D’Lo’s reference to the de facto police policy of “Shoot first, ask

(questions) later” had the audience roaring with laughter. S/he was
just as skilled in bringing his/her tenor of seriousness back to a low
rumble. His/her three poems, told in a funktified L.A. drawl that
seemed more girly than gritty (an issue s/he often joked about),
were about the civil war in Sri Lanka, jazz and the depth of music,
and the corruption within the Rampart Division of the LAPD.
D’Lo has been a student of music (and a jokester) his/her entire
life: “The only thing in life that was constant was music.” Similar to
Bella, s/he took piano lessons, sang bhajans (devotional songs), and
says s/he “loved me some hip hop” before s/he was a teen, in the
1980s. Although s/he lived just seventy-​five miles north of Comp-
ton, California, where Black youths were producing gangsta rap,
his/her access to hip hop in his/her predominantly White neigh-
borhood was limited to watching Yo! MTV Raps. By the time s/he was
a teenager, D’Lo had compiled a list of over two hundred rap art-
ists. S/he began writing poetry, mostly about music, when s/he was
around twelve years old. Modeling Sweet Tee, one of his/her favor-
ite MCs, s/he soon began to write lyrics.
Self-​taught like the other artists, D’Lo formed a female hip hop
dance crew with South Indian, Pakistani, and Latina dancers who
performed at parties and culture shows in high school (at that time,
D’Lo identified as a gay woman). For D’Lo, hip hop was “never
really a Black thing, or a White thing. It was a cultural thing and
it’s youth.”6 Hip hop helped him/her to contend with the racism
that was “hard core” in his/her childhood, and it aided in his/her
developing sexuality and gender identity. D’Lo conducted his/
her own “cultural analysis” of music—and a new set of race rela-
tions—during his/her study abroad at Oxford University where s/he
attended video school. Music again drew him/her into multiracial
social situations: s/he began to take drum lessons and at night s/he
would pop lock and take part in dance battles at hip hop clubs in
London. In these venues s/he stood out, “because back then, in ’95
even, you never used to see Indian people at hip hop clubs. You
never saw Brown faces.”7 There probably were not many female bat-

148 Flipping the Gender Script

tlers, either, let alone Sri Lankan girls who identified as bois. Head-
ing back to the United States to attend University of California, Los
Angeles, for ethnomusicology, D’Lo joined with a White Jewish girl
to become the rapping duo Disturbing Silence that “fuckin’ tore
UCLA apart.” As an androgynous-​looking Brown woman perform-
ing Black popular music with a White woman, D’Lo disarmed audi-
ences with his/her smile. S/he explains that s/he never “played the
gay card”; instead, s/he and his/her partner presented themselves
as “strong” rather than queer women in front of student organiza-
tions such as La Raza and for Black student audiences. Over time,
however, D’Lo has crafted shows that force his/her viewers to con-
tend with all of his/her counternormative crossings.
When I first met D’Lo s/he had graduated and moved to New
York, where s/he was among the minority of women who had
earned a certificate from the School of Audio Engineering. D’Lo
became heavily involved with the Artist’s Network’s Refuse and Re-
sist program against police brutality, as well as with their anti-​war
Not in Our Name protest. D’Lo was also active as an MC, hosting
various South Asian shows such as Artwallah in Los Angeles and
Diasporadics in New York. Performing at these festivals alongside
desi male MCs like Chee Malabar, D’Lo’s non-White queer mascu-
linity diversified the range of desi masculinities performed onstage.
D’Lo’s presence stretches the options that desi audiences deem
imaginable for themselves, as D’Lo claims a “gay, Hindu, [and] hip
hop” space for him/herself (see Fajardo 2008). Prior to his/her cur-
rent success as a solo actor, poet, lyricist, and comic performer,
D’Lo had tried to learn the technical aspects of music production
from male studio producers who were reluctant to show the trade
to a woman. In spite of these difficulties, D’Lo is on the road to
attaining his/her goal of working in a studio and producing tracks
for hip hop artists.

Brown Women in a Black Male Field

The difficulty that desi women face in infiltrating the business is
not solely due to racial dynamics; some of the desi men are able to
make a mark by opening studios, starting record labels, and signing
artists. Women’s knowledge at least equals their male counterparts,
and it is evident that sexism pervades these realms. As a product

Flipping the Gender Script 149

and reflection of the United States, hip hop is a male-​dominated
culture. The MCs in particular are mostly men; women, even Black
women, tend to be rare among rappers, just as they are at freestyle
battles and in the hip hop business at large. Hip hop scholars have
detailed the challenges that women face as they attempt to make a
name for themselves, especially given their relative lack of access
to technology and the greater restrictions on their time (see Rose
1994; Kelley 1997; Pough et al. 2007). Additionally, both Black and
White men in the industry promote women less, and female artists
may lack access to male networks that could advance their careers
while they also face sexual harassment. Brown women in hip hop
face tensions and articulate contradictions that overlap with and di-
verge from those of both desi males and Black females in hip hop.
In response, D’Lo and Bella act by engaging these groups through
dialogue.8
Bella confronts a particular set of gender and sexual dynamics
as a Brown female DJ in the Bay Area. Since our first encounter in
the late 1990s, Bella and I have spent time together hanging out at
our homes, attending social events, and going to numerous clubs
where we partied and I was able to see her work. When I asked her
how people react to her as a female DJ, she stated: “As a DJ period,
they listen, they respect.” She reflects on the positives and negatives
when she remarks, “Nice guys come up to me, surprised, and a lot
of good comments, too. Flirted a lot with on the bad side.” Sexual
politics intersect with gendered dynamics when Bella experiences
the paternalism of male club owners, promoters, and other DJs
who are surprised that she is technically skilled, knowledgeable
about the music, and has such a large selection of records. She feels
like she is “constantly proving” herself, and although she tries not
to “waste that energy and [instead] focus on playing,” it sometimes
feels like having a “stack of cards against you.” As in many aspects
of American business, women in hip hop need not only have the
skills of their male counterparts; Bella and other female DJs like
Spinderella and Kuttin Kandi also need to work especially hard to
gain the respect of and recognition from fellow professionals. Ac-
cording to Rachel Raimist, the creator of a documentary on female
MCs, “As a woman in hip-​hop you have to struggle that much more,
constantly having to prove yourself, fight for respect, and strive to
be taken seriously” (2004: 62). The experiences of Bella and D’Lo

150 Flipping the Gender Script

link them to their predecessors in hip hop herstory, including Rox-
anne Shante, Queen Latifah, and MC Lyte, all of whom had to nego-
tiate similar dynamics.
Misogyny has a concrete and much contested place in hip hop
and takes center stage in academic debates about this culture.
However, desi female fans and producers, like Black women, must
grapple with misogynist lyrics and sexist attitudes in their everyday
work lives and feel silenced and reduced to sexual beings by men in
the industry. Bella interacts with a variety of people across genres
of music. The Bay Area reggae and dancehall scene, for example, is
led by DJs and promoters whose families came from South Africa,
Nigeria, the Republic of Congo, and Jamaica, as well as by local
White American DJs. In contrast, the hip hop scene is made up of
a different set of people, mainly African Americans, but still incor-
porates a range of styles. The sonicscapes that Deejay Bella occu-
pies exemplify the multidimensionality of Black musical worlds,
especially in the multiracial mecca of northern California, yet men
still predominate. Many accept Bella, but she still faces solitude.
Both in her science and her music work, men sometimes attempt
to usurp her authority by reducing her to her sexuality. Men have
often portrayed women in hip hop in one of two ways: the sexually
available vixen/ho (e.g., Lil’ Kim) or the potentially gay artist/dyke
(e.g., Da Brat) (Raimist 2004: 62). As Bella says in frustration, “I’m
a little person and everyone looks at me and says, ‘You’re my boss?’
. . . People can just think I’m gay, if that’s how they rationalize
it.”9 The politics of being non-Black and female intersect with the
generally progressive sexual politics of the Bay Area and its large
presence of gays and lesbians. This nexus places alternative sexuali-
ties at the front and center of numerous interpersonal exchanges. I
asked D’Lo, who at the time placed his/her identity as a gay woman
who identified as a boi front and center of his/her performances,
how s/he felt about misogynist elements. D’Lo responded, “Yeah,
but that’s just one part. I love this shit . . . There has to be changes
somewhere, but meanwhile, let’s make something new so that
there’s that alternative.”
As Tricia Rose argues: “Rap music and video have been wrong-
fully characterized as thoroughly sexist but rightfully lambasted
for their sexism” (1994: 15). Mark Anthony Neal further notes that
“despite popular belief, hip-​hip is not the most prominent site of

Flipping the Gender Script 151

sexism and misogyny” (2005: 146) and, Neal includes, homopho-
bia, given that its producers live in a society that engenders these
same “values.” Bella’s engagement in the worlds of science, music,
and local desi circles frames her interpretation of sexism, pater-
nalism, and gender dynamics as systemic and societal rather than
defining them as “hip hop” or “Indian” cultural phenomena. After
all, so much of the criticism directed at Black urban youths and
their cultural expressions scapegoat hip hop for societal products
such as sexism, for instance, in place of a sustained and structural
analysis of heterosexual male privilege in a racialized nation (Mor-
gan 2000; Collins 2004; Pough 2004; Chatterjee 2006; Sharpley-​
Whiting 2007). This diversion is propped up by media depictions
that reduce “hip hop” to its most commercialized, basest repre-
sentations, including stereotypical and repeated images of Black
men and women. Mainstream conglomerates profit from pimping
stereotypes and seducing Americans to partake in mindless con-
sumption. This is done partially for sales and to distract Americans
from urgent matters including wars at home (on the poor, for ex-
ample) and abroad. This is not to say that rappers, from the super-
star to the everyday variety, should advocate sexism and homopho-
bia, or excuse them when they do. But it provides a broader context
within which to read the gender and sexual dynamics in hip hop.
Extending an analysis of sexism beyond the actions of men in hip
hop to hear the voices of women, including desis, whose lives are
shaped through hip hop illustrates the complexities of gender re-
lations (see Pough 2004; Neal 2005). As Neal, a proponent of Black
feminist manhood, remarks, “Rarely do we discuss how women use
hip-​hop to articulate their view of the world, a view that may or may
not be predicated on what the men in hip-​hop (or their lives) might
be doing” (2005: 158). Beyond this, imagine what we discover when
we listen to non-Black and gay women who use hip hop to form and
express alternative and sampled identities.
Black popular culture imprints upon the emerging consciousness
of Bella and D’Lo, along with the Bay Area radio producer Asma,
who apply the insights they gain from hip hop to their analyses
of American society. Just as they and their desi male counterparts
locate racism as a structural and historical process, these women
understand sexism and patriarchy to be phenomena that are both in
and beyond hip hop culture because of their encounters with these

152 Flipping the Gender Script

practices in multiple circles. Radhika is a hip hop fan and organic
farmer who has worked on community garden projects with people
coming out of jail in the predominantly Black Bayview area of San
Francisco. As a woman who is Bengali and White, Radhika indicts
the racist scapegoating of hip hop when she states that heavy metal
bands “have all the same misogyny and nobody wants to talk about
that.” These women take hip hop to task for perpetuating negativity
while contextualizing antiwomanist sentiments within a societal
framework.
Desi women in hip hop come to question its male and mascu-
line norms not only through their relations with Black men but
with Black women as well. Black female MCs from the 1980s were
formative to the self-​conceptions of young desi girls in love with
music and learning to love themselves. D’Lo loved “all the female
MCs,” and his/her favorites include the hip hop pioneers Sweet Tee,
Cookie Crew, and MC Trouble. Hip hop fans and foes alike debate
in too simplified a manner the role that women play in their own
oppression. Desi girls, who often had access to only one generation
of female elders, drew from the range of sexpressions among Black
female rappers, including the pro-​woman, proud Afro-​centric
Queen Latifah; the hard-​core MC Lyte who could lyrically smash
any dude; TLC, the safe-​sex rhyming trio; and Lil’ Kim and Foxy
Brown, who proclaim as much right to their sexual liberty as the
men who diss or desire them. Those hip hop heads who grew up
in multiracial communities were drawn to nondesi and non-White
expressions of sexuality virtually absent in the literature on Asian
American youth. Just as their ethnic alienation turns them toward
race-​central worldviews, the gender restrictions within South
Asian diasporic communities direct them toward alternative modes
of expression. The particular intersectionality of the racial and gen-
der identities of desi women in hip hop marks their experiences
as unique from and overlapping with hip hop’s other participants
(Collins 2000).
Sexism encourages desi women to find allies with Black women
and their shared experiences in hip hop. This includes the issue of
how to be true to one’s minority and female status simultaneously,
which leads to the development of female cooperatives or networks
that help protect them in the business. Bella, who finds it difficult
to meet other women involved in hip hop, creates women-​centered

Flipping the Gender Script 153

networks by hosting events and spinning at parties hosted by
female DJs. D’Lo’s position, on the other hand, disrupts an under-
standing of his/her position strictly in terms of being a woman be-
cause as a boi s/he sometimes employs a “male” perspective in ex-
plaining why s/he enjoys surrounding him/herself with women. “I
was a boi. I loved women anyway, you know what I’m sayin? I’m gay.
I like to have women around me.” D’Lo’s public presence as a boi-​
identified gay Sri Lankan pries open hip hop as a male-​dominated
site of hegemonic Black masculinity, particularly in his/her role as
an MC—a role generally occupied by men (Fajardo 2008: 419). At
times, D’Lo takes the stage next to male MCs as an embodiment of
alternative masculinity, but at other times s/he faces men who treat
him/her unlike “one of the boys.” Thus, the unconventional gender,
sexual, and racial identities of desi female artists also bring them
into conflict with other groups.
Some Brown female hip hoppers feel marginalized and treated
unfairly by both Black women and men in the industry: some do not
get paid for their gigs, are dropped from the lineup of performers,
or feel that promoters do not communicate fairly with them. Al-
though they usually celebrate other women’s achievements and
build community with them, at times desi women are frustrated
when they compare themselves with their peers whose careers
seem to advance. One artist feels that Black women are not inclu-
sive in music, which heightens her sense of invisibility. Some also
face harassment—even physical intimidation as other women in
the business also face—and in club spaces alcohol can lead to tense
encounters. A desi woman was hired by a promoter to spin records
at a “party for lesbians” in the Bay Area. Upon her arrival, however,
the DJ realized that the crowd was in fact not a gay one (for which
her record selection for the night was geared) but rather the regu-
lar heterosexual weekend audience. During the course of the event,
a young Black patron, frustrated with the music, threw her drink
over the DJ’s equipment. The desi artist, who said she “dealt with
this shit before,” felt set up by the promoter and analyzed the alter-
cation as an unfolding drama of the intersection of race, gender,
and sexual politics. She pointed to a number of her identities that,
within the context of a heterosexual Black nightclub, was reread as
nonnormative: “I’m sure part of it is that I’m Indian, I looked gay,
I wasn’t playing enough rap.” The DJ held a relatively “powerful”

154 Flipping the Gender Script

status as music selector within a setting in which Blacks often set
the terms. The DJ interpreted the patron’s dissatisfaction with the
music choices as a signal of the patron’s dissatisfaction, too, with
the DJ’s “deviant” identities, combining to make desi female artists
sometimes uncomfortable in their roles in the hip hop business.
These conflicts are the exception, yet it is nonetheless virtually
impossible to be a woman in hip hop and remain unaware of the
gender and sexual politics at play. For desi female performers,
sometimes the odds seem to be stacked against them. As one art-
ist said in frustration, “I should go for a woman’s field. What’s a
woman’s field? Rape counseling, I should work with abused girls.”
And although the artists do give their time to progressive causes,
none can leave music; indeed, above all other identities it is music
that defines them. Music moves each artist in ways that cannot be
described through words and intellectual analyses. In turn, they
each wish to move their audiences.
When young desi women enter the hip hop scene as participants,
they enter a predominantly Black social field with few models for
understanding their position as non-White, non-Black artists. Over
time, DJs and MCs like Bella and D’Lo see that their experiences
merge with those of other females attempting to gain distribution
and attract wider audiences while contending with sexism, sexual
advances, and homophobia. At other points where the racial out-
sider status of desis subsumes their gender status, Black and Brown
women are at odds. Desi artists and the tricky orchestrations that
they describe contribute to the conversations in hip hop studies
scholarship that thus far largely implies a Black audience and fo-
cuses on the relationships between young Black men and women of
the hip hop generation. Some scholars and journalists have become
attuned to the silencing and mistreatment of women in hip hop. We
can reflect even more on the problems and promises of hip hop cul-
ture when we understand how non-Black, female, and non-straight
participants contend with potent exchanges that play out in clubs
and within the hip hop business at large.
These dynamics are part of the game, however, and the artists,
having spent a good portion of their lives in these spaces, learn to
negotiate them and even carve out spaces in which to voice their
own identities alongside the range of their Black peers who cohabit
hip hop’s social landscapes. In fact, the lessons learned by desis

Flipping the Gender Script 155

about the implications of gender and sexuality impact their music
and their relationships with Blacks, as does their racial and ethnic
difference. Tense and productive exchanges emphasize to desis the
meaningfulness of differences, and they infuse their music with
this sense of commonality and distinction. Artists like D’Lo and
Bella, despite their double marginalization as non-Black women,
continue to manage their frustrations and work independently and
consistently. Because they live for music, they contend with these
complexities and occupy spaces “in the middle”—between and
across communities, identities, and expectations. However, their
membership in ethnic communities often operates under a differ-
ent set of gender expectations than those in hip hop, thus requiring
the artists to expend equal amounts of emotional effort. Hip hop’s
desis once again check our assumptions of sameness and difference
with regard to gender and sexual mores across communities.

Negotiating Gender Roles in Desi America,

Expressing Sexuality through Hip Hop
Oh, I know that when Neil will grow older, he will appreciate and he
will realize how beautiful our culture is.—Indian mother’s voiceover on
“Neil,” Karmacy Track
But she knew enough not to go . . .
Knew that, over there, bald heads were for
bad people turned pious   or just bad people
and bad people are ugly
coz hair always matters.
And these bald women had to wait    as punishment   to
slowly become beautiful.
And she? She re-​shaved her head once every week   And waiting to
do it   Was punishment.
—D’Lo, “From Silent Confusion to Blaring Healing”

In his/her performance of the poem “From Silent Confusion to

Blaring Healing,” a Brown, bald, boyish D’Lo flips the gender script
by calling attention to the differential (de)valuation of the bald head
in transnational perspective. In Sri Lanka a shaved head is imposed
upon outcastes, such as widows, to mark their pariah status; in

156 Flipping the Gender Script

 Ramble-​Ations, a “one D’Lo show,” features skits in which D’Lo embod-
ies a number of roles including Gandhi and his/her Amma (mother). Flier
courtesy of Pilar Castillo.

the United States, D’Lo willingly shaves his/her head to represent

his/her inner self. Instead of sidestepping the factors that mark
him/her as different, D’Lo engages with these dynamics up front
through comic and political self-​expression. D’Lo has been touring
the nation with his/her show “Ramble-​Ations: A One D’Lo Show.”10
The subhead on the promotional material for the show reads, “Born
gay into a Hindu family and raised by Hip Hop.” And the text fur-
ther proclaims, “Gay Hindu Hip Hop—These 3 things make me but
don’t allow for one another. This is my attempt at fusing these ele-
ments of my being, and others, onto the stage.” As a boi born in a
woman’s body, D’Lo performs complex gender and sexual identi-
fications onstage in what seems to be a direct affront to the norms
valued within South Asian communities.
D’Lo, however, wishes no disrespect. Rather, through lyrics and
onstage performances the artist encourages audiences to rethink
ethnic, racial, gender, and sexual authenticity by enacting alterna-

Flipping the Gender Script 157

tive desiness as s/he lovingly—even humorously—refutes desi re-
spectability. D’Lo employs call and response—a foundational prin-
ciple of hip hop—to engage the audience members, who may even
perhaps identify with some of the performer’s multiple transgres-
sions. This use of hip hop to alter the terms of South Asian Ameri-
canness is just one example of the artists’ engendering of political
participation. D’Lo’s visual presence and artistic material expand
the range of South Asian sexualities in the diaspora as s/he illus-
trates to Brown audiences identities, including queer female mas-
culinities, previously believed impossible and certainly deemed eth-
nically diluted (Halberstam 2000; Chatterjee 2006).
The presumed “invisibility” of South Asians in commercial hip
hop underestimates the impact of Black popular culture. Further,
desi artists correct the misconception that the “values” of hip hop
and South Asian ethnic communities are at odds, like Black and
Asian “cultures.” But how can a gay Brown male-​identified woman
find solace in the misogyny and homophobia of hip hop? Black
female artists and queer producers of hip hop, some of whom cre-
ate a genre called “homohop” that is present in the Bay Area, show
why those seemingly ignored or even oppressed by hip hop remain
committed to the culture.11 Additionally, some scholars and “hip
hop feminists” (Morgan 2000) have also found agentive ways to
employ Black culture as a tool for dialogue and self-​expression. So,
too, have some desis. The explicit sexuality of some aspects of hip
hop does not always devalue Black women; instead, it is often a
celebration of expressive embodiments of Black women and their
bodies (Neal 2005: 130), particularly in a context in which men
have undervalued Black womanhood (hooks 1981). The content of
hip hop and its characters spark the conversations of desi female
artists on relationships, sex, and sexuality. It provides some desis
with models of sexuality that they could choose to emulate or chal-
lenge, sample or reject. D’Lo’s queering of the diaspora may be in-
terpreted as exceptional or as inauthentically desi (how can one be
desi and queer?) (see also Takagi 2000; Eng 1997, 2001). Yet D’Lo
illustrates what Black sexualities offer American desis in their pro-
cess of providing (queer) alternatives to hegemonic conceptions of
desi gender and sexuality (Gopinath 2005).
Like other immigrant parents, South Asian elders feel it their
duty to indoctrinate children with culturally appropriate gender

158 Flipping the Gender Script

roles and sexualities, an especially urgent task within the context
of displacement from their home countries. Thus, not only are “the
daughters of their community disproportionately burdened with
the preservation of culture in the form of religion, language, dress,
food, and child-​rearing” but also female chastity and regulations
against exogamous relations are of ultimate importance (Dasgupta
and Das Dasgupta 2000: 327). American-​born children, conscious
of filial responsibility to re-​create culture through economically
stable and reputable careers along with heterosexual, endogamous,
and timely marriages, struggle when they see that they might fail to
realize their parents’ dreams. Intergenerational rifts open because
American social norms expose desi youths to new possibilities.
These become potential samples for American desi life. Parents at-
tempt to restrain crossovers, however, when they observe their chil-
dren interacting with Blacks and, worse, see them taking active part
in a despised culture. This is not what “coming to America” means.
But, parents reason, this is just a phase of youthful rebellion, and it
will end with future stability.
Along with the nearly universal assumption that their children
are heterosexual, parents from the subcontinent generally hold
their sons and daughters to different sets of expectations. To be
marriageable, girls should be chaste and not date. In marriage, they
should emulate their mother’s role as “keepers of culture” respon-
sible for enculturating their children with religious, linguistic, and
culinary practices (Gupta 1999; Espiritu 2001; Maira 2002). Parents
grant boys, on the other hand, more freedom and less account-
ability.12 However, brothers and male cousins are expected to marry
appropriately—before which they must attend good schools, major
in something useful, and secure a solid and respectable job. When
the girl’s family looks for a boy in marriage, parents often evaluate
all of these factors.13 “Almost abusive in its consistency,” writes a
hip hop desi to me about his parents, “is their asking when I’m get-
ting married, usually coupled with the suggestion [that] I should go
to India and find a wife.”14
Second-​generation desi youths do not simply mimic their par-
ents’ values and perspectives as automatons. Rather, they sort
through them and try to balance competing dreams. Desi youths
often make the kinds of marriage and career choices that gel with
their parents’ hopes, partially to fulfill their duties and because it

Flipping the Gender Script 159

fits well with their own visions of a future. Others dissent, however.
In particular, although desi artists want to please their parents, this
desire often clashes with their love of Black popular music, a dis-
tinctly nontraditional practice. Interestingly, their choices are as
gendered as their parents’ expectations. Male MCs feel it important
as sons to care for their parents, marry South Asian women, and
raise desi children to continue the family line. But they understand
that their eccentric career paths limit marital choices among desi
women who might prefer men in more stable fields. Desi women in
hip hop, however, often form relationships with men in the music
business, meaning they flout family expectations in career and mar-
riage. That is, some of the men feel a tug to choose between love or
art, but the women’s romantic love and their passion for music coa-
lesce.
Before attending to the sexual politics of desire I want to clar-
ify the way that desi MCs approach hip hop as a masculine field.
Too many times their motivations have been dismissed as simply an
eroticized desire and fear of racialized Blackness, though this may
be true in the case of many—but not all—non-Blacks (Lott 1993b;
Roediger 1998; Maira 2002). To rephrase Bakari Kitwana’s observa-
tion on Whites and hip hop: “[desi] boys don’t necessarily want to
be Black. This conclusion is an oversimplification” (2005: 14). Some
mainstream desi youths are attracted to hip hop for its racialized
masculinity, but the artists have other motivations.

“Indian Negroes?” The Racialized Sexuality of Desi Men

We call [Blacks] kalus. We kind of have this affection for them, it’s kind
of funny. We’re kind of afrai . . . not afraid of them, but we have so much
respect for them. Also ’cause Indians love basketball, right? So we totally
have respect for, like, kalus that can dunk. And the general muscular
body that they have, we want . . . A lot of Indians are thin . . . So, we all
want to be like that: the thick calves and being able to dunk . . . So for
the male point of view, the kalu is what we find, like, not the ideal, but
. . . first because you know in terms of their mental, or whatever, in terms
of how they study, we don’t have respect for that in general. It’s kind of
racist, but, you know. But we want the physical typing. We want to main-
tain like the Indian goodie-​goodie, academics, but we want to have that
too. The view is to have the best of both worlds. But in terms of kalu

160 Flipping the Gender Script

 women, the majority of us don’t find them too much attractive . . . I actu-
ally find White women more attractive than kalu women . . . Our whole
connection to the kalu culture is through the men, you know?
—Rajiv, mainstream Indian University of California, Berkeley student

The idea of a young desi man like Rajiv, in the above quote, attracted
to hip hop often conjures images of a model minority who, in the
words of Thien-​bao Thuc Phi, “take[s] on a racist exaggeration of
black manhood to replace the demasculinization placed on [him]
by white supremacy” (2008: 303). After all, states Judith Halber-
stam, “arguments about excessive masculinity tend to focus on
black bodies . . . and insufficient masculinity is all too often fig-
ured by Asian bodies” (2000: 2). A second interpretation reads the
attraction of Asian Americans to Blackness, including the adoption
of hip hop aesthetics and slang, to be a response to their devalued
immigrant ethnicity. Indeed, the racialized hypersexual masculinity
of Black men depicted in some hip hop is a draw for men of all back-
grounds. Sunaina Maira explains the sexualized draw of “a particu-
lar machismo” signified in hip hop for mainstream desi males who
contend with the contradictions of class and race by negotiating
“coolness” and “nostalgia”: “It may . . . connote a certain image of
racialized hypermasculinity that is the ultimate definition of ‘cool’”
(2002: 336). As such, for Whites Blackness becomes, according to
David Roediger, “the object of racialized desire, and simultaneously
racialized fear” (quoted in Maira 2002: 336; see also Cornyetz 1994).
This is not, however, what motivates desis in this project to produce
Black popular culture and live in Black urban communities in New
York and California. Desis who become MCs do not learn who Black
people “are” through decontextualized media images. Daily, they
engage with Black men and women as romantic and business part-
ners alongside their interactions with South Asians in love and art.
In this section I examine how the consumption and production of
Black popular culture by desi MCs intersects with heterosexual ro-
mance to accurately explain how hip hop and ethnic commitments
shape their gender identities and sexual choices.
Mainstream desi youths often display a paradoxical relationship
to Black men, specifically through their desire for Black masculinity
yet distaste for interracial relations. This is partially related to the
American sexualization of desi men, who confront depictions of

Flipping the Gender Script 161

themselves as “lacking” masculinity, particularly in their encoun-
ters with other men. An Indo-​Fijian I spoke with felt his manhood
challenged by a pair of racist White men; he also felt disrespected
when the leaders of a basketball pickup game routinely passed him
over in favor of a Black man who had less basketball skill. Dru, a
young Black student attending a San Jose, California, community
college who dated desi girls, describes his male friend as “surpris-
ingly muscular for an Indian,” thereby reinforcing Rajiv’s concep-
tions about desi men’s fitness. Some desi girls’ preferences for
“big,” “muscular,” and “dark” Black men also imply that desi men
lack these features.
Most of the analyses of South Asian masculinity, few that there
are, draw from theories about Asian Americans despite their dif-
ferential racialization. Many desis disidentify with the category
Asian American because of cultural and phenotypic distinctions.
But there are overlaps, such as in media depictions of emasculated
Asian men as caricatures, cab drivers, and as nerds and geeks who
rarely get the girl. And particularly in relation to Black masculini-
ties, South and East Asian men become lumped in the constructed
dualism of Asian/Black. While there is little information on South
Asian and Black male relations in the United States, desi men
may feel and may be viewed by others as relatively less masculine,
thereby accounting for the desirability of Black masculinity (but not
mentality) recounted by Rajiv.
While avoiding Blacks, mainstream desi men attire themselves
with racial and gendered cues (or samples) of young Black men,
thereby turning racialized aesthetics (low-​slung jeans, particular
brand names, slang, and posture) into ethnic and gendered per-
formances (Maira 2002). They ethnicize or remix these by, for ex-
ample, incorporating Hindi or Punjabi slang in their speech, calling
themselves “coolies,” and wearing gold chains with khalsa medal-
lions, the symbol that represents the Indian religion of Sikhism.
One desi woman I spoke to, Meena, prefers it when Black men talk
to her because the style of South Asian men, who try to “talk like
they’re Black,” seems “forced.” “They don’t want to mix into that
[Black] community,” the Berkeley student says, “but they want to
take their dialect and music and stuff like that and try to put an
Indian face on it.” “Indian face” immediately conjures images of
“blackface,” but does it imply something different than “rotten

162 Flipping the Gender Script

coconut”? In either case, such interpretations of “doing race” are
contradictory because they suggest that individuals construct racial
identities, which contests the essentialist assumptions of Black-
ness and Indianness that underlie such comments, including the
idea that certain groups “own” certain authentic gendered perfor-
mances. These reified conceptions bear the imprint of centuries-​
long discourses that have racialized the sexuality of various groups
in the United States in order to “naturalize”—and therefore differ-
entially value and exploit—group distinctions. But perhaps we can
also interpret the sampling of urban styles by Brown youths as the
expression—possibly troubling, possibly innovative—of a process
of cross-​racial fertilization symbolizing connectivity.
Urban desi MCs mark their familiarity with Black culture in the
way that they carry themselves: the kinds of clothes they wear, the
way they don them, and the way they walk and talk. For others,
the way the artists inhabit their bodies and their displays of cultural
capital, particularly their knowledge of hip hop, can imply that they
grew up within this culture. These men do not usually feel com-
pelled to challenge stereotypes of Asian masculinity. However, they
are not indifferent to the forms of masculinity expressed through
hip hop. Hip hop settings often require performances of norma-
tive masculinity and aggressiveness that initially attracted these
rappers. “There was a masculinity to it,” acknowledges the Rukus
Avenue cofounder Sammy, “and there’s certainly [an] appeal to it
in that sense and that’s where I fell in love with hip hop after that
point.” Chee enacts his masculinity as often as he performs race
when he battles other MCs in order to help onlookers interpret him.
In these ciphers of evaluation, he feels, one needs to represent or
else be embarrassed: “If I don’t come off here, I’m gonna look like
a sucker.” But if the consciously cultivated stage personas of desi
male MCs are obviously masculine, they are not overstated in the
ways that others, upon hearing of “desis in hip hop,” often assume.
Contrary to some analyses of the adoption of hip hop by non-Black
men, these artists do not embody stereotypical conceptions of
Black masculinity, and neither does this fully, or even mostly, ex-
plain their participation. This is partially because they represent the
genre of conscious rather than gangsta or bling rap that earns air-
play. Intergroup contact does not always erase conflict, but it often
can do so. Because of their close ties to Black friends, girlfriends,

Flipping the Gender Script 163

 and their extended families, desi rappers are conscious of a range
of Black masculinities (as there are among South Asians) not cap-
tured in stereotypes promoted by the mainstream media. Blacks,
too, reflect “heterogeneity, hybridity, multiplicity” (Lowe 1996).
Thus, desi men realize that they have options in thinking about how
to be a man.
Though there are exceptions, non-Black males who love hip hop
are not unequivocally “thugs” who desire Black masculinity to com-
pensate for their emasculation. “That’s a stereotype,” Rawj said
when we were talking in a coffee shop in Berkeley about the appeal
of Black masculinity for Asian rappers. He reminded me that when
he was growing up in the 1980s, sex did not pervade the image of
hip hop and videos (in which “every rapper is hella hard or trying
to look sexy,” Rawj describes) were not yet widespread. Looking
over the press photos for Feenom Circle’s latest project, we joked
about potential booty pictures and jewelry, highly unlikely given

MC Chee Malabar. Photograph courtesy of Preston Merchant.

164 Flipping the Gender Script

their perspective (in the photos the closest thing to bling was a
kukui nut necklace). Another Indian MC, Vivek, told me of the time,
after rapping at a post-​9/11 desi gathering in Oakland for which
he was wearing a kurta with the skull cap often worn by Muslim
men, he stepped outside for a breather. He was accosted by a first-​
generation desi man in his thirties who, with cigarette in one hand
and beer in the other, exclaimed “Man, I’m glad you’re not what I
expected, to be all thuggish!” Speaking about this exchange later,
Vivek emphasized to me that Indians in hip hop were trying to do
something “positive,” something “conscious,” and that this is neither
about drinking and smoking (which he does not do) nor about ful-
filling stereotypes.
Desi men, despite the recent arrival of their families to the United
States, find a range of masculinities available to them. More con-
cerned with art than image, their engagements with Black people
and hip hop culture differ from desi males who desire and despise
Blacks from a distance. Drawing especially from local ethnic, racial,
and musical collectives, they sew together various stylistic and ex-
pressive cues to perform their masculinity. These MCs enact Brown
masculinities onstage that reject problematic images of Black men
promoted in commercial hip hop and expand the range of available
gender roles for desi men.

Love or Art?
I feel that there’s a responsibility attached to making that commitment to
somebody in terms of being able to provide, or help provide. And I want
to have a family. That’s, beyond anything, my biggest goal in life. I would
give up everything else for that in a heartbeat. That’s not even a question
to me.—KB, Indian American MC

Why do some—though not all—desi men dedicate their profes-

sional and artistic lives to Black culture and yet marry desi women?
Is it the “raja syndrome” that privileges boys (DasGupta and Das
Dasgupta 2000: 333), drawing them to their female counterparts?
“Indian guys are probably more into the obligation [to family] than
the girls. I’ve heard so many stories where guys just leave their girl-
friends because their parents found a wife for them,” says Meena.
Calling them “mama’s boys,” Meena says that while desi men will

Flipping the Gender Script 165

do things in college that their parents are not aware of (dating, for
example), they ultimately follow parental advice about majors, and
“they’ll get a good job and they’ll marry who their parents want
them to marry, so they usually keep the traditions going.” Discus-
sions about South Asian parental constraints often focus on daugh-
ters; males are thought to have relative freedom. Radhika, who is
Bangladeshi and White and dates a Black male rapper, says: “In
general for any culture the men have a lot of freedom to go explore
other cultures and the women are the keepers of culture.” If this is
the case, why don’t we see more interracial marriages among desi
men in hip hop?
Missing in descriptions of the gender double standard is the filial
duty and economic pressures that South Asian parents place on
sons. “Men are supposed to carry the family,” Deejay Bella says.
“They have to take care of their parents” as sons do on the sub-
continent. The economic achievements of Asian male professionals
in America link their masculinity to upward mobility and wealth.
“Controlling images” of Asian American doctors, engineers, and
professors that abound in television shows and in Hollywood films
affirm their association with the mind rather than the body, which
tends to be the focus of stereotypes about Black men and women
(Espiritu 1997; Collins 2000).15 South Asians usually expect men
to support their families, and as a result desi men “have to make
money,” Bella emphasizes.
Such expectations set up a tension between ethnic obligations
and musical passions in the lives of some desi men. “It was more
like love or art,” says Rawj, and this “actually caused me a lot of
inner distress.” “It’s a tough choice,” Karmacy’s Sammy concurs.
Finding love and art to be oppositional, Rawj decided in his twen-
ties to pursue music with his hip hop group Feenom Circle instead
of finding a wife, despite his sense of sacrifice. For him, music was
his “dream, but at the same time this is the importance of your cul-
ture.” Moreover, money is important in finding a wife and support-
ing a family. As Rawj explains, “I really felt like a Punjabi father
wouldn’t be really hip to giving his daughter away to a guy who, on
the side, does this. You know what I mean? Unless I was successful
at it. Successful in monetary terms.” As these rappers attempt to
fulfill obligations, they contend with people’s misunderstandings
of their musical choices as a desire for (Black) hypersexuality, which

166 Flipping the Gender Script

contrasts with the respectable white-​collar masculinity praised as
an ethnic ideal among desis (Maira 2002: 49). Social status and
their elders’ views of music as a fanciful vocation is just as impor-
tant as financial security: “I feel like there’s a certain stigma against
musicians in general in Punjabi culture. That it’s like, of a lower
breed,” says Rawj. Thus, hip hop may represent a barrier to poten-
tial desi spouses who search for more familiar lifestyles. Material
realities and their individual passions and obligations cause some
rappers to keep daytime careers in computers and law, for example,
even if these jobs “drain” them of creativity. Despite such conflicts,
a number of performers wed desi women and made albums; they
succeeded in both love and art by wedding their ethnic and hip hop
communities.
Marrying a co-​ethnic, the norm among South Asians in the
United States, is important, and not only to please one’s parents. “I
did want to marry a Punjabi girl . . . because I thought it was impor-
tant and it wasn’t because somebody put it into my head, either,”
Rawj asserts. Like Rawj, KB married an Indian American woman
and felt that this was not predetermined. Desi women are familiar
with the filial expectations that their partners faced; perhaps, too,
they may be counted upon to continue ethnic traditions. But the
desis whom the artists feel comfortable around are, themselves,
not mainstream. As Rawj explains, it would “take a certain kind of
woman” in order to “meet [him] at the same point” where he found
himself to be. These rappers were looking for “an equal,” someone
“real deep,” “sympathetic” to their music, “someone with culture,”
and an educated woman who did not expect her husband to be the
sole breadwinner. As it happened, Rawj ended up marrying his rap
group’s Web designer, a desi woman who looked at his career “as
a plus as opposed to a minus.” Rappers like Rawj, KB, and Sammy
are able to bridge divisions between the pulls of art and love be-
cause they found supportive women—women who are “completely
down” and who understand their choices. These unions discount
the “raja syndrome” as the only explanation for desi endogamous
marriage and instead point to a less-​stereotypical view of American
desi women and men who are concerned with more than economic
incorporation and cultural preservation.
Hip hop culture impresses upon desi rappers ideas about gender;
it is also the mode through which they express their own perspec-

Flipping the Gender Script 167

tives on gender relations. Their rhymes on this topic are hetero-
normative as they discuss marriage, love, and loss. Sometimes
rappers praise South Asian women. Karmacy’s four-​man Indian
crew in their song “Neil,” for example, rap about an Indian girl
that Neil’s mother had been trying to set him up with since grade
school, and whom he consciously avoided because he was too busy
being an American boy. In college, however, he sees this woman
in a new light and ends up with her, praising her as a repository of
Indian culture and thereby fulfilling his mother’s hopeful predic-
tion quoted in the epigraph. That Karmacy’s MCs found and mar-
ried desi women who respect and support their engagement in the
arts may be the ultimate expression of this mother’s hopes and the
artists’ own dreams, articulated through hip hop music. This is
a prime example of sampling—the artists neither reject fully nor
adopt wholly hegemonic desi gender norms.
Desi men who are not married tell a slightly different story.
The majority of male artists have dated both desis and nondesis,
thereby avoiding their parents’ ethnic insularity. “I think [my par-
ents] know I don’t play by those rules,” said a desi man who prefers
“light-​skinned bohemian” women of color. It is probably the case
that the artists’ involvement with a Black subculture with alterna-
tive notions of beauty has shaped their preferences. Lara, a Black
woman in her early thirties who works in the music business in
Oakland, is surprised to hear about South Asian anti-​Black sen-
timent, countering, “But boy, do those Indian men love on Black
women!” Yet desi and Black relationships raise the scorn, disap-
pointment, and grief of South Asian parents who are “scandalized”
and “cried.” In the case of one Indian American man who had mar-
ried a Black woman, his parents were disturbingly “happy” the
marriage ended in divorce. In rare cases parents come around once
grandchildren are born, although these elders tend to be triple mi-
grants—Indians from Africa or the West Indies where contact with
Blacks is greater.
To some extent, interracial—even interreligious or inter-
regional—marriage is an increasing possibility for diasporic youth.
Yet while many South Asians have mixed marriages in their ex-
tended families, they still remain the topic of gossip and derision.
Desi youths have aunties and uncles who subscribe to “BMW,” a
witty acronym used by the novelist Gautam Malkani (2006) to stand

168 Flipping the Gender Script

for “Blacks, Muslims, and Whites,” the hierarchy of preferences,
from “least” to “most” desired, if one makes the mistake of marry-
ing “outside.” Such condemnations have been “extremely trau-
matic” to some desis in relationships with Blacks.
Almost as a rule, however, desi artists do not date White women,
in contrast to most scholarly depictions of Asian American sexu-
ality (Marchetti 1994; Fong and Yung 1995; Shinagawa and Pang
1996). They cite attraction, politics, and compatibility as their rea-
sons. Early experiences with racism may still impact these adults.
The politics of attraction during high school made these artists all
too aware of their racial difference from White beauty ideals, espe-
cially for those who went to White schools and who felt unattrac-
tive to White girls. For example, White women were not attracted
to one desi rapper until, he says, “jungle fever”—“the movie and
the phenomenon” of interracial attraction—came on the scene in
his senior year.16 He reacted to this and, like D’Lo, “wasn’t really
trying to have too much time for White women or White people
in general, you know?” Reflecting back, he reasons that he might

MC Chee Malabar. Photograph courtesy of Richard Louissaint.

Flipping the Gender Script 169

have had “too strong of a racial politics” at that point, now that he
agrees with Gandhian principles of tolerance. Chee Malabar, who
prefers the “Black and Spanish women” who approach him in New
York, is not attracted to White women because he feels they would
not be able to understand his perspective and experience in life. “I
have more on my mind than they can imagine,” Chee said soberly.
That minority women “understand where I’m coming from and . . .
I can be honest with them,” is critical to this MC, which reflects the
importance of a shared worldview that crosses some color lines but
not others. These MCs view Whiteness as a divide that they cannot
or will not overcome.
Romantic choices relay something about the racial identities of
MCs: “Tell me whom you love, and I’ll tell you who you are,” notes
the epigraph that frames Frances Twine’s essay on the “romantic
management of racial identity” (1996: 292). In her study of the
dating patterns of biracial Black and White youth, Twine argues
that the “shifts in racial self-​identification were often partially ex-
pressed and grounded in romantic choices” (295). The racial iden-
tities of South Asians in America are ambiguous and shifting, too,
and their decision to date minority women and not White women is
an explicit identification as being non-White. The commonality of
being a minority—including Whites’ deviant sexualization of mi-
norities, which affects conceptions of desirability—is an important
component of what they find attractive in non-White women. Hip
hop offers South Asians access to an explicitly racialized identity;
dating Blacks may similarly offer, as Twine notes, “romantic access
to a racialized cultural identity” (301). If, as Milton Gordon (1964)
claims, intermarriage (to Whites) is seen as the final stage to as-
similation, then what does it mean when one chooses a non-White
partner? The artists’ views on Whiteness and their tendency to date
minorities suggest a relation between their racial politics and the
way they conceive of themselves as racial and sexual subjects, thus
discrediting the notion of a colorblind or postracial America (Hol-
linger 1995; see also Moran 2003). That these South Asians in re-
lationships with Black women identify as desis and maintain their
connection to other South Asians and certain ethnic practices also
means that they are not “becoming Black.”
The rappers also date desi women (it would be “strange” not to
love Indian women, one commented) who tend to be “like them”:

170 Flipping the Gender Script

some of these women have also dated interracially, understand the
artists’ choices, and are willing to go against the desi grain. An-
other MC’s interactions with South Asian women have increased
alongside his involvement in the desi music scene. Pointing to cul-
tural and environmental reasons as opposed to shared ethnic back-
ground, he says of one West Indian desi girlfriend that they were
similar because “she grew up in the Bronx around all Black people,
she talks the way I talk, she listens to all the same music I listen to.”
Hip hop rather than ancestry, therefore, becomes their shared cul-
ture.
Desi men in hip hop sometimes represent and sometimes diverge
from the broader second generation in their career and marriage
choices. They attempt to deal with competing expectations within
South Asian and hip hop America, both steeped in particular gen-
der and sexual dynamics. While male artists often consider love and
art to be competing realms, some bridge the two, including the
married artists, all of whom wed desi women. Indeed the other desi
men in hip hop have formed relationships with a range of minority
women, thereby finding it important to be with someone who sup-
ports their decisions and shares their interests—including hip hop
culture—and the concerns they rap about. But what explains what
looks like a full crossover into hip hop by the female artists who
tended not to date desis at all? Is it because “girls seem more brave
in a way,” as Meena hypothesizes, and are more willing to take part
in particularly those social arenas parents most want to restrict
them from? And if so, how do these impact our interpretations of
the identities and politics of desis?

Love and Art

I’ve personally never had a problem dating Black men, and I don’t feel
like culturally I would have to be with an Indian to do the things that I
need to do. I feel like I need to be with someone with the same world-
view. There are Black men who clearly approach me for the Kama Sutra
thing. But then there are others who approach me and are just open; they
respect me and that’s all I really need.—Radhika, community activist

Female artists contend with the notions of race and sexuality of both
South Asians and Blacks, but their gender and sexual dynamics play

Flipping the Gender Script 171

out differently than they do for their male counterparts. Histori-
cally, Westerners have exoticized South Asian women as desirable
albeit devalued partners. The dynamics of interracial heterosexual
relations are not limited to interactions between South Asians
and Whites; Black men also orientalize desi women. How, or do,
female artists interject these fantasies, and how do such percep-
tions shape the dynamics between Black and South Asian women?
Desi women’s own sexual preferences highlight the impact of
mainstream notions of Black masculinity and the counterweight of
sustained interracial contact. Like their male counterparts, female
artists do not date White men, but they rarely date desi men either.
Desi female performers are aware of the gender and sexual norms
among co-​ethnics and their Black male and female peers. In staking
claims in multiple communities they sample from a range of avail-
able options—including tropes of Black masculinity—to present
alternative sexualities and lifestyles. They take risks to challenge
orientalist stereotypes as well as misconceptions of “women in hip
hop.” Their choices overlap and diverge from the male MCs, but
both sets deal with similar difficulties in achieving satisfaction in
love and art.
Desi men and women in hip hop both look for partners who
understand and are supportive of what they do, yet the women tend
to date Blacks, including African Americans, Jamaicans, and Ethio-
pians. They do this at considerable risk of ostracism, because South
Asian anti-​Black sentiments often culminate in anxieties over the
particular pairings of desi daughters with Black men. This frustrates
many of the female artists who want the freedom to love whom they
desire while also keeping their family’s affections. Understanding
the tensions surrounding these patterned choices deepens our ex-
amination of the causes and consequences of romantic relation-
ships between South Asians and Blacks.
Although some of the female artists had wanted to date desi men
when they were in college and soon after, they are generally resis-
tant to doing so now, in their thirties, precisely because of the ideas
that many desi men, even those born in the United States, hold
about tradition and gender role expectations. These women remem-
ber all too well their childhood and college experiences within their
ethnic communities, and they continue to dislike others monitor-
ing their sexuality and thus critique mainstream desi ideas. As one

172 Flipping the Gender Script

Berkeley student told me, “I think Indian guys really have a problem
. . . like ‘oh my god, she’s such a ho!’ for doing anything that’s not
completely covered from head to toe and not touching anyone.” For
example, a female artist and I, dressed in club attire on our way to
go out, ran into a group of desis we knew at a popular Indian chaat
(or snack) shop in Berkeley. They circled the artist and praised her
tight-​fitting outfit—attire associated not just as “American” but as
Black American (see Maira 2002: 13). Yet once she was out of ear-
shot one man disapprovingly claimed that she was just there “to
strut around.” In light of this incident, Sunaina Maira’s descrip-
tion is apt: “The Indian remix subculture . . . showed little variation
in the coding of female style and, more important, an underlying
preoccupation with the stylistic coding and regulation of Indian-
ness, and implicitly of Blackness, especially for women” (2002: 46).
By contradicting—in fact moving all the way in the opposite direc-
tion—of standards set for proper desi behavior, the artists’ ethnic
authenticity is questioned. If proper desiness is linked with com-
munity solidarity, then “women deviating from this idea of tradi-
tional Indian womanhood are considered traitors to the commu-
nity” (DasGupta and Das Dasgupta 2000: 327). In response, desi
artists operate largely outside of desi spaces.
Hip hoppers find their co-​ethnics’ reactions to be hypocriti-
cal and close-​minded erroneous assumptions of who a person
is based on his or her attire. They feel that desi men will “totally
judge females that act a certain way, and then they’ll try to get with
them,” laughed Meena, who believes this is “disrespectful.” Ironi-
cally, mainstream desi men often imagine these very “disrespect-
ful” interactions to be characteristic of desi female-​Black male
interactions, and this displacement becomes their touted reason
for their need to “protect” desi girls. Thus while South Asians often
imagine that hip hop spaces are tense with male-​male heterosexual
competition, patriarchy, and sexism, ethnic communities in fact
re-​create these dynamics.
Desi female MCs and DJs are subject to a unique expression of
anti-​Black racism on the part of desis: namely, they become its tar-
get. After fending off drunk and groping desi men at parties who
assume the “right” to (touch) desi women (the same men who claim
it is Black men who “prey” on “their women”), female performers
do not agree with mainstream desi men’s assumption about the

Flipping the Gender Script 173

(sexual) motivations of Black men in contrast to the “honorable”
motives of desi men. “Black culture is very sexual,” comments a desi
man. Thus, the artists’ attachment to hip hop and Black people—
especially the Black men whom desi women artists date—lead
mainstream South Asians to glue such stereotypical conceptions
to the artists. Meena says that the Indian men in her college circles
often link desi girls with darker skin color to (loose) sexuality. In
tricky moves, South Asians’ biological conceptions (i.e., the imag-
ined hypersexuality) of Black people are contradicted by the plas-
ticity with which they apply these ideas to others: desis—who are
not (inappropriately) sexual—who hang out with Blacks (who are
inappropriately sexual) therefore become (inappropriately) sexual,
themselves! The artists have long encountered such sentiments and
their prevalence continues to turn them off from socializing with
co-​ethnics who do not understand their sense of style and find their
access to Black people and cultures mysterious and suspect.
In contrast to desi hip hoppers, countless mainstream desi girls
told me that they ended their relations with Black men because
they would never marry them. The disturbing ways that some main-
stream desi youth relate to Black men and women in their intimate
relationships parallels the troubling and anti-​Black ways they adopt
hip hop culture. Black men relate their own stories of “crazy Indian
women,” often remarking that their girlfriends refuse to introduce
them to their parents, or deceive their parents about the true iden-
tities of their boyfriends. Dru, a gregarious biracial Black and Ger-
man college student from the South Bay, went to a Muslim desi’s
house (appraised at three million dollars) and his date prepped him
to say, in the event that her parents came home, that he was attend-
ing community college but that he was transferring to “whatever
UC (University of California) you like,” in order to elevate his edu-
cational status in their eyes. In another case, he says he went out
with a Pakistani girl who instructed him to get into the back seat
of the car (a Lexus GS300, no less) and duck down as they drove
by her parents’ house so they would not see him. Dru fully under-
stood the implications of her request: “It’s to hide the fact that (a)
she’s talking to boys, and (b) she’s talking to boys who look like
me.” Such is the extent to which unquestioned racist norms circu-
late among South Asians and affect those outside its bounds. That
desi girls still date Black men does not make them anti-​racist, espe-

174 Flipping the Gender Script

cially when they condone their parents’ behaviors by choreograph-
ing charades and expecting their Black friends to understand the
degree to which the South Asian community devalues them. “I said
no,” Dru says in response to the girl who asked him to duck down.
“I’m not gonna do that for anyone. It makes me feel like a coward,
even if it’s for her benefit.”
The desi artists attempt to challenge these kinds of interactions
that frame the general tense dynamics of South Asian/Black rela-
tions in the United States. In contrast to other desis’ clandestine
activities, they usually maintain open relationships with Black men
despite community pressures against doing so. Therefore, different
kinds of conversations emerge among family members; whether
positive or negative, their presence expands the extent to which
South Asians across generations have to contend with the influ-
ences of Blacks. Just as White racism and beauty norms push desi
artists away from dating Whites, desi racism and chauvinism send
these women away from South Asian men and sometimes toward
Black men.
The situation is a bit more complicated for female performers
who, now in their thirties, want to find life partners but find re-
lationship choices to be difficult. As Maira explains, “Women who
had dated African American men and struggled with parental dis-
approval expressed perhaps the most emotional critique of the
anti-​Black prejudices of immigrant parents” (2002: 71). Like their
male counterparts, women think deeply about how to develop per-
sonal lives that can support their professional, political, and artis-
tic choices. As a result, they weigh the merits and drawbacks of
dating South Asian versus Black men. As this is the case, we cannot
contend that America is either a colorblind, postracial society or a
multicultural haven in which differences matter no longer. Neither
can we believe that South Asians are on their way to “becoming
White.”
One desi in her early thirties—prior to dating her boyfriend, a
Black rapper—was becoming anxious about her single status and
decided to search for a husband on a desi Internet dating Web site.
Pulled by her political and future desires (she wants to remain con-
nected to Bangladesh and have her children learn Bengali), Radhika
stated, “Well, logically I should find a Bengali guy because I can’t
give the kids that language.” Having dated only one Indian in her

Flipping the Gender Script 175

life, she had primarily dated Black men over the past decade. But the
question arises, “Okay, could he [a Black man] handle India? Could
I bring him there?” She believes that a Black man might be mis-
treated, especially “the darker they are the worse it is.” She did meet
a desi man whom she “admired culturally and intellectually” (not
physically? I wondered), but the relationship failed after a couple of
months. When she stated, “I think that no matter which way I go,
I’m going to have to give up something” in choosing between a desi
or Black man, she describes the same tension voiced by the men I
discussed earlier in the chapter. Radhika’s conundrum differs from
those faced by other Asian American women who choose between
the comfort and ethnic continuity assumed in endogamous mar-
riages and the potentially privileged status accessed by marrying
White men. This desi was giving up visions of her future that re-
lated either to living in South Asia or to continuing her work within
a Black working-​class community in San Francisco. Her political
and emotional futures seem to unzip within the racialized politics
of dating and marriage. In what appears to be individual decision
making, the artists confront conditions by forces—like racism and
immigrant community formation—larger than themselves. And
so, they pick their battles.
Generally speaking, desi women in hip hop do not seem over-
whelmed by the tension between “love or art,” or if they do they
try to overcome it. Perhaps they are already living so outside the
bounds of their parents’ expectations that they feel a kind of free-
dom to confront certain expectations while conforming to others.
But it is nonetheless difficult to control the positive (integrating
into an artistic community) and negative (losing ethnic support)
repercussions of choosing nondesi partners. But their bonds with
men in the hip hop business, men with whom they can share their
passion about music, hip hop, and art, also offer support and com-
munity. For some of these women, their passion for music overlaps
their passion for the men, often Black, who produce the music.
Asian and Black couples garner much public interest: an online
article titled “Black Men, Asian Women” alone garnered 555 com-
ments (Sen 2006).17 Clearly the phenomenon of Asian and Black re-
lationships is not odd or surprising to hip hop’s desis. Desi female
artists in relationships with Black men will often meet their fami-
lies, attend holiday events, and share food and music. In turn, the

176 Flipping the Gender Script

women introduce their partners to Indian food, Bollywood, and
South Asian music, the latter of which their male partners some-
times incorporate into their musical productions. But being open
about their interracial relationships necessitates the couples’ cour-
age as they negotiate which cultural events they attend, especially
during important festivals like Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights.
Attending a hip hop party, particularly in the multiracial Bay Area,
can be more relaxing for a mixed couple than dealing with elders’
stares at a desi event. Many desis I spoke with feel more comfort-
able among Blacks than among desis, although these, too, were
spaces rife with complex vibes.
While the intersection of sex and race can lead to a type of “double
burden” for women in hip hop, this is not always the case. Gender
relations can be even more complicated: South Asian women some-
times have an even easier time entering Black social circles (such
as at predominantly Black house parties and hip hop and reggae
clubs like Oasis in Oakland) and functions (such as the Malcolm X
Jazz Festival in Los Angeles) than do their male counterparts. Being
seen by men in the industry as sexually desirable can trump, or inte-
grate favorably (albeit problematically) with, in this sense, their
racial difference.18 Hip hop is of course not only a highly gendered
arena but is also a heavily sexualized one, particularly due to the
sociality of the events (i.e., going to hip hop shows or clubs is an ex-
plicitly social, even sexual, affair aided by alcohol and other drugs,
whereas going to school, for example, might not be). But here desis
often face remixed politics that characterize South Asian and White
interactions.
Some Black men subject desi women to Black Orientalism, a
rendition of the exoticization and otherness they experience from
White Americans. Afro-​Orientalism, with its ability to link Blacks
with Asians, can be colonizing and decolonizing. As Bill Mullen
notes, “Afro-​Orientalism is a counterdiscourse that at times shares
with its dominant namesake certain features but primarily con-
stitutes an independent critical trajectory of thought on the prac-
tice and ideological weight of Orientalism in the Western world”
(2004: xv).19 Without discrediting the political potential of Afro-​
Orientalism (the critical contribution of Mullen’s work), the sexual
dynamics in nightclubs also reaffirms aspects of Western (White)
Orientalism. “Where y’all from?” a Black man asked a group of

Flipping the Gender Script 177

desi girls at a hip hop club peopled with attractive young Bay Area
natives working hard not to look too expectantly at potential dance
partners. “You all look exotic,” he said appreciatively. Black men
sometimes describe Indian women as desirable and “beautiful” for
having “long wavy hair” and “big butts.” We also find hints of both
“kinds” of Orientalism in Du Bois’s overlooked novel from 1928,
Dark Princess: A Romance, an anti-​imperialist love story about Matthew
Townes, a young Black American medical student, and Princess
Kautilya, the daughter of a maharaja (king) from India. Mullen fo-
cuses on Du Bois’s internationalist perspective and on workers of
the world, but he also highlights the fact that “Du Bois’s concep-
tion of orientalism was wedded to a patriarchal or paternal ideology
inflected in contemporary debates about female subalterns in the
United States and India, in particular, and by Du Bois’s own roman-
tic conceptions of the Asiatic” (2003: 218–19). While analysts have
argued that Du Bois attempts to fuse the exoticism of Kautilya with
“radical politics and love” (232), desi/Black relations in the club are
not politically progressive just for being interracial.
Many of the South Asian women I spoke with who frequent hip
hop clubs explain that they are a “safe race” for Black men because
they are not White and not Black and because they are “exotic”
(“the whole Kama Sutra thing”). D’Lo says that his/her Sri Lankan
girlfriends often go to clubs where Black men approach them be-
cause, s/he interprets, the men like “dark-​skinned girls with nice
hair.” These issues, “especially the effects of skin color and hair tex-
ture,” impact “Black women’s self-​images and how others treated
them” (Collins 2006: 166); they also shape the self-​awareness of
desi women who socialize with Blacks. A fair-​skinned green-​eyed
Indian woman from Seattle told me that Black men like her be-
cause she is “whitish” but also “not Black.” Colorism is yet another
link between South Asian and Black communities in which indi-
viduals place a higher value of beauty on fair skin (indeed, most
South Asian parents warn their children to stay out of the sun).
For Meena, being exoticized by a Black man who thought she was
Egyptian was “flattering in a way, but it’s kind of sad, too. Like,
why do they think that someone of a lighter race is so beautiful to
be?” These dynamics also affect the experiences of Brown women
in hip hop since it may be the case that, as Thien-​bao Thuc Phi says,
“the growing number of African American men with Asian women

178 Flipping the Gender Script

has caused some tension between black women and Asian women”
(2008: 312).
The sexual and heteronormative dynamics between Black and
Brown men and women in Bay Area dance clubs in the 1990s and
2000s fostered competition between heterosexual women of color
for (Black) male attention. Women of color can and do forge bonds
resulting from their shared experience of gender and racial disen-
franchisement in the United States but they have had to overcome
obstacles of the patriarchal race-​first framing of American society
(Lorde 1984; Harris and Ordona 1990; Espiritu 1997). Heterosexual
romances in clubs mostly populated with young Black men and
women often assume the racial solidarity of Black Nationalism,
similar to desi men’s “protection” of South Asian female sexuality
in the desi remix scene. Despite this parallel, when tensions over
courtship arise Brown women in Black social spaces become de-
fined in contrast to Black women, making the former feel “like an
outcast a lot of times.” However, the female artists also adopt con-
ceptions of physical beauty that intersect with musical interests
that draw them to Black men.
Like some mainstream desi girls, some of the female artists feel
that Black men are more masculine than desi men, pointing to their
musculature. Some highlight physical aspects of their past and
present partners, saying that they prefer dark skin. Does this corre-
late with Eric Lott’s characterization of Whites’ “fascination with
black male potency” (1993b: 57)? The artists certainly claim that
their boyfriends are sexy in what may be seen as the reverse flow of
Afro-​Orientalism. But their desires for Black men are contextual-
ized, and are rooted in more than fantasy and distance: they are also
turned on to the men’s passion for music and their artistic skills.
One woman finds the content of her boyfriend’s rhymes—that he’s
“putting a good message out there”—important: “I’m really drawn
to his brain, that he can do that stuff.” Another woman ponders
whether her obsession with music translates into an obsession for
men who make music; by spending time with them she could figure
out how their minds work and then apply these lessons to her own
productions. Thus, it is not Black men per se that these artists find
attractive but rather the individuals, often Black, who make hip hop
music. We see from desis’ experiences inside and outside of the
club that while racialization and sexualization impact South Asian

Flipping the Gender Script 179

and Black relations, their trajectories are not predetermined. For
both parties in the long-​term interracial South Asian/Black rela-
tionships that I witnessed, their motives for being with one another
surpass the stereotypes of either desi exotification or Black sexual-
ization (Sen 2006). They bond over shared experiences as American
minorities and as fellow music heads.
Music, love, and sex entangle themselves in cross-​racial desires.
Desi women who became hip hop artists try to pursue their sexual,
social, and career lifestyles without too greatly disappointing their
parents. Relative to the male artists, female artists take greater
risks of being shunned for their refusal to be proper desi girls in
their personal and professional lives. For them, love and art often
coincide. Ironically, while female artists may seem like they have
crossed over to the “other side,” Blacks and South Asians still im-
bue these women—whom they tie to “culture”—with desi ethnicity
and femininity. The gender and sexual choices of hip hop’s desis
speak volumes about the intraethnic and interracial dynamics be-
tween South Asians and Blacks in the United States. And desis can-
not resolve these tensions simply by inserting themselves into the
Black social, business, and sexual worlds of hip hop.

“In the Middle”: Brown Women, Black Masculinities

Girl, I’ll be your rebounder.
—D’Lo, Sri Lankan MC and poet
Queer diasporic cultural forms work against the violent effacements that
produce the fictions of purity that lie at the heart of dominant nationalist
and diasporic ideologies. (Gopinath 2005: 4)

Male and female desi hip hoppers have differing relations to Black
masculinity. They disrupt our assumptions of Asian men’s desire
for a racialized masculinity, and the female artists reveal the under-
reported desire of some women to embody (not necessarily access)
this same Black masculinity. That is, images of Black men in hip
hop and other elements of the culture offer women like D’Lo sev-
eral sexual and gender tropes they can emulate to reconstruct their
nonnormative identities into an expression of self they feel is true.
I was fascinated to learn that desi women risk disownment from

180 Flipping the Gender Script

their families when they decide to live out extreme decisions that
contradict South Asian and American gender and sexual norms.
In fact, it is desi women, not desi men, who incorporate tropes of
Black masculinity into their own sexuality in surprising ways by
adopting the persona of “pimps,” “players,” and “b-​bois.”20
D’Lo faces extra tension from Sri Lankans for his/her lack of con-
formity on multiple fronts (see Gopinath 2005). “I had come to the
conclusion that I was different, nobody was going to understand
me,” D’Lo says. Being gay and identifying as a male in adulthood,
D’Lo embraces a lifestyle and look counter to Hindu, Sri Lankan,
and Tamil femininity. Some members of minority communities in
America name homosexuality a “White disease,” or as something
that exists outside of their groups and is one of the perils of be-
coming “too Americanized” (Takagi 2000; see also Maira 2002:
47–48). Constructions of non-White sexuality heighten South
Asians’ reactions to desi homosexuality and transgender identities,
which, according to gatekeepers, “harm” the overall image of “the
community.” This policing recasts South Asian gays and lesbians,
who already are targets of multiple vectors of homophobia, as in-
ternal threats to the proper images of ethnic respectability of Asian
America (McBride 2005). But by no means did all desis choose to
live by these terms.
D’Lo’s ambiguous racial, gender, and sexual crossings cause
anxiety among people whose expectations s/he disrupts. Misunder-
stood and rejected because people “couldn’t understand” him/
her, the budding artist “needed to bounce [leave home] in order
to search” elsewhere. Music, particularly hip hop, became D’Lo’s
sanctuary and career, which in turn only contributed to his/her par-
ents’ dismay. D’Lo didn’t want to become a doctor, and “in fact,”
s/he says, “there’s a piece that I [perform that] says, ‘She was sup-
posed to get married and be a doctor / I’m gay and I want to be a rock
star.’” In order to pursue his/her passion for music and women,
D’Lo was always “running away” in order to find “freedom.” Just as
Asians in America have been ousted from their home(land)s, queer
and transgender Asian Americans are ousted from their familial
and ethnic homes (Eng 1997).
Hip hop shaped D’Lo’s sense of self. His/her “gay consciousness
developed” from the time s/he was little: “Like I felt like I was a

Flipping the Gender Script 181

male, you know what I’m saying?” Having to become a girl during
puberty was difficult because s/he “couldn’t do it properly.” Then
hip hop came as a revelation: “Finally . . . I realized, ‘you know
what? I can just be true to myself and just take the title of a b-​girl.’
You get what I’m saying? Because that was truth to me. That was
like in the middle.” D’Lo’s sense of being “in the middle” echoes
descriptions of biracial and bisexual individuals. Like ethnically and
sexually ambiguous people, D’Lo disrupts reified and pure notions
of “male” and “female,” “South Asian” and “Black,” “immigrant”
and “citizen.” Indeed, this very ambiguity often creates discomfort
and destabilizes knowledge, thereby causing others to ask “What
are you?” As in so many other ways, hip hop provides these indi-
viduals with the possibility of being “in the middle” and maintain-
ing the “truth” of their racial, immigrant, and other identities. Hip
hop provides a flexibility of roles that speaks to the very experiences
of these second-​generation youths.
D’Lo adopts the b-​girl/b-​boi persona as a way of being that allows
for the expression of his/her queer and masculine identities in
forms borrowed from hip hop and expressed through performance.
As Sandra Chatterjee writes, “Because D’Lo, a gay performer with
a female body, embodies clearly a hip and black masculinity that
many young South Asian men aim to sport, her performance de-
stabilizes the heterosexual foundation of diasporic ideologies of
domesticity that define hierarchies of authenticity, inclusion, and
exclusion” (2006: 451; see also Gopinath 2005). As it does for other
queer rappers, hip hop allows D’Lo to showcase his/her sexuality—
his/her love of women—while also encompassing his/her racial and
dancing identities, which are malleable in his/her hands. D’Lo also
expands the repertoire of desi masculinities beyond desi men. Yet
despite the trenchant commentary of D’Lo’s performative work,
his/her experiences still reflect the common United States concep-
tion of ethnic dilution through racial contact. Describing his/her
more femme days when Black men used to flirt with him/her, in a
telling slip of the tongue s/he said, “Even when I was Sri Lankan . . .
I mean, even when I was a girl!” Catching this, we erupted in laugh-
ter, understanding the fluidity and interconnection of ethnicity,
gender, and sexuality (see Johnson 2003). Although D’Lo identi-
fies strongly as a Sri Lankan, s/he has access to having been Sri Lan-
kan and a girl, whereas now s/he has transformed into something

182 Flipping the Gender Script

other than a Sri Lankan girl. B-​boying grants this metamorphosis a
suitable shape and fulfills D’Lo with its content, or message. And in
all this flux, D’Lo finds the stability of hip hop to be not only heal-
ing but also generative. D’Lo’s onstage performances fulfill Halber-
stam’s hope that “masculine girls and women do not have to wear
their masculinity as a stigma but can infuse it with a sense of pride
and indeed power” (2000: xi).
D’Lo isn’t the only female-​born desi to appropriate male roles
within hip hop. I was with Bella at a hot Oakland nightclub called
Sweet Jimmy’s where she was hired to spin the backup tracks for a
local rapper’s performance. She began her set with two records of
the commercial Black rapper Ludacris’s contagious hit song “Area
Codes,” one on each turntable. Bella mixed his hook, “I’ve got hos
. . . I’ve got hos . . . I’ve got hos . . . ,” back and forth, switching
from one turntable to the next, with the audience members nod-
ding their heads to the beat. Bella not only switched from turntable
to turntable but also switched codified gender roles by taking the
rapper’s recorded voice as her own as she swayed in her long, form-​
fitting pink dress. Through mixing and spinning the DJ flips words
used to denigrate women and rearticulates them from a female’s
perspective about heterosexual relations. “See,” she said to me one
day as we lounged in an African-​owned San Francisco bar sipping
hibiscus-​flavored cocktails, “they have it all wrong. Men are the
hos, they are always willing to put out” (be sexually available). These
women engage anti-​essentialism strategically by identifying with a
group against whom they have been defined. This enables the DJ,
in Bella’s case, to flip discourses of hegemonic Black masculinity to
redefine herself as a woman.
Some female artists also identify with pimps or, more accurately,
with pimping. To be sure, they identify not with a literal pimp, but
with what some members of the hip hop generation have redefined
“pimping” to mean (Neal 2005: 137)—namely, calling the shots
and having control over one’s life in potentially counternormative
ways. For example, one artist uses pimping to refer to “trying to get
hookups” and gigs, and maneuvering within the music business
in general (also considered hustling). Can South Asian women ap-
propriate pimping as part of a feminist consciousness tied to a mi-
nority status? “Pimping is a state of mind . . . a movement about no
longer being the victim, a movement where women do not have to

Flipping the Gender Script 183

take some of the crap that men dish out” (Megan Moore quoted in
Neal 2005: 138). According to Gwendolyn Pough, Black female art-
ists “have appropriated the language used by men rappers to deni-
grate women and use it as a means of empowerment in their own
lyrics” (2004: 13). Thus, even a desi woman might assert that she was
the pimp in her relations with men, thereby challenging the idea
that these men played her. This counterintuitive framing of gen-
der relations reflects the competitive nature of the music industry
as well.
D’Lo and Bella present an intriguing pair of women in hip hop
because they seem to contrast in so many ways, including their self-​
presentation and style. D’Lo’s masculinity counters Bella’s femi-
ninity, for example. But they both sample and weave together Black
male tropes of players, pimps, and b-​bois, thus flipping the gen-
der script by identifying with Black masculinities. In doing so, they
alter both Black masculinities, and desi masculinities. In the “One
D’Lo Show” performances, which include D’Lo’s skit as a sari-​
clad Sri Lankan mother grappling with her daughter’s homosexu-
ality, audiences are confused: “Is she a girl? Is that a girl or a boy?”
Even offstage, D’Lo confounds norms and expectations altering
the terms of masculinity and desi sexuality. D’Lo shines as an MC
while Bella flexes her technical mixing skills. In critiquing rappers
for their anti-​womanist sentiments and also adopting their voices
as a “means of empowerment,” Bella’s dialogue with hip hop not
only deeply engages its gender and sexual dynamics but alters the
very terms of what is possible.
On occasion, desi women artists adopt Black masculinities—
sometimes those very stereotypes that define Black male “devi-
ance”—to position and empower themselves within the complex
dynamics of urban popular culture. Adopting models of identity
from nondesi sources, they still present themselves and their non-
desi partners to South Asians despite repercussions. Ultimately,
they identify as women of color who share struggles over sexism and
sexuality with Black women in and out of hip hop. These desis nego-
tiate love and business relationships with Black men and women by
sharing information and knowledge about how to better their skills
and enjoy shared passions. Rather than suppressing their ethnicity,
gender, or sexuality, they cultivate these identities through woman-​
friendly networks and challenge sexism and homophobia.

184 Flipping the Gender Script

 Deejay Bella. Photograph courtesy of Bilen Mesfin.

Claiming Womanist and Queer-​Friendly Spaces

The female desi artists create spaces of positive energy where women
can convene as progressive-​minded artists within a male-​dominant
scene. They “bring wreck” (to sample the hip hop scholar Pough
[2004]) by bashing stereotypes and forcing women and men on the
dance floor and in the studio to recognize exactly who is bringing
the beats and busting the flow. Sexual and gender agency expressed
through music and enactment becomes politically potent when audi-
ences, drawn into the collaborative nature of hip hop performance,
bring closeted identities to light. According to Pough, the actions
of some Black women in hip hop “represent a kind of space where
they are claiming this public sexual identity in ways that . . . we really
haven’t seen because of the politics of silence surrounding black

Flipping the Gender Script 185

women and sexuality” (2006: 808–9). South Asian and Black women
are sexualized in differential yet overlapping ways, and desi women,
too, contend with ethnic restrictions on their sexual expressions in
the diaspora. They emphasize crossovers among minority women by
cultivating racially inclusive women-​friendly spaces and networks.
To meld political and gender concerns Deejay Bella created Sis-
trens, a gathering designed for Bay Area “women artists with a
social bent.” Events sponsored by Sistrens include motivational
speakers and home-​cooked vegetarian fare. Further, at parties and
clubs Bella makes sure to play female reggae and hip hop artists
who rarely get airtime with male DJs, and she goes out of her way
to support women in hip hop. When asked why she does this, she
responds, “I have to.” Bella has developed subversive techniques to
deal publicly with the abundance of homophobic and misogynist
lyrics in recorded music. First, she raises these topics when social-
izing with men in the business. “I don’t play any of that homo-
phobic shit. Do you guys play that?” she asked two Bay Area male
DJs as we partook in late-​night dining after their gig. When one
said he played it if he thought the crowd could not understand the
patois, Bella offered her own method of dealing with an offensive
but popular song the audience wants to hear: she would just play
the instrumental version of the record. Other cases call for her to
play a verse of the man’s song, but she will follow it by mixing in a
female “answer track.” This creates a dialogue between the two art-
ists and engenders a certain—sexy and equal—vibe on the dance
floor. Bella once came across fliers that featured nude women ad-
vertising an upcoming Bay Area party. She tore down the fliers and
replaced them with new, women-​friendly ones she had made. By
initiating conversations with male colleagues and making execu-
tive decisions, women in hip hop claim a space and maintain dia-
logues—between men and women, among women, and between
Blacks and non-Blacks—that fuel the growth of musical forms
and consciousness about music content. In these dialogic rela-
tions (Bakhtin 1981), South Asians and their peers draw from their
knowledge of dominant ideologies and the ideas and expectations
of society in order to denaturalize the terms of the exchange. And
although the power of our times is increasingly centralized, it re-
mains unfixed, denaturalized, and not “owned” (Foucault 1976:

186 Flipping the Gender Script

210). As such, these individuals may change the very terms that
define them—and the consciousness of those around them.
Desi artists are codified, restricted even, by the popular mean-
ings of race, class, gender, and sexuality. But they nonetheless take
action, or “decision making power” (Giddens 1984), to shape their
lives. They try to work within woman-​centered networks, support
other female artists, and identify with women of color. “We’re
really similar,” Deejay Bella says about Latina and Black women, “I
feel them and what they’re saying and the stereotypes Black men
have of women.” Despite the business-​fostered competition, desi
women connect across lines and call on hip hop and the men who
produce it to be accountable for their role in gender oppression. The
performers continue to thrive while taking pro-​womanist and anti-​
homophobic stances against stereotypes that sexualize women of
color and silence their presence. D’Lo, for instance, once formed
with two Black women a group called WADDAG (or “What a G,”
perhaps signifying on “G,” meaning “gangsta”), based on an acro-
nym standing for “Women Aware Deep Dark and Gay.” Black and
non-Black women in hip hop can make feminist interventions for
social change, despite “finding it hard to claim a space for them-
selves in the male-​centered world of Hip-​Hop” (Pough 2002: 9).
Through women-​centered events and artistic choices that celebrate
female artists, female hip hoppers practice their art in ways that
aim to equalize gender relations within and beyond the music in-
dustry. They remind us of the possibilities of bounded agency and
the political potential—the “transformative capacity” (Giddens
1984: 92)—of everyday actions.

Conclusion
The choices of desis in hip hop illuminate the process-​oriented
dualities of actors’ agency and institutional determinants. No one’s
options are limitless; habitus, which creates bodies as bodies cre-
ate it, is a structure that defines what is conscious and informs a
society’s members of their available options and active possibili-
ties. Institutional forms, no matter how restrictive, are not deter-
minative and within this concept is the possibility of changing ac-
cepted wisdom, or doxa (Bourdieu 1977). Hegemony, or the power

Flipping the Gender Script 187

of societal norms and structures that are expressed through daily
practices, interacts with the power of the individual to actively pro-
mote or rebel against those very norms. Because they choose a criti-
cal consciousness that contests a variety of norms, the desi artists
engage in everyday acts of resistance against not only conformity
but also oppressive ideals. As members of multiple communities,
they contend with sets of competing and overlapping hegemonic
norms. They strive to represent a spectrum of sexual and gender
expressions in desi America; similarly, they attempt to mark their
presence as non-Black men and women in the male, Black domi-
nant industry of hip hop.
Hip hop scholarship must be careful not to reproduce the inequali-
ties of hip hop culture and the sexism of American society writ large
by granting airtime to male stars who disregard or speak for women
and non-Blacks. Fans and commentators often view Black women’s
concerns as supplemental to the “real” issues in hip hop, and they
are generally asked to comment only on the topics of gender and
sexuality. Similarly, non-Blacks are underrepresented and often only
enter debates about race and authenticity. Women, non-Blacks, and
gays and lesbians must be integrated in dialogues on hip hop as they
comprise, along with straight Black men, the hip hop nation.
Some desis interject these conversations, bringing with them
some of the concerns of their ethnic communities. So what does it
mean when non-Black minorities insert themselves into a culture
exploding with Black sexual politics (Collins 2004)? Their engage-
ment with Black popular culture as bricoleurs (Hebdige 1979) who
cut and mix identities engenders new articulations of desi gender
and sexual identities. As samplers, hip hop desis perform the con-
struction of gender and sexuality. Desi male and female MCs de-
flect assumptions of their desires for Black masculinity by articulat-
ing South Asian American masculinities that provide new models
for desi youth. At the individual level, desi hip hoppers relate to
Black masculinities and femininities, which they try to reconcile
with ethnic expectations. While all of the desi artists wish to ful-
fill their parents’ expectations about marriage and career choices,
their musical and personal pursuits often run counter to these ex-
pectations. Bridging the various communities allows them to fulfill
multiple obligations of love and art while cultivating inclusive and
progressive communities.

188 Flipping the Gender Script

 Black masculinities resonate with some desi women in fascinat-
ing ways as they negotiate—and sometimes alter—the assump-
tions of audience members. Reflected in the artists’ lives are tense
and productive encounters between desi and Black men and women
framed by the historical racialized sexualization of these commu-
nities. Desis in the business of hip hop and interracial romance un-
cover overlapping concerns across Brown and Black communities
that are obfuscated by divisive discourses. The evidence insists that
we consider not only the impact of Blacks upon South Asians but
also the power of desis to alter hegemonic notions of Blackness and
sexuality.
The artists also contradict hegemonic ideals through their rela-
tionships with Black men and women. They embrace the humanity
of Black people by challenging anti-​Black racism through their
musical and personal choices. In exchange, they are rewarded with
respect and are accepted by Black peers who offer community out-
side of ethnic bounds. Although not inherently progressive, inter-
minority relationships are part of the artists’ racial consciousness
and signal their identification as people of color. In this way, love
and music are deeply entangled and are infused with the politics
of gender and sexuality. Underlying this complex vortex of inter-
actions and identifications is the conscious politics of these hip
hop desis.
Hip hop still maintains a space of empowerment and politiciza-
tion in which unequal gender relations can be worked out, within
and even across color lines. These dialogic encounters reveal im-
portant crossovers with those designated as the “other” of South
Asians. Female artists express a race, gender, and sexual conscious-
ness beyond any one form of identity politics. They embrace and
enact social change against multiple forms of oppression, includ-
ing the sexism and homophobia that compound the racism and
nativism they experience in America. While these women contend
with misogyny in hip hop, they and their male counterparts locate
the roots of sexism and homophobia—just as they locate the roots
of inequality and class exploitation—within broader historical,
structural, and societal factors. This type of critical consciousness
enables them—indeed compels them—to continue to produce hip
hop music.

Flipping the Gender Script 189

 4.
The Appeal of Hip Hop,
Ownership, and the Politics of Location

Maybe it was living in the desert that made me concerned. Maybe being
one-​of-​one made me conscious. Maybe being identified as Sri Lankan
made me feel concern over the island’s plight. Maybe being raised in a
strict Hindu household allowed for Hip-​Hop to present itself as the ulti-
mate escape and solution. Maybe I wanted to represent the island in the
desert like how black folk painted their pride on hip-​hop’s canvas.
—D’Lo, “Part 3: Sri Lankan Boi”

“Music is what made me, do you get what I’m saying?” D’Lo insisted
to me in one of our conversations. “[People] don’t understand that
something else can make you besides your reality and your environ-
ment,” s/he added—particularly if that “something else” is the cul-
tural product of a denigrated people. In this chapter I address the
central question of why South Asian Americans are producing hip
hop, and I explain how the desi artists came to proclaim that hip
hop is their “jewel.” I contest traditional interpretations that are
superficial at best, racist at worst, for the appeal of hip hop to non-​
Black youths. Media depictions of urban Blacks in commercial rap
music often stereotype Blacks as deviant beings, thereby encourag-
ing the notion that non-Blacks must be drawn to this racialized vio-
lence and scatology. It is true that for many desis, as for other young
Americans, adopting hip hop is a way to be cool and rebellious (Kit-
wana 2005). It also helps to resolve particular class and ethnic anxi-
eties (Maira 2002). But these elements are not the only attractions
for those who eventually produce hip hop music. D’Lo’s poem cited
in the epigraph above provides clues for why hip hop becomes the
compelling answer to the problems faced by these desi artists.
Some desi youths have trouble with their emerging ethnic, gen-
der, and sexual identities and contend with “being different all the
time.” In their youth, the artists also felt a more general “void”
emerging from the discrepancy among their life experiences, their
closeness to young Black peers, and national and community dis-
courses about difference and belonging. But the appeal of hip hop
is greater than its ability to help resolve individual problems—
problems that the artists have mostly dealt with by adulthood. In-
deed, in the long run hip hop enables the politics of desi artists
as they become community builders, knowledge producers, and
consciousness raisers. From this Black cultural production they
adopt the foundational practices that incite reaction, including the
communal nature of the form, the practitioners’ attention to his-
tory, the use of call and response, and, of course, sampling. Brown
performers employ these practices to forge inclusive communities
and consider themselves legitimate hip hop producers as a result of
their awareness of the polyvalent influences that form hip hop. Hip
hop is a lifestyle they merge with a global race consciousness.
For these adults, hip hop is a positive and conscious way of life.
Yet shifts in its content and marketing over time forces them to
contend with the tension between the messages they wish to re-
lay and their audiences’ presumptions of “Indian rappers,” for in-
stance. Even before they open their mouths, desi MCs are thought
by some listeners to be “wannabe rappers” and “thugs,” with
these assumptions reflecting the images glorified by some main-
stream artists, labels, and media outlets.1 But the artists in this
book defy this interpretation, as expressed by Vivek when he in-
sists, “I’m trying to do some positive shit, so [thug] is the last thing
you should call me, you know?” Another Indian MC is disturbed by
his co-​ethnics’ fetishization of his presumed “authentic” access to
Blackness because of the way he speaks and rhymes. The simplis-
tic notion that fetishization motivates all non-Black hip hop lovers
reduces the humanity and diversity of Black people to one genre of
one popular cultural production currently in favor with the masses.
The goals of hip hop desis are to make music, express themselves,

The Appeal of Hip Hop 191

and “do something that’s more positive, more conscious,” both in
their music and in the way that they live. This is the draw of today’s
Black popular culture.
This chapter analyses, first, the appeal of hip hop for desi artists;
second, their perspectives on racial authenticity and Blackness; and
third, how they locate themselves within hip hop as legitimate pro-
ducers of a culture commonly associated with urban Black men.
South Asians who dedicate their lives to producing hip hop re-
sponded viscerally to the race-​conscious rap of the late 1980s and
early 1990s. Black rappers’ messages of countercultural critique,
racial pride, and the emotive and physical pleasure of this culture
spur the young desis obsessed with music to action. Hip hop is also
the soundtrack to their activism and they create their own music to
reflect inclusive race politics. As producers cognizant of hip hop’s
own race politics, they engage with debates over the place of Black-
ness in hip hop, including whether or not the culture has tran-
scended race. While at first adopting discourses of Black National-
ism wholesale, they later translate Black Power into Brown Pride. In
the process, they alter both established Blackness and desiness.
The roots and ownership of hip hop is one of its most vexed de-
bates. Simply stated, hip hop is a multiracial production of a Black
popular culture. There is something undeniably Black about hip
hop. It is rooted in the experiences of the descendents of enslaved
Africans, and it emerged at a particular socioeconomic and politi-
cal juncture in the United States during the 1970s. Yet those hip hop
historians bent on keeping hip hop a purely Black form, who say,
for instance, “Latinos to me is Black” (Davey D), erase other con-
tributors, including women and Puerto Ricans, who lived in places
like the South Bronx.2 Hip hop neither contains nor expresses
the totality of American Blacks nor does it consist only of African
(American) elements. Brown MCs and DJs approach this culture
as they do their relations with Black friends—with knowledge of
context, origins, and politics. The awareness by desi performers of
the complex rise of this culture and its incorporation of multiracial
and diasporic influences leads to their claims as legitimate artists.
Like all cultural formations, hip hop is polycultural, which denies
neither history nor its central players. But I am less invested in de-
fining the moment of hip hop’s origins or in parsing out to particu-

192 The Appeal of Hip Hop

lar participants the copyrights of its innovations, particularly when
so much of hip hop contests the notion of sole authorship. Hip
hop is a musical and aesthetic form and much more. It is an ideol-
ogy and, therefore, it is political. Parts of hip hop culture question
dominant narratives and value that which is devalued in the United
States, including Blackness and other forms of difference. These
messages resonate with those politicized desis who are contending
with their own distinctions. Counterhegemonic, critical, and resis-
tant ideologies shape hip hop desis’ life practices; their thoughts
on race shape their participation.
In order to participate as legitimate producers of Black popu-
lar culture, Brown youths confront expectations of racial authen-
ticity. They face these tests and make a place for themselves where
previously there had been no representation. Their conceptions
of hip hop and their reasons for loving it impact the artists’ self-​
definitions as “legitimate” or “authentic” artists. But they apply
these criteria not only to their music; they apply equally to an art-
ist’s politics and approach. Brown performers reveal a concept of
authenticity that is not tied to identity but rests on one’s approach
to music. As they expand their knowledge of history and the poli-
tics of race, they consider the structure of hip hop’s own racial poli-
tics. Hip hop desis present three perspectives on what hip hop is
and their location within it. Instead of sidestepping matters of race
and arguing that hip hop is a utopic culture that has transcended
race, these South Asians attempt to apply the same explicit race talk
found in this cultural formation to their own ethnic identities and
diasporic locations. They illustrate the impacts of being an Ameri-
can minority while contesting the biological and hierarchical basis
of racial categories, thereby confounding the notion of America as
a postracial society.

The Appeal of Hip Hop

For me at that time, hip hop was a context for me to think about life—it
embodied all the things I was awakening to and the things I had contem-
plated for a long time: an alternative artistic sensibility that was radical
to what the norms of society urged you to be. It was rebellious; it in-
volved race politics, displayed crafty word play and was very social. It all

The Appeal of Hip Hop 193

 came together for me at that time and, ever since, has provided the lens
[through] which I view the world.—Jonny, desi hip hop journalist

The attractions of hip hop are numerous, and for the desis who be-
came producers in the 1990s their reasons overlap. Not finding the
appropriate responses to racism within their ethnic communities
or in mainstream national discourses, desi youths heard early rap
delivering potent, race-​conscious reactions. These desi youths were
nonconformist, music minded, and open to sonic expressions of
politics. Hip hop gave them the vocabulary to understand local con-
ditions and served as the vehicle through which to articulate their
global concerns.
Some desi youths are drawn to hip hop because they felt that in
their lives “something was missing.” Hip hop fills the disjuncture
between what these young people see around them and the every-
day ways that individuals make sense of their situations. These desis
grew up amid two general sets of socioeconomic practices mar-
ried to racial discourses—first in the 1970s and 1980s when the sec-
ond generation was young, and later in the decades that hugged the
twenty-​first century during and after their time in college. The Bay
Area was a unique place to experience the Reagan years that rep-
resented the first socioeconomic context, as instituted by the cut-
back policies of Reaganomics and deindustrialization that led to an
hourglass economy. Artists from urban and working-​class neigh-
borhoods saw the rise of crack cocaine and the heightened policing
of their communities—realities that were invisible to many South
Asian professionals. The twin racist ideologies of the cultural dys-
functions of Blacks detailed in the Moynihan Report of 1965 and
the Asian model minority gained prominence at this time.3 But few
residents could miss the activism of the Bay Area, the land of the
Black Panthers and the Yellow Panthers and the first ethnic studies
departments at universities. Second-​generation Asians may have
been too young to recognize that the area was ripe with the Chi-
cano Movement and the American Indian Movement, and many are
unaware that there ever was an Asian American Movement. How-
ever, as students at Bay Area universities in the 1990s, KB, Rawj,
Jonny, Bella, and Asma, a hip hop radio producer, are direct bene-
ficiaries of these movements. But the 1990s also heralded a second
set of economic, neoliberal, and globalizing practices that touted

194 The Appeal of Hip Hop

“pull yourself up by your bootstraps” ideologies and entrenched
cultural (rather than racial) explanations for difference. Many of the
desi artists became politicized in college when their studies mixed
with hip hop—a combination that spoke to questions unanswered
by colorblind or multicultural discourses.
Hip hop desis are attracted to the nonconformist and politically
explicit theories of local rappers because of the questions they raise
and the responses they give. Hip hop culture provides an important
alternative that keeps race and structural inequality central to dis-
cussions in the Black—and increasingly national—public sphere,
even if it garners negative press (Pough 2004; Iton 2008; see also
Lipsitz 1998a). The commercialization and increasing visibility of
hip hop, particularly through music videos, has encouraged greater
consumption of this culture. This commodification has engendered
the racist stereotypes of Blackness and “realness” that the artists
resist but that nonetheless inform the responses of audiences and
limit the options of non-Blacks in hip hop. But the popularity of
this genre has also led to the emergence of Hip Hop studies and
town hall meetings around the country about the politics of Black
popular culture. If desi artists could not initially find a voice in
mainstream hip hop or in these scholarly discussions, they have re-
cently cleared some space and participate in national dialogues on
hip hop, identity, and justice (Nair and Balaji 2008).4 Yet the moti-
vation underlying the efforts of these artists is the pleasure that
overcomes them as they listen to the music of their generation.
Robin Kelley reminds popular culture scholars of the “deep vis-
ceral pleasures black youth derive from making and consuming cul-
ture” (1997: 37); the same can be said for South Asians and hip
hop. The pleasure of hip hop for desi artists is equal parts music
(or form, i.e., beats and track production) and message (or con-
tent, i.e., the lyrics). At first, KB felt that he “[got] into hip hop”
from such an early age because he was from Richmond, California.
“But looking back,” he revises, “when I was in third grade, hip hop
music was the only thing that ever really interested me, in terms of
music . . . In terms of my creativity, somehow the idea of putting
words on the paper, that style always intrigued me—something
about the way the words rhymed, the way they flowed.” The artists’
renditions of this love story portray their connection with hip hop
as neither surprising nor puzzling; they echo the reasons given by

The Appeal of Hip Hop 195

Filipino DJs in the Bay Area, Mexican Angelenos, and Asian b-​boys
and b-​girls in Hawai‘i (Osumare 2007). Music summons sonic and
visceral pleasure that we cannot reduce to technicalities of mes-
sage and form (see Sacks 2007). Part of the draw is that music is a
“universal language” that pulls these youths toward it. The “feel”
and “emotion” of hip hop may be considered “noise” to some lis-
teners, but it touches these desis, some of whom say it resonates
with forms of Indian music. It “can give a lot of feel,” says Deejay
Bella, stressing hip hop’s depth of knowledge and pleasure (Lipsitz
1994; Kelley 1997)—a view that contrasts with John McWhorter’s
claims in All about the Beat (2008) that the beats and rhythm of hip
hop deter social consciousness.
In his book McWhorter asks, “How many among us really be-
lieve there is a meaningful connection between that rap and making
people think in new ways—ways so new that the nation’s fabric
changes?” (143). Indeed, the engagement of mainstream desis with
hip hop appear to confirm McWhorter’s theory. I asked a number
of desi college students what they liked about rap music, and they
said that they “liked the beats” or that it was “something to dance
to” but they did not really “understand the words.” McWhorter and
these mainstream desis reflect the perspectives of individuals pri-
marily exposed to commercialized rap music. They may neither
contextualize the images and content of mainstream hip hop nor
approach the pleasure they derive from commercialized culture
through an oppositional viewpoint (hooks 1999). To argue that hip
hop is “just music” that is just “all about the beat” evades the depth
of pleasure and its link to politics. The range of today’s hip hop, in-
cluding that which is produced by South Asians, reveals hip hop-
pers across the nation to be embracing various levels of artistic,
anti-​racist, and political commitments. As Public Enemy in their
classic hit from 1989 “Fight the Power” explains, “As the rhythm
designed to bounce / What counts is that the rhymes / Designed to
fill your mind.” This in fact explains why many youths are so drawn
to the form and message of rap that they take part in its “legacy.” In
using hip hop as their voice desi artists engage debates on art and
politics and their growing presence becomes a model for other hip
hoppers and racialized immigrants. Yet form, content, and pleasure
do not cover the factors urging them in this direction.
Racism, which I have discussed at length in these pages, com-

196 The Appeal of Hip Hop

pels these youth to embrace hip hop and distinguishes them from
Whites. In place of alienation, it offers what Vivek calls “a wider
urbanish Black consciousness” that results in “automatic” rather
than “intentional” friendships with Black youths. Rocky, an MC
from Toronto, has sentiments that echo his United States counter-
parts; he “quickly related to” the music of N.W.A. and Public Enemy
“because they talked about racism, and how they were mistreated
by the authority for doing absolutely nothing.” Hip hop fills the
emptiness with an analytics to comprehend American race politics.
Music is central to the articulation by underrepresented individu-
als of their groups’ presence in America. Like hip hop, punk music
“projected a disdain for mainstream society that young Chicanos
found useful as a vehicle for airing their own grievances.” Chicano
fans found they could “gain visibility for their own views by em-
phasizing their families of resemblance to the alienations aired by
punk,” as desis do with hip hop (Lipsitz 1994: 85; see also Mahon
2004 on Black rockers). Chicanos and desis are also linked as Brown
youth for whom Black and White modes of expression cannot con-
tain their emergent identities. We find examples of Latinos and
South Asians turning to Black musical forms to express their racial
and American senses of self. According to Deborah Wong, “Iden-
tifying African American musics as a source for Asian American
expression becomes a way for Asian American musicians to rescue
certain possibilities made so difficult by racializations that muffle
and silence them” (2004: 179). Specific to the early favorites of desi
hip hop heads were those rappers who analyzed the nexus of the
individual within societal changes. For instance, gangsta rappers in
the 1980s not only glorified (and warned against) the prevalence of
drugs and violence in their communities; they also highlighted the
economic and political policies that led up to such travesties. Desis
are among the Asian and Latino youth who were attending college
when Californians passed Proposition 187 that denied social ser-
vices to undocumented immigrants, voted for Proposition 21 that
increasingly criminalized youth (Watkins 2005), and overturned af-
firmative action. The messages of hip hop helped them contextu-
alize these changes within broader histories of oppression. Thus,
while South Asians in Silicon Valley were making millions, other
desis rapped their responses to the troubling conservative backlash
of the time.

The Appeal of Hip Hop 197

 While co-​ethnics were hearing hip hop for the first time in col-
lege, the artists already found it their “sanctuary” and “savior.”
By “listen[ing] to everybody else’s shit,” D’Lo was able to “figure
out my shit.” When hip hop provided the answer, D’Lo “realized
that the only thing in life that was constant was music.” Beyond
“just the beats,” hip hop “fed” the desi artists and became a “lens”
through which they understood the world. Serving first as a “secret
jewel” that some held tight in private, creating music collectively
became “group therapy.”
Adopting hip hop is a political choice (Hebdige 1987; Strauss
1999) that enables the desi artists to confront hegemonic ideas
and carve their own paths (Mercer 1995). The artists embrace “con-
scious nonconformity” (Jones 1963: 187) in their world approach
and life choices. Ravi, the cofounder of an independent record
label, told me that hip hop often appeals to outcasts and misfits. It
is true that desi hip hoppers tend to be different, independent, and
nonconformist. Not only do they go against family and community
pressures to associate with the “proper” people and follow tradi-
tional paths; many of them also question the notion of “norms” in
the first place.
Hip hop is also attractive because it combines these desis’ inter-
ests in academics, music, and critical ideology. They were ques-
tioning the world as early as high school when music and critical
thinking came together with ideological force. For instance, had
it not been for two “hippie-​ish, really bright counterculture” high
school teachers, Jonny would have “stayed on the right track,” he
says with some irony, and might have become an accountant in-
stead of making the “somewhat adventurous” choice to become
a music journalist. Such teachers “armed” their students how to
think: “To question authority. To think for ourselves. To believe in
something. To discover how all is not what it seems. To really ex-
tend our thought process beyond the surface and to make connec-
tions amongst various elements.” These concepts were “really in-
toxicating and formed the foundation” of the rest of Jonny’s life.
Their lessons of critical thinking and challenging authority “all cul-
minated in empowering us as individuals, in having us realize we
could think for ourselves and weren’t just a cog in the big machine.”
Indeed, these lessons, later taught by ethnic studies college profes-
sors, echoed the ideas of their favorite rappers who were beginning

198 The Appeal of Hip Hop

to get airtime. Critical thinking skills developed their social aware-
ness, and the sermons of their favorite rappers articulated what
such a perspective could offer.
Desi hip hop artists fall within a legacy of non-Blacks drawn to
the rebellion in Black expressive forms—including the blues, jazz,
and hip hop—that refer to messages of revolt against the mas-
ter narratives of American history and meritocracy (Woods 1998).
These desis are attracted to hip hop’s rebellion as resistance against
oppression rather than rebellion as the wild side of life. In this way,
hip hop desis sometimes contend with their predicaments in ways
similar to earlier White jazz musicians. Jazz offered some Jews and
Italians a means through which to work out ethnic ambivalences
by enabling them to critique “mainstream” society and by serving
as an alternative to a sober middle-​class White American lifestyle
(Lipsitz 1994: 55). Hip hop’s desis, like White jazz musicians and
Chicano punk rockers, contest rebelliousness as their primary or
only motive. For example, some Whites in jazz ostracized them-
selves despite their access to a mainstream or privileged status and
chose to identify with Black performers, the nonconformists (Jones
1963: 200). Desis, particularly educated suburbanites, are also
non-Blacks with access to a (relatively) privileged identity. And as
non-Blacks who turn to a predominantly Black form, they too must
assess their status. In his book Blues People Amiri Baraka (LeRoi
Jones) reveals how White jazz artists “had to face the black Ameri-
can head-​on and with only a very literal drum to beat. And they
could not help but do this with some sense of rebellion of separate-
ness from the rest of white America” (1963: 152).
In the process of developing their critical perspectives, hip hop’s
nonconformity drew the desi artists to its form, content, and com-
munity. Beats and rhymes resonate with the performers, but hip
hop was not strictly responsible for developing their nonconform-
ism; instead, their sense of alienation and engagement with criti-
cal thinking inspired this move. The need to interrogate the world
preceded their engagement with the messages of hip hop in the late
1980s and early 1990s.
According to MC Humanity from Staten Island, New York, “The
ability of rap to [express] so much of what’s on a person’s mind
was something that drew me to it. The social messages and the
poetic wordplay were elements that made hip hop a part of me.”

The Appeal of Hip Hop 199

At a forum across the country in San Francisco, Davey D, a nation-
ally renowned Black DJ and hip hop commentator, confirmed that
“hip hop has always been political and reflected the conditions of
the people.” Hip hop is an ideology, a way of thinking, as well as a
way of being. Many fans who are drawn to the beats and images of
hip hop may be uninterested in the development of this culture, its
messages, or its producers. But its lyrical and overall content claim
center stage to its attraction for many minority youth, including the
South Asians who become expert rhymers, mixers, and producers.
Unlike some Latinos and Caribbean Islanders, desis do not
always share geographic, material, and racial overlaps with Blacks.
For instance, some Latino youths, particularly Puerto Ricans in
the South Bronx and Mexicans in Los Angeles, also felt excluded
from the American mainstream and became core participants in
the development of hip hop culture. Filipinos earned a remark-
able presence as some of the first mobile DJ sound system crews in
the 1980s in Daly City and Los Angeles (Wang, forthcoming). They
share South Asians’ ambiguous racial status and may feel linked
to Latinos as Brown Americans (particularly given their mestizo
Spanish and Catholic backgrounds), but their residential patterns
place them closer than most South Asians to Black communities
(such as Bayview, near Daly City). It is also not surprising that Cam-
bodians like PraCh in Long Beach, California, home to the rapper
Snoop Dogg, would go on to become MCs. But it is precisely desis’
non-Whiteness that radicalizes them and links them to hip hop.
The messages the artists felt the most were not the images of
rappers as gangsters and criminals that became status quo, particu-
larly with the rise of Los Angeles gangsta rap in the 1980s. Neither
were they drawn to lyrics that glorified money and the commodities
it could buy, even though this theme became so popular in the mid-​
1990s. Instead, they specifically picked up on the positive messages
of politicized rappers and were pulled to the early rhymes of resis-
tance that sonically and intellectually represented a counterhege-
monic and anti-​racist sensibility. The combination of Black Ameri-
can musicians’ “tradition of explaining reality and change” (Woods
1998: 25) and the consciousness “in the air” in the Bay Area and of
the music convinced these youth, critical thinkers all, that positive
social change could result from their participation. They learned
from street intellectuals like Ice Cube, Nas, and Public Enemy why

200 The Appeal of Hip Hop

they were treated as minorities and why they felt like “outcasts” and
“outsiders.”
As they came of age in college in the 1990s, a resistance ideol-
ogy counter to the status quo became more appealing as both a
method and a theory. These aspects of hip hop are similar to corridos,
or ballads of “poetic symbolic action” created within the context
of social struggle (Limón 1992: 170). The artist MC Humanity and
his cousin AbstractVision, were moved by the “raw, unrestrained
anger” of the Black rapping duo Dead Prez and the “South Asian
perspective” of Eng­land’s Asian Dub Foundation (ADF), who “had
a socially conscious message in all their music.” As a Pakistani Mus-
lim living in New York, MC Humanity says that he “related to the
racism [ADF] felt as South Asians, as well. They talk a lot about the
racial oppression felt by our communities and other communities
of color,” thereby echoing the global race consciousness that these
artists would later proclaim. The song “Colour Line” by ADF illus-
trates this appeal:
Today the colour line/is the power line/is the poverty line
Racism and imperialism work in tandem
And poverty is their handmaiden
Those who are poor and powerless to break out of their poverty
Are also those who by and large are non-​white, non-​western, third
world
Poverty and powerlessness are intertwined in colour, in race
Discrimination and exploitation feed into each other today, under
global capitalism

American rappers articulate how racism works in the United States,

and politicized British Asian music expresses how racism operates
across transnational communities. But analyses of oppression by
American desis are neither nation- nor race-​bound. One lesson
these artists share with their British and American counterparts is
that in order to critique racism one has to uncover its historical
workings. Thus, they evoke “history” and “ancestry” once they turn
their knowledge to action and produce their own rhymes.
Rappers like Chuck D and Queen Latifah taught listeners that
it is important to call out inequality and to see that the past im-
prints the present. Politicized desis incorporate this lesson in their
studies of subaltern colonialism and displacement, and it also

The Appeal of Hip Hop 201

informs their approach to music and identity formation. In con-
trast, Dick Hebdige emphasizes the aesthetics of style in bring-
ing together multiracial groups in Britain as it “displaces attention
away from the question of ethnic origin onto the question of how
to build affinities on a shared cultural and aesthetic ground” (1996:
141). Additionally, Oliver Wang believes that some Asian American
rappers attempt to use skills to trump race as a way to obviate the
need for a shared past; instead, they seem to embrace the popular
rapping veteran Rakim’s famous line, as quoted by Wang, “It ain’t
where you’re from, it’s where you’re at” (2007: 48). Desis diverge in
their compelling need to excavate the histories they see playing out
in contemporary relations and identifications.
Crates of records speak to Deejay Bella in the same way that an ar-
chive speaks to a historian: “So, instead of a book or a TV show, or
a documentary or film about a period of time in history, you know,
listening to a series of music is the same for me . . . [It’s] musical
knowledge and it’s history . . . ’Cause it’s the history of the way that
music is recorded [and] reflects the times.” These look backs that
emphasize context reject ahistorical discourses of the 1990s. Hip
hop as the Black CNN became a boisterous and informed response
to new coded forms of oppression. Rhymes that uncover how “cul-
ture can also function like a nature, and it [i.e., culture] can in particular
function as a way of locking individuals and groups a priori into a
genealogy, into a determination that is immutable and intangible
in origin” (Balibar 1991: 22) allow desis to engage strategically their
newly unearthed knowledge of South Asian pasts.
The artists harness the political potential of hip hop not only as an
ideology and response to racism but also as a methodology for ac-
quiring and relaying new forms of knowledge. Such practices evoke
Michel Foucault’s genealogical methodology of illuminating hid-
den histories to challenge master narratives that naturalize power
and group identities in his examination of discourses, hegemony,
and self-​discipline (see Foucault 1990, 1995). And while Foucault
may take issue with the artists’ quest for “truth,” the desis’ process
of becoming expert artists embodies his knowledge/power nexus.
Historicizing cultural norms and discourses, such as hegemonic
desiness, allows them to understand the power and production
of knowledge, such as “race,” and its metamorphosis into “com-
mon sense.” It was the rap group Public Enemy that put together

202 The Appeal of Hip Hop

these messages: to recognize and decode racism, to pay attention
to the past and illustrate broader contexts, and to articulate a race-​
conscious and resistant ideology.

From Black Power to Brown Pride

I learned a lot about the Black experience and saw that as the defining
framework for ANY race discussions in America.
—Jonny, hip hop journalist

“When I first heard Public Enemy,” D’Lo says, “I was blown away. I
was like, finally. It wasn’t like, ‘whoa, this is some cool shit.’ I was
like, FINALLY. I felt finally that it was like (pause), somebody
was finally gonna give me the space to say what I needed to say. I
was like, ‘oh, this is exactly what I was looking for.’” Every artist
in this project was influenced by Public Enemy—the Black Nation-
alist rap group initially formed by Chuck D and friends at a college
radio station in Long Island, New York—which rose to prominence
in the late 1980s and early 1990s.5 “Fight the Power,” one of their
most potent and popular songs, incites consciousness:
What we need is awareness, we can’t get careless
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
My beloved let’s get down to business
Mental self defensive fitness
. . . . . . . . . .
Make everybody see, in order to fight the powers that be
Lemme hear you say
Fight the Power!

“I’m Black and I’m proud,” this music exclaims, thereby filling the
artists with a deeper sense of self. D’Lo “thought it was so dope
that they were saying something. Public Enemy. To just even talk
about Black people and what they were gonna do for their people.”
Many Americans had never before confronted the fast-​pitched,
highly energetic sonic manifestos found on the album Fear of a Black
Planet. Chuck D’s lyrics proved that the past wasn’t past: “Most of
my heroes don’t appear on no stamps / Sample a look back you look
and find / Nothing but rednecks for 400 years if you check.”
The Black Nationalism of Public Enemy was also expressed by

The Appeal of Hip Hop 203

other artists of that time, including Ice Cube and Grand Puba, and
among more recent rappers like Boots Riley of the Coup, and the
deceased Tupac Shakur, who have roots in Oakland. While many
early hip hop tracks were party music, a good segment of late 1980s
and early 1990s rap took up where the Black Power Movement left
off, articulating disenchantment with static economic opportuni-
ties.6 Compton’s Ice Cube, in the song “A Bird in the Hand” (1991),
laments the slim job options for young Blacks without college de-
grees: “I didn’t have no money so now I have to hunch the / back
like a slave, that’s what be happenin’ / but whitey says there’s no
room for the African.” Some desis welcomed these California
rappers since they addressed local concerns that echoed the “Black
noise” of New York’s Public Enemy (Rose 1994).
Some young Black men and women who witnessed the disap-
pointments of the post–civil rights era in their cities called upon
hip hop to voice their anger. California’s rappers, including the so-​
called gangsta rappers of L.A., pointed their fingers at the fiscal
conservatism of Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr., the policies
of Republican Governor Pete Wilson, and the increasing police bru-
tality and incarceration of young Black and Latino men under the
LAPD’s Chief Daryl Gates (who helped create Special Weapons and
Tactics [SWAT] teams). Young desi teens heard these indictments
in the rhymes of Ice T’s “6 in the Mornin’” (1987) and, of course,
N.W.A.’s notorious “Fuck tha Police” (1988). These messages may
have bypassed those Asian immigrants who wished to close ranks
against the increasing volume of rap music, not expecting that this
music might appeal to some of their own children.
In this context, it may be surprising that the cries to “fight the
power” spoke to middle-​class South Asian Americans who had
benefited from “the system.” Not all of the artists were privileged,
as I noted earlier, and many witnessed these structural changes
firsthand. Despite their youth, these South Asian artists were like
the Asian American jazz musicians who saw “their own activities
as an expression of an important political moment” linked to the
activism of the 1960s (Wong 2004: 179). Chuck D and his group ex-
pressed a politically oriented understanding of the United States.
And for these desis, the call to “fight the power” reflected not only
American racial dynamics but also anticolonial struggles abroad.
Hip hop’s desis agreed: “don’t believe the hype” of South Asian

204 The Appeal of Hip Hop

stereotypes and the purity and exceptionalism of desi culture. As
Jonny explains, “I think hip hop’s anti-​establishment sensibili-
ties resonated with the general feeling I felt about me—reveling
in being different and ‘un-​mainstream.’ Hip hop at that time was
really political, whether it was obvious (Public Enemy) or not (De
La Soul).” These youths were politically committed to understand-
ing and critiquing the system, and Public Enemy shouted that there
would be repercussions.
At first the performers adopted, wholesale, Public Enemy’s mes-
sage as their own. The artists were not exposed to a sufficiently criti-
cal narrative of the desi experience with regard to race and discrimi-
nation. Thus, their initial reaction was to align themselves with
Blacks and to see how they fit into the Black American experience.
Jonny says that, “for a short time, I think I became seduced with
Black culture and I used the politics to justify my seduction after
the fact.” In time, however, they realized that in order to apply Black
Power ideologies to their own contexts, they needed to resolve how
hip hop could address their own experiences.
Musical desis sampled these powerful messages and mixed them
with their awareness of the South Asian histories and immigrant
processes that shaped their lives. As D’Lo notes, after hearing Pub-
lic Enemy for the first time “I immediately started claiming ‘Brown
Power’ out my mouth.” D’Lo later relayed this distinction to his/her
cousin from Toronto (home to a population of Sri Lankan wartime
refugees) who wore a Malcolm X cap. “Why are you wearing that?”
D’Lo asked him. “You can’t touch that, that’s Black people’s thing,”
D’Lo schooled him. “We got to reclaim something for ourselves.”
But, looking around, where were the corresponding desi-​based ar-
ticulations? Before they could produce it themselves, the desi artists
translated Black Nationalist sentiments by racializing their ethnic
identities through addressing power and history. D’Lo epitomizes
how individuals can cultivate interminority and international re-
lations when non-Blacks identify with Blacks without confusing
themselves as Black. I was curious how D’Lo developed a perspec-
tive that recognized racial crossovers while maintaining a sense of
difference. “It’s just like you couldn’t be stupid,” s/he responded.
Also, it came with D’Lo’s choice to disidentify with Whites, unlike
many other middle-​class desis. Jonny and D’Lo were attempting to
sort out a racialized self-​conception not provided in mainstream

The Appeal of Hip Hop 205

discourses of how individuals come together in groups rooted in
both “sameness” and “difference.” The distinctions between the
experiences of immigrants and native-​born minorities, between
Brownness and Blackness, mattered, and yet these individuals
could come together as minorities concerned about social change.
In a seemingly ironic twist, Black Nationalism inspired the art-
ists to develop Brown Pride. At this point, some of them realized
that through this move they could maintain their identities as desis
without having to claim a Black identity. Thus, their worldviews did
not transcend racial distinctions; rather they took into account how
racialization operates upon different populations. Brown Pride em-
phasizes that race cannot be forsaken for some utopian and tran-
scendent humanism or other category of sameness. The identity
politics of Black Power limited the legitimacy of non-Black claims
to it, which encouraged the young desis’ processes of remixing
Black Nationalist rap messages into ethnic awareness in their own
lyrics. D’Lo, for instance, who was facing homophobia as well as
racism in his/her youth, was also concerned about the civil war in
Sri Lanka and the political, social, and nation-​conscious nature of
rap helped him/her make sense of this.
Thus, the desi hip hop producers drew on the messages of the
1990s to politicize and racialize their ethnicity, and they examined
their relationships with Blacks at home and South Asians abroad.
Jonny explained that “it was through [Black popular culture that] I
then discovered my own politics . . . I started to gain pride in being
both Indian and contrarian,” and in his reworking this view was not
a contradiction. Jonny in fact was able to develop both of these as-
pects of his identity—his Indianness and his being against the desi
grain—in college through Black music, which became the “lens”
through which he viewed the world. Being “Brown” and being a
hip hop head did not define Jonny’s identity so much as express a
worldview: being a critical thinker, questioning the norms of so-
ciety, delving into race politics, and cultivating an appreciation for
aesthetics.
Hip hop’s desis didn’t respond to Public Enemy as either Blacks
or Whites—as their call to Black Power, as an attack (feeling that
Public Enemy was shouting at them), or as a stylistic choice. They
responded as non-White youth, the Brown children of immigrants,
and as minorities. Public Enemy and other influential rap groups

206 The Appeal of Hip Hop

cultivated among desis an explicitly racialized, politicized concep-
tion and vocabulary for racial pride as Brown people, the very iden-
tity upon which Whites have enacted racism against them. But po-
litical rhymes also compelled them to create more inclusive visions
of the oppressed. In his/her poem “When You Have no Choice,”
D’Lo recites:
We hear the stories
Of Mothers getting caught in the crossfire between gun and son
Of young girls getting raped
with sticks and poles
Of men tortured to death by fire
Of children snatched and sliced open
for the whole world to see . . .
In Kwanju, In Sri Lanka, In Newark, In the Philippines, In Mexico
We banded together to fight
ignorance and arrogance
We had no choice but to take up arms

D’Lo’s connection is a global one to peoples at war for a freedom

that “Comes with a price / And no one questions whether it’s worth
it.” Although s/he loves Sri Lanka, D’Lo also criticizes the corrup-
tion and laments the situation of children who have never lived in
a nation of peace:
Regardless, we are an alcoholic nation run by alcoholics
who fail with the militants thru negotiations to bring on peace for
the nation.
Don’t think I’m lying . . .
But besides all the bullshit,
we all love our island even if it is still in political turmoil

Hip hop has also always been, and continues to be, a voice of
resistance—a critical interrogation of the “establishment.” How-
ever, through D’Lo’s loving criticism we also see the artists take
part in a hip hop conversation of internal community critique, and
therein is another powerful reason for why it appeals to some South
Asian Americans. By listening—really listening—to rap lyrics, espe-
cially those created before the mid-​1990s, desis in hip hop reflected
on how rappers’ articulations about being Black, and the condi-
tions of Black men and women in America, related to their own

The Appeal of Hip Hop 207

experiences. In many ways it confirmed their developing race con-
sciousness. But they also used it to speak back to those things they
found problematic within their ethnic communities, including
those outside the United States, thereby expanding diasporic dia-
logues through Black music. Hip hop was an appropriate vehicle
for their immigrant perspective on global and local matters of in-
equality. And what they did with it, like the Spanish-​infused rap
music of the Nuyoricans and the Mexican Angelenos, encourages
other hip hop heads to look beyond both the nation and racial cate-
gorization.
Like the blues, hip hop provides epistemology (Woods 1998:
29); desis, in turn, improvise upon it. If America’s most oppressed
group can celebrate and express such fierce resistance and pride
through the blues, jazz, and hip hop, perhaps overlooked desis can
also adopt this form to articulate their developing voice. Often the
artists do this by forging communities with individuals who share
“like ideology” rather than by bonding within exclusively defined
categories. Counterintuitively, the message of Black Nationalist rap
has taught some artists that ideology, rather than identity, is critical
to advancing an anti-​racist, critically aware perspective of the world.
Their Third World race consciousness, articulated by Malcolm X as
I show in the beginning of this book, melds Chuck D’s racial out-
rage with Gandhian principles of tolerance and love. These sons
and daughters of formerly colonized people create a global race
consciousness that is particularly attentive to the international and
cross-​racial impacts of White supremacy and United States hege-
mony.
Desi artists who make diasporically attuned hip hop feel the
solo and the social draw of hip hop. Chee, for instance, often says
that through hip hop he came to understand himself better. And
while music production, rhyme writing, turntabalism, and master-
ing a track are often solo endeavors, the artists also turn outward
in making hip hop their life. The sonic appeal of the music leads
them to cultivate multiracial communities of interest centered on a
shared lifestyle. According to Deejay Bella, “When you meet other
people who are interested in [music] as well . . . it just deepens
your knowledge and just keeps you in that realm.” And beyond their
love of hip hop (“because, frankly, a lot of people like hip hop,” ad-

208 The Appeal of Hip Hop

mits Jonny), shared values and perspectives brings together hip hop
heads.
The artists’ musical and activist commitments reinforce one an-
other: some teach in public schools, trace the effects of environ-
mental racism, and hire young Black men and women in their com-
panies to try to counteract the unequal playing field for minorities
in education and employment. Others have worked for Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch, and have created their own
social justice organizations. Asma, a Muslim Indian woman from
Richmond, California, became a radio producer of a popular urban
radio talk show and a radio news director. Her interest in public and
youth-​based programming for the masses emerged from dinner-
time conversations with her parents about illiteracy in India. D’Lo
was able to explore why things in the world were not right through
women-​centered collaborations and antiwar performances. Hip
hop is a form that decries racism and other issues these artists have
faced by giving them substance, form, and a platform for expres-
sion.
Desi artists revel in hip hop’s “capacity to challenge the old racial
politics” (Kitwana 2005: 4). Latinos, South Asians, and other Asian
Americans also change the old racial politics, and thus move beyond
Black and White conceptions of racial identifications and commu-
nity. Public Enemy gave D’Lo the opening to articulate his/her fears
and frustrations about the war in Sri Lanka, and then s/he made it
his/hers: “Because I so strongly identified with Sri Lanka and what
was going on there,” s/he says, “. . . that sort of set me apart in a
way where hip hop became mine. . . . Because that was the vehicle,
the culture, that I even had a platform to talk about the injustice.
’Cause nothing else in this world would. And [if ] I can talk about
shit that’s going on in my life, then that allows for other people to
talk about shit in their life, do you get what I’m saying?” The art-
ists took part in a dialogic process of give and take, learning about
the experiences of some young urban Blacks and making hip hop a
voice for some young South Asians, thereby contributing an impor-
tant perspective to hip hop (Rose 1994). They are like the Cambo-
dian rapper PraCh, for instance, who creates a “transnational hip
hop nation” by drawing parallels between America’s genocide of
Southeast Asians with “Whites to the Blacks” (Schlund-​Vials 2008).

The Appeal of Hip Hop 209

Desi performers, too, inform audiences, including Blacks, about
South Asian pasts and predicaments. These are political acts at the
level of everyday action rooted in informed sampling and dialogic
exchange.
A central draw of hip hop for these performers is its give-​and-​
take nature; or, as the African art historian Robert Thompson de-
scribes, “Black music communalizes” (quoted in Cosentino 1992:
54). Participants are joined not only by shared experiences but also
shared references, or “public secrets” (Jackson 2008), that help
define a community. Beyond this, desis do not just join with like-​
minded individuals but instead take an active role in giving back to
audiences those things that hip hop has so critically given them.
The rapper KB emphasizes the social aspects of hip hop as commu-
nity building, as follows: “People. People have things to say. And
when people are talking about something they care about and put
so much emphasis into it, it’s beautiful.” But in order to “break
down barriers,” as artists like D’Lo and KB do, they must express
their messages to audiences, who are often quite stuck on either their
images (an Indian rapper?) or their deep bass lines. The message is
primary; the music is the vehicle of delivery. “I’m a lot more about
the words than the music, myself,” KB says. The messages they offer
are positive as they perform new models of desiness.
The artists’ international lens and incorporation of South Asian
samples also calls to mind the fact of the cross-​Atlantic conti-
nuities evident within hip hop music, including the storytelling
of West African griots and the percussive-​based music and Jamai-
can toasting that influenced rapping (Thompson 1983). Cyclical,
rooted in community, the use of call and response—the kinds of
sociality that Brown artists foster on the dance floor are grounded
in practices that are foundational to Black music but expand be-
yond African-​descended communities. Thus, perhaps even more
than they are aware, the deployment by desis of traditionally Black
practices alters the meanings and representations of ethnicity
and race in the United States. Sammy, cofounder of Rukus Avenue
Records, describes how desis elevate their standing in the United
States by harnessing hip hop’s potential: “It’s always been about a
social consciousness . . . Here we are and we’re standing between
our culture and everybody else saying, ‘here, come on up to our
world and this is how we choose to do it.’” Jonny felt the same

210 The Appeal of Hip Hop

tug from earlier rappers: “It felt like you were playing for the team
that was just beginning to rise to the top.” This is about more than
the camaraderie and sociality of producing music with a message
that moves the crowd. Despite the obstacles they face, the artists
are nourished by expressing themselves, being heard, and connect-
ing with their audiences. Deejay Bella relays with a huge smile the
joys of giving back: “When you love music so much, you want to
keep playing it. And when you can play it in a flow, in a continu-
ous flow, it makes the whole emotion that much heavier, that much
deeper . . . Music is a collaborative thing.” And, in response, she
gets back what she gives: “It’s amazing. It’s amazing that somebody
you’ve never met before, who’s never met you, actually felt what you
played, and would actually tell you that.” Hip hop emerges from
these intangible links between music, visceral responses, and the
bonds among collaborators.
As these individuals invest their time and money, becoming ex-
perts and professional performers, they explain that hip hop made
them, rather than the other way around. One DJ says that “having a
lot of music around, talking about music all the time” is very neces-
sary. For an MC, music is “always on my mind. I’m always thinking
about this.” They listen to it, think about it, talk about it, read it,
write it, make it. Constantly. Music is at the center of their lives. And
just as hip hop was a voice for disenfranchised Blacks, it has become
a voice for this range of middle class desis who feel compelled to ex-
press their experiences and understand the world around them. For
these youths hip hop is not a “phase” in response to generational
conflicts and the difficulties of adjusting to life as immigrants. They
have spent the majority of their lives in and around hip hop culture,
whether producing, writing, and rhyming in the studio or at home,
clubs, or shows. They are drawn to the counterhegemonic messages
and the sonic force of this culture still rooted in resistance against
oppression and the status quo. It is “good music” that appeals to
critical thinkers because it is filled with politicized vocabularies
that theorize and claim witness to race, difference, and inequality
in America.
There are no straightforward or clear-​cut distinctions of how
South Asian Americans entered hip hop and what they did once
they became established artists. Some of them, like KB (Karmacy),
Rawj (Feenom Circle), and Chee (Himalayan Project), are drawn

The Appeal of Hip Hop 211

to lyrics and performance. The accessibility and “practicality” of
the technical aspects, like mixing and producing, draw others,
like Bella and Sammy. Nonetheless, the desi artists love and dedi-
cate their lives to this culture for almost identical reasons. It draws
those who “go against the grain” and are nonconformist. It is also
a culture that accepts many people who are rejected by their ethnic
communities. Hip hop is a way for them to remain true to self
through a racially conscious but not race-​exclusive approach; after
all, it enables their transnational identities and ethnic expressions.
They say it best expresses their worldviews and their social loca-
tions and commitments. Rap music speaks to these desis and it is
their ultimate hope that their own carefully crafted messages reach
the ears of others. But how do these individuals conceptualize who
owns hip hop culture, what its relation is to Blackness, and how
non-Black producers earn a rightful place?

The Blackness of Hip Hop: Whose Is It, Anyway?

Maybe Blacks cling to rap because it is ours. Hands down. Period . . .
It coincides with the slang, “secret culture” that Blacks use to relate to
one another . . . that common bond, which is the underlying principle
of what culture really means. Heck, you’re an anthropologist, you know
what I mean.—Anthony, Black hip hop fan from Oakland, California
A coolie that can spit some lyrics? Oh, you’re going to be a star!
—a Black rapper to a desi MC

I asked Anthony, an old college friend of mine who first introduced

me to both hip hop and his friends and family in Oakland, what hip
hop meant to him. Like D’Lo, Anthony, who did not have an easy
life, found hip hop “therapeutic”—a way to “express yourself about
your anger.” But now, over a decade since I asked him this question,
I must reconsider seriously whether or not Blacks still own hip hop,
“hands down”? And even whether Blacks still own hip hop. Who is
included in this “secret culture,” and is there something “Black” at
its core? These debates force Brown hip hoppers to deal with their
position within a Black art form, which they do by reconceptualiz-
ing the culture in a way that includes them. The debates are deeply
contested ones and it is not my intention to provide the ultimate

212 The Appeal of Hip Hop

answers. Instead, I analyze what the explanations by South Asian
artists of their place in hip hop tell us about Blackness, representa-
tion, the politics of location, and the ownership of culture. Surpris-
ingly, although these desis consider themselves legitimate hip hop
artists, they do not all agree that hip hop is multiracial. Ultimately,
these non-Black performers highlight not only the racial politics of
culture, but the fact that popular culture is a highly political field
in which transformative action around race (rather than “above” it)
can take place. Debates that loom large—including contests over
ownership and authenticity—often obscure these facts.
Ironically, the very principles and practices foundational to hip
hop, including its community-​based and populist grounding, have
given rise to some of the most debated topics among fans about
what—and who—constitutes “real” hip hop. “There’s always been
a yin and yang in the community and what comes out is what the
community allows,” Davey D says of hip hop. “Hip hop is what
the people is . . . Hip hop is all of us.” But Davey D tends to agree
with Imani Perry’s explicit statement that “hip hop music is black
American music” (2004: 9–10). What is at stake in the Blackness of
hip hop? Analyses that reduce “the community” to Blacks, even for
strategic reasons, are problematic because they reify both Blacks
and hip hop and render Black expressive forms static. And because
the artists draw from these conceptions, they have a difficult time
describing both the Blackness of hip hop and their own locations.
Hip hop is rooted in practices of other Black musical forms, in-
cluding the oral tradition (going back to African griots), call and
response, and improvisation, all of which work to cultivate and
define the parameters of community along with pleasure and self-​
expression (Thompson 1983). With changing technology and the
particular historical juncture in which hip hop arose (Rose 1994),
sampling, new forms of cutting and mixing, and rhymers’ mes-
sages relayed in ciphers combine to make hip hop not only parallel
anti-​essentialist identity formation but also open to adoption by
ever-​expanding communities. In fact, these aspects are generative
of the political adoption of hip hop by individuals across color and
national lines. Still, perhaps the biggest issue surrounding disputes
over racial authenticity in this area are the effects of corporate capi-
talism and the problematic and profit-​driven links that corporate

The Appeal of Hip Hop 213

leaders make between racist stereotypes of Black men and women
with “real” hip hop. It is profitable for businesses to sell the images
of Black masculinity and femininity, including notions of sexuality
and criminality, that emerged during slavery (Collins 2004). Com-
panies wanting to reach larger (i.e., White) audiences turn com-
mercial forms of hip hop consumption into voyeuristic fetishiza-
tions of the other that naturalize the status quo. Thus, while hip
hop practices encourage its adoption, the stakes of some busi-
nesses and individuals in claiming hip hop reify it as a Black-​only
enterprise, even as these stakes work at cross-​purposes.
The common perception that “real” hip hop is created only by
urban Black males is molded by corporate White interests. The pro-
cess of cultural development intersects with its commercializa-
tion by global and local capital that reifies both hip hop and the
producers of this culture. The process of commodification de-
contextualizes objects by transforming its content and producers
into something palatable for mass consumption. Reified forms of
Blackness thus become consumed by those who are unaware, un-
concerned perhaps, of its producers and the context of cultural
production. The heterogeneity of members of the African dias-
pora, crisscrossed by ethnicity, gender, sexuality, political views,
immigration status, and a host of other factors that critically define
individuals, becomes lost in translation. Mainstream desis, for in-
stance, substitute this reality with static one-​dimensional images
perpetuated in the media and by politicians because it accommo-
dates their perspectives.
The historical appropriation of Black music by Whites has under-
standably made “ownership” a central concern about power, rep-
resentation, and recognition (monetary and otherwise). So where
do Asians stand? Shall we flip Davey D’s example about Latinos and
say, “Asian to me is White?” The communal nature of hip hop con-
fuses the question of authenticity: hip hop culture, itself, questions
the concepts of purity and individual authorship through sam-
pling and remixing, thereby complicating the idea of copyright-
able intellectual property (see Sharma 1999). So can South Asian
Americans not be authentic rappers? Its cutting-​edge and rapidly
changing nature highlights the ephemeral, rather than static and
pure, character of symbols, signs, and commodities, and of cul-
ture itself (Gilroy 1993b). If we apply these same concepts not only

214 The Appeal of Hip Hop

to expressive forms but to race itself, the political potential of hip
hop expands. Nonetheless, the meanings and representations of
“Blackness” and Black people must remain at the center of conver-
sations about the ownership and authorship of hip hop. This ex-
pressive culture is unequivocally rooted in Black aesthetic forms
and comes from the perspectives of this particularly racialized and
disenfranchised population.
Hip hip is not either a multiracial art form or a Black one. Rather,
hip hop is a multiracial production of Black popular culture. This
conception differs from that of Perry, who asks, “Why can’t some-
thing be black (read Black American) and be influenced by a number
of cultures and styles at the same time” (2004: 10)? In my formula-
tion, hip hop is undeniably tied to the experiences of Blacks and to
a lineage of Black musics, but it is more than influenced by a “num-
ber of cultures and styles.” Blacks represent a variety of cultures and
styles and non-Blacks have contributed centrally to this creation,
illustrated in recent historical studies, although none have dealt
with South Asian Americans. Debaters often overlook the diverse
and diasporic roots of Blacks in America; post-​1965 immigrants
from the Caribbean—particularly from Jamaica, homeland of the
legendary DJ Kool Herc and second-​generation islanders such as
Busta Rhymes and Biggie Smalls—infused early hip hop with the
sounds of reggae and dancehall. Jeff Chang’s Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop
(2005) details the participation of Latinos on the East and West
Coasts. The Chicano Angeleno Kid Frost and the Cuban, Mexican,
and Italian MCs that comprise Cypress Hill were popular and influ-
ential artists in the 1990s. The more recent fame of Nuyoricans like
Big Pun, Fat Joe (RIP), and Angie Martinez, along with the global
phenomenon of reggaeton, only hint at the overall presence of
Latinos that has inspired Spanish rhymes among even non-​Latino
Blacks.
Mentioning these revisionist histories often provokes unproduc-
tive debates about “real” or “diluted” music, concepts that Baraka
(LeRoi Jones 1963) applies to his interpretation of Whites in jazz
and the blues, which trap music as an unchanging pure form. How
much more productive would it be were we to reorient the owner-
ship/authenticity debate by focusing on an artist’s approach to hip
hop, rather than on an artist’s identity? This anti-​essentialist ap-
proach evaluates the artists’ motives, skills, and locations within

The Appeal of Hip Hop 215

urban culture without erasing hip hop as an American Black cul-
tural formation deeply attendant to the politics of race that also
extends beyond those commonly considered “Black.” Centering
our analysis on artists’ approaches to hip hop displaces hegemonic
Blackness (and maleness and a working class status) as the requi-
site(s) for “real” hip hop. As a result, diverse representatives of hip
hop can become antidotes to the monotonous and flattened depic-
tions of commodified Blackness. This perspective does not “take
away” hip hop from the young urban Black males who create it;
rather it represents the membership and concerns of an expansive
hip hop nation.
Some non-Blacks are grabbed by this culture because of their
race consciousness that emerges from their experiences as Ameri-
can minorities. The investment of these desis in hip hop is a politi-
cal act of race-​conscious identification. They “sincerely adopt hip
hop,” which includes “their embrace of both the aesthetic and po-
litical location of blackness” rather than deracializing Black cul-
tural formations (Perry 2004: 27).7 The hip hop nation is indeed
multiracial and transnational, but this is not to say that it has tran-
scended the import of race. Hip hop culture, in fact, can provide the
platform for expanding racial matters beyond people of African de-
scent precisely because of its attention to racism. It enables multi-
racial conversations among individuals who articulate their linked
fates. American desis who become artists engage with Blacks who
shape their awareness of the politics of hip hop. As producers, they
contend with being non-Blacks in a highly racialized field. Their
strategy is to call upon the race-​conscious vocabulary of hip hop
to explain themselves while they expand the parameters of main-
stream rap music—and perhaps of Blackness, itself—by their pres-
ence and perspectives.

Desi Artists Locate Themselves in Hip Hop

Two central issues shape desi performers’ conceptions of hip hop:
its racial dynamics as a culture rooted in the experiences of Blacks
in the United States, and the influence of White corporate inter-
ests in depoliticizing and commodifying stereotyped “Blackness.”
When a Black countercultural form marries major capitalist inter-

216 The Appeal of Hip Hop

ests marketed to mainstream consumers, fans question the “real-
ness” or “authenticity” of the form. Mainstream consumers, who
are mostly but not all White, determine and want hip hop to be like
the rapper 50 Cent—Black, male, and from the ’hood. As a result,
this rapid commodification pushes debates about the racial mem-
bership of the hip hop nation into a global conversation. Musicians
are deeply implicated in and often torn by the constraints and dy-
namics of capital as they try to produce, promote, and distribute
their art. The artists agree that commodified hip hop is inauthen-
tic (c)rap. They universally dislike the commercial marketing of
rap music because they see media representations as neither Black
culture nor hip hop, but rather the peddling of racist stereotypes
and the (uncool) sale of coolness. The corporations’ disinterest in
explicitly political rappers who criticize big business and capital-
ism at large for advancing racism and economic oppression further
dissuade the identification of desis with commercial rap—similar
to their disidentification with other hegemonic forms. Therefore,
none of the artists locate themselves within commercial hip hop,
first because it is closed to them as non-Blacks, and second because
they feel commercial rap is about neither the message nor ideology
of hip hop. This explains why all of the desi MCs produce socially
conscious music along with party tracks, battle raps, and nostalgic
looks back, which they usually self-​produce and promote out of
their backpacks and the trunks of their cars.8
Although the artists detach themselves from mainstream rap,
their conception of hip hop’s racial politics often contradicts their
sense as legitimate MCs and DJs. Some call upon the transcen-
dent multiracial quality of hip hop today; these artists tend to cre-
ate ethnic hip hop. A second perspective, held by those who create
racialized hip hop, believe that hip hop is, at its core, Black. Neither
perspective accounts for their identification as artists—a short-
coming of how we speak about race in the United States. Despite
their varying viewpoints on this matter, in their socializing and
music making their lives resemble one another more than they dif-
fer. Neither hip hop as racially transcendent nor hip hop as strictly
Black suffices. Ultimately, their theorizations reveal a movement
toward a third perspective, which can be characterized by Vivek’s
conception of a “wider Black consciousness.”

The Appeal of Hip Hop 217

 Transcending Race: A Voice of the People
Originally, it was a Black art form, but it’s not anymore. It’s transcended
all those boundaries. And it applies to people now. Hip hop is about
people. It’s about unity, about fostering equality among people. It gives
people a voice.—KB, desi Karmacy MC

Nearly half of the artists share KB’s notion that hip hop is a voice
of the people, and that hip hop has transcended the boundaries
of race. These proponents argue that although hip hop stemmed
from the Black experience of oppression in America, it has now ex-
panded to become universal, much like other Black musical forms.
As a result, non-Black artists can partake in its creation. According
to KB, “Hip hop arose out of the struggle of oppressed people . . .
It was a way to express those emotions that couldn’t otherwise be
expressed.”9
Artists espousing this transcendent view of hip hop argue that
fans erase its multiracial history in order to emphasize hip hop as
a culture for, by, and about Black people. The multiracialists chal-
lenge my college friend Anthony’s insistence that hip hop belongs
to Blacks, “Hands down. Period.” Asian Americans may be hard
pressed to claim to have been a sizable presence in hip hop’s earli-
est renditions, but Asian cultural formations, including martial arts
films, were influential. Thus, some non-Black artists within the hip
hop community contend with their non-Black status by pointing to
hip hop as a culture of change, now open to non-Blacks.
A contradiction emerges, however, when we notice that the art-
ists who stand by this perspective often feel placeless in mainstream
hip hop where the record label owners tend to be White and the art-
ists they sign are most often Black. Although these desis want to use
hip hop as a platform, they feel they have to create a distinctly South
Asian space outside the mainstream. One producer, for instance,
worked for a major music company but felt there was no room to
express himself as an Indian. This inspired artists like Sammy to
alter the recognizable form and sound of hip hop and fuse it with
South Asian instrumentals and immigrant themes in order to target
desi audiences. This ethnic form of hip hop epitomizes their con-
cept that hip hop is a “multiracial creation.” Perhaps music tran-

218 The Appeal of Hip Hop

Karmacy rapper KB performs at the House of Blues.
Author’s photograph.
scends boundaries, but hip hop has not transcended racial politics
within the United States, which inflects hip hop, thereby making
some desis feel marginalized.
Some who share this perspective link the inclusive nature of hip
hop to what they deem to be the positive aspects of the culture’s in-
creasing ties to global capital. Sammy says that hip hop “is grow-
ing now. Hip hop is not only growing through power structures,
but also through cultural and social structures.” He says that as hip
hop has exploded as a business, what was once limited to a “Black
struggle for [their] minority environment” has now changed and
has begun “to go in a different direction.” The commodification of
Black popular culture has taken troubling forms, yet the waves of
global capital also carry the voices of formerly silenced populations
around the world. Also, the Internet supplants some of the music
monopolies and exposes audiences to a polyvalent array of music.
The increasing accessibility and conspicuous presence of hip hop is
representative of a generation. Whereas Bakari Kitwana (2002) uses
“the hip hop generation” to describe Blacks born between 1965 and
1984, Sammy argues that “we’re known as the hip hop generation. I
think that it’s the voice of an Indian generation.” Thus, in this view,
as the United States has changed so, too, have groups’ experiences
and their place in the world.
The perspectives of these South Asian record label owners and
MCs are telling in light of how youths locate themselves in America,
but they may advocate popular discourses that leave them politi-
cally, if not culturally, voiceless. A “multiracial” conception of hip
hop borrows the logic of multiculturalism, in which all differences
are seen to be equal without particular attention to the power differ-
entials across groups (see Wang 2007). Yet, the artists’ own atten-
tion to history and power alleviates ahistoricism, and it is voiceless-
ness rather than a desire for equal representation that inspires their
lyricism. Sammy and KB express themselves because of their sense
that South Asians have lacked a voice in America; a sense that also
drew Black and Puerto Rican youths to develop this expression in
the first place. Second-​generation desis are often disenfranchised
socially, rather than economically, due to their invisibility in social
and political arenas. And the position and vocalization of Blacks
who reject their own disenfranchisement leads desi performers to
a culture they interpret to be open to the multivocality of its mem-

220 The Appeal of Hip Hop

bers. Although hip hop is entrenched in racial politics, it offers
tools to bridge differences by discussing universal issues and de-
sires. The way that artists like KB, Sammy, Swap, and Nimo use
Black popular culture challenges people’s stereotypes about “Asian
rappers” and also denaturalizes the link between Blackness and hip
hop by claiming space in hip hop as South Asians.

True Rap Is Black at Its Core, the Underground Is Multiracial

True rap and hip hop is about and for Black people. Mainstream hip hop
is commercial crap that just exemplifies everything that is wrong with
the racial structures that exist in this country. Although I don’t have a
problem with non-Blacks producing hip hop (including South Asians!),
to define the genre, you must polarize your perception and the genre
itself—so hip hop must remain Black music because it must remain hip
hop.—Arun, desi remix DJ

The second perspective on the racial dynamics of hip hop, at times

subject to the circular logic employed in Arun’s words above, states
that “hip hop is essentially Black, but there’s room for us in the
underground.”10 Nearly half of the artists in my study articulate this
view, many of them MCs who produce racialized rhymes for hip
hop heads rather than ethnic hip hop targeting desi youth. “Hip
hop is still based in the Black experience because race matters so
much,” says a Nepali fan who married a multiracial Black woman.
Some of these advocates also argue that hip hop remains by and for
Black people and that Black youths’ tastes determine what hip hop
“is.” So in order for one to produce “legitimate hip hop,” Blacks
need to purchase one’s music. But does one have to be Black to cre-
ate hip hop? If so, who is Black? The artists’ responses are contra-
dictory because it is difficult to maintain that hip hop is by and for
Black people and yet account for one’s deep participation as some-
one who does not consider oneself to be Black. Like Jonny who ar-
gues that the immigrant experience is framed by the Black experi-
ence in America, these writers, DJs, and MCs consider themselves
to be “people of color” whose experiences are parallel to but not
conflated with those of Blacks.
As hip hop artists, some South Asians move in primarily local,
social, and musical settings where Black peers often set the stan-

The Appeal of Hip Hop 221

dards. These peers, according to the South Asian rappers, unequivo-
cally accept them because these desis do not attempt to portray
themselves as Black. “It’s never been an issue,” Rawj explains. “I’ve
never once felt like [people thought], ‘Oh my god, look at them!!’”
He laughs, “I’ve always felt part of the whole movement. I was in a
group that was 6/7ths Black. Nobody ever said, ‘how are we going
to sell music when we have this Indian kid?’” Many of the MCs ex-
press that while they do not face censure from Black friends, they
still feel subjected to a double standard. Rawj acknowledges that
Indians are visual outsiders but does not hold a grudge because
“it’s still African American music.” Chee, of Himalayan Project,
battles in ciphers and at open mic events where he displays aggres-
sive wordplay and rhyming skills—both of which he can employ to
address or counter the crowd’s skepticism of seeing an Indian rap-
per; his male status is expected. Doubters have approached Chee
and have called him out by referencing his Indianness derogatively
in their freestyles. Chee responds to this challenge by coming on
strong and sticking to the tenets of battle rapping—the diss (dis-
respect)—while also holding fast to its racial rules: “I don’t diss
them as a race or a people. But I’ll be like, ‘yo, your style is wack.’ If
you got wack clothes on, you got a fucked up haircut, I’ll say some
shit. That’s what battling is about, you know?” Then, like Rawj, he
adds, “But I understand. Because I’m an Indian in hip hop, so I ex-
pect that. But I’m not going to give it back because that’s not the
way to handle it.” Like White musicians who pay homage to the
roots of jazz in Black culture, the approaches taken by these MCs
come from their comprehension that slavery and the legacy of dis-
enfranchisement shapes the content and form of hip hop as well as
its politics of exclusion and inclusion. Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones
1963) explains that Whites who identified with jazz music and its
creators, in recognizing the humanity of Blacks in a nation that did
not, found themselves outside the mainstream. And in the case of
both the midcentury White jazz musicians and the millennial desi
rappers, their cross-​racial identifications are a choice as opposed to
the situation for their Black counterparts.
During a lengthy discussion at a busy café near the Berkeley
campus, Rawj, casually dressed in jeans and a T-​shirt, related his
thoughts about race and the rights to hip hop. In his husky, Bay
Area–inflected voice, he stated: “Okay, here we go. I’ve thought

222 The Appeal of Hip Hop

about it a little more. Regardless of how you try to spin it, since we
are doing hip hop, we’re in a certain capsule. And our expression
is molded in the Black voice, because the art form originated there,
right? And it’s not even [just that] the art form originated there, but
the other art forms that contributed to hip hop being made were all
Black as well. Funk, jazz, rock ’n’ roll, whatever you have . . . So it
came in the lineage of Black music. So it’s all been molded in the
Black voice, right?” “Right,” I answered. “But what about the folks
who say, ‘no, it was multiracial from the start?’” “Hey,” he rebut-
ted, “none of those guys or girls were part of it enough to the point
where public perception of what it is, is, ‘oh, here we are, this is a
rainbow coalition’! I think that [it was] just like what it is now—it
was a certain body of people with sprinkles of other people. And
I think that other argument was erected probably to make some-
body else feel legitimate. You know what I mean?” Although Rawj
locates the development of hip hop within a legacy of Black musics
rather than stemming from a specific pure and original moment, in
a move similar to that of Perry (2004), he refuses to overemphasize
the contributions of non-Blacks, despite his racial status. Thus, much
like mainstream Black/White racial discourses that neglect Asians
and Latinos, some South Asians accept a racially marginal subjec-
tivity vis-​à-​vis the position of Blacks as America’s major minority.
Conceptions of ownership and racial authenticity—often deter-
mined by hip hop’s consumers—limit the artists’ scope of what is
(im)possible for their musical careers. The “hip hop is Black” art-
ists mostly accept the improbability of widespread recognition be-
cause the prevailing notions of racial authenticity and marketing
priorities neglect Asian rappers. They situate themselves within
these terms as insiders within the “underground.” That way, D’Lo
can claim that Blacks “own, [really] own hip hop” and also iden-
tify as a hip hopper. Because it tends to be independent rather
than corporate, underground music does not reach as many fans
(although this is changing with new technologies, including You-
Tube). Sidestepping mainstream channels often means forgoing
dreams of getting signed to a major label or achieving financial suc-
cess through music. As a retired rapper who is now a label owner
says of his role as an MC, “I had to let it go because I respected the
game [of hip hop] too much. And it was too confusing as an Indian.
I wanted to prove a point.” At the same time, the artists consider the

The Appeal of Hip Hop 223

Album cover courtesy of Roger Kahlon.

underground more multinational, multicultural, and multiracial. It

is a site for creative acts of fusion.
These theories remind us that “hip hop” refers to many things,
including a form of music, culture, business, and lifestyle, and that
recognizing its multidimensionality and that of its members is ana-
lytically productive. Their references to “hip hop” include various
kinds of hip hop music, such as conscious, underground, main-
stream, southern bounce, and so forth. Seeing the multiple layers,
genres, and voices of hip hop—its polyvalence—leads to D’Lo’s
anti-​essentialist and multiracial perspective on the culture that re-
affirms the primacy of the Black experience. In conceptualizing hip
hop as a multilevel phenomenon including but not limited to “com-
mercial” and “underground” parts, s/he deconstructs the idea of

224 The Appeal of Hip Hop

hip hop as a monolithic expression of “Black culture” as it is pro-
moted through mainstream channels.
Comprised of multiplicity, hip hop culture—like the artists’
multiscalar identifications—changes over time and can become
inclusive of non-Black artists. The artists’ self-​positioning in the
hip hop business also gives them space relatively free from those
commercial aspects of the industry they critique. Thus, artists who
share this second perspective find independent arenas to be em-
powering sites where multiple perspectives and styles can flourish.
The artists highlight the complexity of hip hop culture by catego-
rizing their music differently and shattering the notion that “all hip
hop sounds alike.” (Indeed, despite journalists’ desires to report on
this topic, there is no one “desi hip hop” sound or scene.) Some are
“for the underground,” others are “fusion hip hop,” and only one
may be considered “strictly Feenom.”

Vivek’s “Wider Black Consciousness”:

A Global Race Consciousness
Usually, I’m not so impressed with Indian kids trying to rap ’cause it’s
a [told in a reverent voice] Black tradition, man. . . . You know, once in
awhile it happens well, but usually when you’re coming from the outside.
. . . Hip hop to me is Black music and now it’s become worldwide . . . but I
feel like if you’re doing it and you’re listening to it, it has to be something
that you respect for that tradition. . . . I feel it’s real important to respect
those [traditions] and try, to what extent you can, to understand them in
order to start flipping it yourself. I feel like that’s significant.
—Vivek, Indian American MC

I began this volume with a description of Vivek because he articu-

lates most precisely the kinds of racial identifications and every-
day cross-​fertilizations that exemplify the thoughts and practices
of hip hop’s desis. While his words are unique, they apply to all
of the artists. In contrast to the multiracialists advocating the first
perspective, Vivek agrees with the second view that hip hop is pri-
marily Black culture. However, instead of locating himself within
the multiracial and underground pockets of hip hop as D’Lo does,
Vivek deliberately considers himself to be a part of a “wider Black

The Appeal of Hip Hop 225

consciousness.” This approach to understanding the world and
one’s place within it traverses racial categories, time, and space.
This context-​driven perspective explains and encourages cross-​
group identifications without denying the specificities of racializa-
tion. The artists share this global race consciousness; it is the politi-
cal perspective at the heart of this project.
Shortly after 9/11, I attended an arts event that provided a safe
space for fearful and concerned young South Asians and Middle
Easterners held at a nondescript Bay Area community center. I
walked into a smallish first-​floor room filled with children’s draw-
ings, filled out the sign-​up sheet, and bought a glass (or rather plas-
tic cup) of wine—a weak substitute for the sold-​out standard fare of
chai, samosas, and chutney. About thirty South Asian young adults,
including Deejay Bella who also lived in Oakland at the time, were
milling about, chatting with friends. After a few men and women
had performed and Deejay Bella sang her song, a slender Indian
man, perhaps in his mid-​twenties, was called to perform. The man,
Vivek, was wearing chappals and a long, flowing white cotton kurta
pajama similar to that worn by Kashmiri men in northern India. He
introduced himself, saying that he was new in town. His unaffected
yet distinctive cadence and accent of his voice hinted the possibility
that he socialized with Blacks.
Instead of taking on the expected rhythm of a spoken word de-
livery, Vivek partially rapped and partially sang an a cappella piece.
What caught my attention (and, apparently, that of a giddy group
of young women who beset him at the end of the show) was not so
much the delivery as the content of the rhymes in his song, “One
Struggle.” Over time, I learned that Vivek’s global, political, and
linked perspective in this song represented his thinking about the
world. In it, he gave his rapt audience an ethnographic account of
the parallel lives of two women living across the globe from one
another. The women represent both of the places where Vivek is
from—Sarabai comes from a village in Kutch, Gujarat, in India and
Denise Saunders is a working-​class Black single mother from New
Haven, Connecticut, near Vivek’s hometown. His dynamically exe-
cuted delivery in Eng­lish and Kachchie (or Kutchi, the language of
Kutch, India) shifted the focus of the previous performances away
from the effects of 9/11 on South Asians and Muslims. He accented
the links among minorities by pondering the intersections of race,

226 The Appeal of Hip Hop

Vivek mesmerized desi women at an emergency post-​9/11 event in
Oakland, California. Author’s photograph.
class, and gender with particular attention to “unlikely” transna-
tional and nonancestral ties.
In the song “One Struggle,” dedicated to the women in his life,
Vivek provides a thick description (Geertz 1973) of the hardships of
the daily lives of two women who are continents apart yet united in
their struggle for multiple ends. It is a material struggle for basic
survival, as well as a fight for superstructural factors of “dignity”
and “equality.” When he gave me a tape (yes, a cassette tape) of
his songs, I found that “One Struggle,” roughly produced, was ac-
companied by a strumming guitar and a woman’s deep humming
that created a bluesy, earthy feel to the song. The song starts with
Sarabai’s daily tasks, which begin early—before the sun has risen.
Sarabai lives in the westernmost desert region of Gujarat where she
needs to fetch water because there “ain’t no tap in this village.” She
must also collect firewood so that she can cook food “at the smoky
stove for the fam[ily].” Simultaneously, Sarabai is responsible for
teaching her daughter, whom she takes along with her, the daily
routine in order to socialize her for a future role as a wife, mother,
and daughter-​in-​law. In addition, she has a “baby on her hip” and
“another in her belly. More work to be done”—or, one could ar-
gue, “more (productive and reproductive) work to be done.” Her
labor is strenuous and continuous, yet Vivek points to the music of
Sarabai’s anklets that “begin to clank” as she walks back and forth
on her daily tasks. He zeroes in on the grace of her movements as
she sways from side to side with three pots of water resting on her
head. The song leaves the listener with both a sense of the labori-
ous nature of Sarabai’s day and her almost Sisyphean perseverance
within the context of village life, familiar to a number of the artists.
Denise, seemingly in stark contrast, lives in one of the most
“developed” countries in the world; yet she performs work that is
similarly routine, necessary, and arduous: she stitches button after
button in the sweatshop as her health deteriorates (“her fingers be
stubbin’”) and her mind closes down from a lack of stimulus de-
spite reading Franz Fanon (whom Vivek studied in college). Denise
is located at the bottom of the production ladder—a position now
occupied by cheaper labor in foreign countries such as India and
by Mexican immigrants in the United States. The hollowing-​out of
United States manufacturing, such as Denise’s sweatshop, in the
1970s and 1980s has also led to the erosion of rural life in places

228 The Appeal of Hip Hop

like Gujarat. The globalization of corporations and foreign invest-
ment into “less developed” countries has spurred on rural-​to-​urban
and then international migration, as the need for female labor has
increased (Hondagneu-​Sotelo 1994; Chang 2000). The connected-
ness of these women’s lives, therefore, is just a thread in the inter-
national yarnball of a global, capitalist economy.
Denise and Sarabai are also connected as “Black women” in their
ideological struggles for “immaterial” things, such as dignity and
equality. And Vivek is linked with them by history, displacement,
and his overall identification with people who struggle. As we were
discussing the potentials of racial crossings, he said:
Sometimes it’s funny style how these crossovers, [these] “perpetra-
tions,” happen . . . I try to be humble and calm about [my familiarity
with Black people]. It’s not a big deal. But socially, the places I roll,
the music I do, those kids are all Black people. I started an organiza-
tion called Umoja, which is in New Haven—which is primarily people
of color but South Asian teachers in there, too. [And] the political
work I do, a lot of that relates to Black Liberation. And actually, that
song [“One Struggle”] is exactly about this, in a way. Not talking
about myself, but just saying, “here’s a woman from Kutch and here’s
a woman from New Haven and here’s how [I’m] considering them
to be similar.” Exactly that—the wider Black consciousness. ’Cause
I say, “two Black women, one struggle.” That’s like, I’m sneaking in
that wider Black consciousness.

To explain his belonging, Vivek offers a host of examples that stra-

tegically call upon an “unlikely” set of actions and commitments
to Black people by an Indian American (Lipsitz 1994). South Asians
in hip hop do not only rap about their associations with Blacks but
their daily lives and the lives of all desis are structured by them.
In this song, the women’s bond is an expression of Vivek’s ideol-
ogy that advocates unifying agendas, a global perspective, and a
woman-​centered viewpoint.
Vivek perhaps cannot experience, firsthand, the life of a poor
woman, but his choice to identify with that struggle as part and parcel
of his own is a step across gender lines that parallel other kinds of
links. By crossing color lines, for instance, Vivek becomes a legiti-
mate producer of Black popular culture. In “One Struggle,” the
Indian MC extends the meaning of Blackness past biology and uses

The Appeal of Hip Hop 229

his own racial ambiguity strategically to embrace a broader collec-
tive. This advances his political goals to forge alliances in order to
ease the suffering of others and it opens up communities and con-
ceptions of Blackness. His Black friends have jokingly called him an
“Indian Negro” and his Jain mother half thinks her son was an Afri-
can in his previous life. Through his emotional, political, musical,
and professional work, does Vivek become Black? Who determines
whether or not this is the case?
The strategies and ideologies of desi artists who work toward
pan-​racial alliances straddle strategic essentialism and strategic
anti-​essentialism. From an external perspective, these crossings
may appear surprising. However, a major contribution of desis
through hip hop is their insistence not only on links between South
Asians and Blacks but on transnational ties that connect these
groups to one another across arbitrary divides. They reveal these
connections to be less unlikely or surprising, and they use music to
encourage this perspective. For now, it appears that all the artists
struggle with the limitations of prevailing discourses in describing
their lives and ideas. Is there a way to speak about the impacts of
racism that respects the particularity of Blacks without marginal-
izing other racialized groups? Vivek’s efforts to describe Blackness
as a consciousness or a political ideology and his act of sometimes
referring to himself and his community as “Black” allows him to
say that hip hop is Black and that he is in hip hop, because he is,
in some sense, Black. His ideas defy commonsense perceptions
of race and culture and they step on some toes. But communities
rooted in consciousness may be more open than those that define
themselves along categorical lines. Like race, this consciousness is
also ambiguous and open to difference and therefore to its adop-
tion by non-Blacks who feel that although race is important, racial
categories are fabricated. Vivek’s perspective encourages us to re-
think who and what Black is and Black is not.11

Conclusion
Hip hop desis call upon their critical consciousness of the world
to assist their negotiation of the politics of hip hop culture. They
understand that hip hop is a Black culture, art form, and ideology
both in the past and present, and that race carries critical implica-

230 The Appeal of Hip Hop

tions. The ability of early hip hop music to articulate these concerns
is central to its appeal to these Brown youths. They were inspired to
put their thoughts into action and they became early participants.
This necessitated a direct engagement with the politics of authen-
ticity, and they located themselves within this culture in multiple
ways. True to the dialogic nature of identity formation, their posi-
tions are informed by identity politics in hip hop and by the indus-
try itself.
How is it that hip hop is a Black expressive form while many of its
consumers and producers are non-Black? Some scholars and music
producers state that hip hop can be a utopian culture transcend-
ing race (Gilroy 1987). Proponents of this view often focus on its
multiracial roots and the incorporation of non-Black influences. By
illustrating the hybridity of hip hop as a “heteroglot science” (Pot-
ter 1995: 105), artists like KB and Sammy assert that membership is
“open” and not based along racial lines (Dyson 1993; Lipsitz 1994;
Toure 1999: 1). The multiracial attendees of hip hop concerts and
clubs seem to support this view. The remix DJ Arun seems to concur
with the scholar Neil Strauss who argues that since no one “owns”
rap, rap music is “for everyone” and the appropriation debate is
moot (1999: 28). But of course history has taught us to be wary of
over-​celebratory readings of hybridity (Roediger 1998: 361–62; see
also Hutnyk 1999–2000; cf. Mercer 1995.) And, if it were true that
hip hop is now a voice for all people, why does Karmacy’s identity
as an “Indian rap group” limit and define its audiences and pro-
motional strategies, and why does this label stand in the way of
their wishes to be seen as “MCs who happen to be Indian”? Rather,
hybridity is like appropriation; it is embedded in power relations
and has multiple meanings and outcomes. This does not, however,
imply that we can or should transcend race.
Another primary concern among fans is the increasing corpora-
tization of hip hop and the loss of its original anti-​establishment
messages. Through the process of commercialization, hip hop is
now a global, multibillion dollar phenomenon. Nonetheless, cor-
porations have broadcast the multiple, complex, and contradictory
messages and images of hip hop across the globe. The marriage be-
tween Black popular culture and global capital illustrates just one
of capitalism’s central contradictions—that the increasing com-
mercialization of hip hop exports new tastes and “needs”—includ-

The Appeal of Hip Hop 231

ing racist ones—to new markets. These consist of new audiences
who might well pick up on messages that are found between the
lines and, therefore, learn more about Blacks, and themselves, than
they previously had. While rooted in the Black American experi-
ence, it is undeniable that others are producing this art form as it
has become globally adopted as a voice of representation in places
like Cuba, Puerto Rico, Japan, and India.
The diasporic flows of Black practices are not new; in fact they
are constitutive of hip hop. Desis harness the potential of these re-
sistant and resilient practices, including call and response, com-
munalism, counterhegemonic ideologies, and attention to history
to create political-​artistic worlds. Non-Black actors have also been
central contributors to the rise of this culture. A polycultural look
back at the early days better contextualizes debates about author-
ship. This does not displace the Blackness of hip hop, a multiracial
creation of Black popular culture, but rather emphasizes the reso-
nance of Blackness for other communities of color attempting to
forge identities. Some desi artists find that hip hop in its “essence”
is Black. In order to reconcile this notion along with their own iden-
tities as participants, those artists like D’Lo and Jonny conceptualize
hip hop not as a multicultural mecca but as a culture with multiple
levels, arenas, and genres; therefore, as non-Black, non-White par-
ticipants they see themselves in the underground. At the same time,
some scholars engage strategic essentialism in their interpretations
of Black culture to encourage racial harmony, protect Black people
from criticism, and preserve Black cultures (Reed in Farley 1999:
178; see also Dyson 1993). The failings of contemporary analyses of
race do not mean we should do away with race; instead, we should
continue to theorize it. We need race-​centered, not race-​only, ana-
lyses (see Dyson 1993)—a view captured in Vivek’s perspective that
takes into account disenfranchisement as the centripetal force of hip
hop culture (Potter 1995: 10; Gray 1997; Rivera 1997; Poulson-​Bryant
1999). “Rap music,” states the journalist Scott Poulson-​Bryant, “is
the language of the disenfranchised, a slang speech of outrage and
anger from a people who don’t have mainstream ways of articulat-
ing themselves” (1999: 180). Desi youths are, as Russell Potter notes,
among the “many other groups [that] now share with black folks a
sense of alienation, despair, uncertainty, loss of sense of grounding,
even if it is not informed by shared circumstance” (1995: 9).

232 The Appeal of Hip Hop

 What lures these desi youths to hip hop is the fact that hip hop,
particularly in its early stages, articulates the structural positions of
Blacks in America and expresses resistance against such limitations
(see Woods 1998 on the blues). These desi artists are attempting to
sort out their own experiences within a nation that has difficulty
positioning them. Some South Asian Americans are keenly aware
of their individual positions as racial outsiders to the nation and
also in the predominantly Black spaces they occupy. The racially ex-
plicit nature of hip hop gives them the vocabulary to make space for
themselves within these multiple arenas. The counterhegemonic
messages, form, and sonic appeal of groups like Public Enemy in
the late 1980s and early 1990s propelled desi performers to use hip
hop as their own vehicle and platform to discuss issues, some of
which overlapped with Blacks and some that were unique to the
South Asian and immigrant experience. They “give back” by trans-
lating Black Power into Brown Pride and expanding the range of
identities that comprise the hip hop nation and by highlighting di-
asporic sensibilities so central to Black American cultural forma-
tions.
Cultivating lifelong cross-​racial relationships and voicing racial
attitudes through hip hop music develops fertile ground for com-
munities of empathy (Potter 1995; see also Gilroy 1987; Hebdige
1994; Rivera 1997) or a politics of identification. The politics of iden-
tification is an alternative to identity politics since it bases inter-
ests in a scope beyond or across constructed categories. From this
perspective, hip hop neither transcends nor is limited by racial
categories. The ability of hip hop to possibly unite disparate and
disenfranchised groups may be seen as a threat to the dominant
race-​class system: “Hip hop is threatening precisely because it
can’t be contained ” (Potter 1995: 105). Naysayers who believe that
hip hop has become totally co-​opted by corporate interests need
only open their ears to the thriving and motivated masses of artists
who may not yet have gained mainstream exposure. Hip hop repre-
sents a viable community of interest and affiliation that serves as an
alternative to the limitations of identity politics that often reaffirm
the constructed categories used to divide and dominate American
­minorities.

The Appeal of Hip Hop 233

 5.
Sampling South Asians
Dual Flows of Appropriation and
the Possibilities of Authenticity

I respect those [individuals] who are really, deeply into [hip hop]. How-
ever, those that just spin it because it’s cool or because it gets the crowd
going or who like to MC so that they can look cool are just appropriat-
ing.—Arun, Indian American remix DJ
Music thus occupies a domain at once between races but has the poten-
tial of embodying—becoming—different racial significations.—Ronald
Radano and Philip Bohlman, Music and the Racial Imagination

It was three AM on a Saturday night in 2003. Along with Stacy, a

Black friend of mine who works in the music business, I was help-
ing Pierre, a Bay Area reggae DJ from the Republic of Congo, carry
his records. Our feet were tired from dancing all night long and we
were waiting to cross the street to pack up my car and ride across
the Bay Bridge to our homes in Oakland. We were euphoric from
a good night of partying (good music and good-​looking people)
hosted by DJs who mixed dancehall songs with Indian beats. Cele-
brating the pleasure that emerged from these kinds of sonic over-
laps, we were pleasurably aware of the fact that the music spoke
to the very multiracial and typically Bay Area configuration of our
group. As we began across the street, a young Black man from the
club attempted to get Stacy’s attention, the gold grill in his mouth
reflecting the streetlight as he tried to holler at her. From across
the street, I quipped that she was impervious to his very last-​ditch
attempt to close out the night. “Fuck you, you terrorist assassin
bitch!” he yelled. I placed the record crates on the ground, turned
around, and was ready to fight. As quickly as it took us to cross the
street, our temporary South Asian and Black celebration was halted
in the face of the troubling racial realignments that pit these groups
against one another in post-​9/11 America.

The power dynamics of South Asian/Black relations in the United

States are similar to those in other nations in that they are not
clearly defined and have, at the first decade of the twenty-​first cen-
tury, become increasingly complex. Here, they are framed by United
States imperialism, global capitalism, and international East-​West
relations. If desis were seen in a positive light in the 1990s, Ameri-
cans’ conceptions of them changed drastically in the early 2000s.
Post-​9/11 discourses and images have solidified and realigned inter-
minority race relations. On the one hand, new racial projects (Omi
and Winant 1994) lump together Middle Easterners, South Asians,
and other “Muslim-​looking” people as enemies as well as highlight
their distinction from “Americans,” including Blacks. On the other
hand, police and governmental surveillance, profiling, and deten-
tion of “potential terrorists” link South Asians with Blacks as popu-
lations subject to intertwined systems of oppression. This seesaw
of (dis)identification appears in the ways that South Asians and
Blacks adopt aspects of each others’ cultural expressions. In some
cases, actors engage hip hop in ways that are complicit with state-​
sanctioned and everyday forms of racism that portray South Asians
as foreign others and Blacks as a native-​born devalued group. Yet
there are others in America who grasp this as a moment of possi-
bility and who work collaboratively to forge new alignments of anti-​
racist solidarity. Hip hop thus becomes an arena in which these
intergroup relations play out in collaborative and divisive ways. It
also becomes the platform taken up by individuals to enable the
kinds of future relations they wish to see.
Racial fault lines shift in unpredictable rather than inevitable
ways. Global historical processes that connect South Asians to
Brown and Black people around the world in overlapping diasporas
explain current realignments that frame the choices of individu-

Sampling South Asians 235

als. Many aspects of hip hop culture today—particularly those with
strong links to global capital—comply with a host of “isms,” in-
cluding ideologies that demonize Black and Brown people through
sonic and visual representations of stereotypes. But popular cul-
ture is also the site where potential formations not yet possible in
formal politics can be tested out and aired (Iton 2008). This project
focuses on those less-​apparent aftershocks that alter the seemingly
immoveable armor of American exceptionalism and domination. A
post-​9/11 framework enables us to examine American race relations
within a global rather than nation-​bound context; popular culture
is one lens through which to analyze such broad-​scale movements
and to enact change at local levels.
The fluctuating visibility and invisibility, belonging and other-
ness, of these non-White groups in the American imaginary and
in the realm of hip hop play out in the dynamics of South Asian/
Black appropriations. How do we interpret the adoption of Black-
ness by non-Black minorities as well as the incorporation by Ameri-
can Blacks of South Asianness in their hip hop products? Shifting
and ambiguous race relations spill into cross-​cultural appropria-
tions, distinguishing them from those depicted in the literature on
Whites’ appropriation of Black cultural forms. Because South Asian
and Black power relations appear especially unstable—they shift
between being lateral (Wong 2004: 189) and hierarchical—their ap-
propriations do not fit unidirectional top-​down theories. Instead,
I illustrate the dual flows of cultural adoption between South Asians
and Blacks.
This chapter foregrounds the post-​9/11 context that brings sharp
relief to new, dangerous and optimistic, kinds of crossovers.
Global political events like 9/11 impact transnational capital and
United States race relations. The contradictions inherent in capi-
talism emerge within debates about race, ownership, and rights
when “identities” become increasingly commodified. The world-
wide availability of commodified artifacts that represent “culture,”
“ethnicity,” and “race,” for instance, affects and reflects American
race relations. Thus, in a global marketplace “difference” is viewed
paradoxically as threatening and desirable. As Jonathan Rutherford
notes: “Otherness is sought after for its exchange value, its exoti-
cism and the pleasures, thrills and adventures it can offer” (quoted
in Giroux 1994: 58). These political acts of the corporate commodi-

236 Sampling South Asians

fication of difference (racialized sexuality or ethnic chic, for ex-
ample) in fact serve to depoliticize and naturalize difference. Com-
mercial hip hop plays an important role in expressing national fears
and anxieties about Black as well as Brown people. Yet its less com-
modified forms are the preferred tool for some members of these
groups to express their disdain for state practices that exploit and
then scapegoat minority populations for a variety of social ills. As
the artists’ communities become new targets, it becomes particu-
larly urgent to comprehend how their consciousness (which pre-
ceded 9/11) to see minorities’ oppression—and thus liberation—as
linked led to their politicized adoptions of a globally commodified
Black expressive form.
Americans invested in the ownership and legitimate production
of hip hop too easily dismiss all appropriative acts to be inspired by
racist images of Black promiscuity, criminality, and inferiority (see
Tate 2003; Kitwana 2005). But while some non-Blacks appropriate
Black culture because of its perceived “hipness” and style, others,
including some Asian American musicians, “want coalition and
connection,” and their love of Black music is a direct expression of
their political ties with Blacks (Wong 2004: 179). Sampling offers
another way to think about these exchanges. In the field of hip hop,
I focus on two forms of South Asian/Black appropriations: first,
the attraction by mainstream and hip hop desis to Black culture,
and second, the incorporation of South Asian sounds, styles, and
women in mainstream Black hip hop culture in the early 2000s. In
drawing from these examples I distinguish between “appropriation
as othering” and “appropriation as identification.” This dichotomy,
like many, is constructed, yet it reflects the general patterns among
these various groups despite exceptions. Multifaceted interpre-
tations of appropriation caution against reducing it to a form of
colonization or disempowerment of those whose cultural objects
one appropriates. For instance, analyses of non-Blacks’ appropria-
tion of Black expressions do not pay enough attention to the cross-​
fertilizations that inform the very production of Black popular cul-
ture. Not all cross-​cultural exchanges are progressive, but neither
is appropriation always the “stealing” of another’s culture.
Agents who appropriate to their signal cross-​group identifica-
tions or dis-​identifications model the cultivation of inclusive com-
munities and help explain how people use culture to divide. Ap-

Sampling South Asians 237

propriation implies differential access by groups to power (Ziff
and Rao 1997: 5); as a result, appropriative acts—and charges of
appropriation—are always political. “Listening to music is listen-
ing to all noise,” writes Jacques Attali, “realizing that its appropria-
tion and control is a reflection of power, that it is essentially politi-
cal” (quoted in Wong 2004: 272). Even in relations between Blacks
and Whites it is inaccurate to codify all Whites as “powerful” and
all Blacks as “dominated” (Roediger 1998; Strauss 1999). Increas-
ing numbers of Blacks own the means of production, especially in
popular culture, and help define the conditions for inclusion. Black
ascendancy in American popular culture, if only at particular levels,
may invert traditional racial hierarchies (Gilroy 1987; Strauss 1999).
These (un)equal exchanges signal racial fault lines (Almaguer 1994)
and strategically deploy culture to bridge them. Not all appropria-
tive acts are equal, and our interpretations of them should not rest
on the actors’ (racial, national, etc.) identities but rather on a contex-
tual comprehension of their ideologies.

Appropriation as Othering
We were just surrounded by [hip hop]. Whereas now, it just kinda makes
it seem less genuine, like, when you go and choose it, you know?
—MC Rawj
Style is a matter of not being “too ethnic” or “authentic” because it’s a
matter of taking something and making it your own. If you wear it as is, it
looks like you’re trying. And that’s what White people do—take it as is—
and you can almost empathize with them. Whites are in search of soul.
Blacks and Latinos don’t [appropriate] because they just are.
—Maurice, Black spoken-​word artist and hip hop fan

Many desi youths can afford to buy Black and not be Black. Anyone
who strolls across a college campus at lunchtime today will notice
the popularity of hip hop styles—baggy jeans, particular brand
names, postures, and vernaculars—among youth of all races. Desi
students are no less subject to these trends, and hip hop, usually
mixed with bhangra beats, is the most popular music among them.
But South Asians who produce hip hop claim that their mainstream
counterparts are more concerned with the “wrapping” (the latest

238 Sampling South Asians

fads in designer wear and jewelry) than the “rapping” (the mes-
sages of hip hop).1 Mainstream desis love hip hop and can afford
the expensive clothes and cars that rappers rap about, yet the extent
of their engagement with Blacks often stops there.
There are copious examples of Asian American youths who latch
on to Black expressive forms, but not enough has been said about
its impact on their emergent identities, affiliations, and politics.
Americans have attempted to understand Asian Americans and
hip hop through the paradigm of what I term “appropriation as
othering.” Theorists often note the harm that people who appro-
priate cause to the object and its subordinated culture; therefore,
hip hop scholars focus on the intentions of non-Blacks who adopt
Black identities (White 1996; Roediger 1998; Kitwana 2005; Wat-
kins 2005). These studies often center on the appeal of Black arts
(particularly music) for Whites and highlight the role of Blackness
in the construction of Whiteness, appropriation, and the question
of cultural ownership. They interpret Whites as once again deni-
grating, consuming, and stealing Black culture, pointing to iconic
figures like Elvis Presley and Eminem—the “great White rap-
per.” As a result, scholars and other observers tend to be critical
of these “racial crossings” (Wald 2000) as minstrelsy and “theft”
(Lott 1993b; Cornyetz 1994) fueled by the desire to have and own
(even temporarily be) the despised other and thereby reassert one’s
position of dominance. Like Whites who adopt Black culture but
who do not interact with Blacks, middle-​class desis often feel they
“know” Blacks through media sources (Roediger 1998). In adopt-
ing Black vernacular and aesthetic styles they are like those Jiggers
and Wiggers who have the protection of not being Black in an anti-​
Black society (Wood 1998: 43–47). Yet, while some of the insights
on Whites’ appropriation of Black cultures apply to South Asian
and Black crossings, distinct dynamics shape interminority rela-
tions.
The appropriation by individuals of “an other’s” culture and iden-
tity generally elicits reactions to these practices as either “positive”
or “negative.” According to the latter view, some argue that it does
not lead to empathy with Blacks “at the human level” (Ledbetter
1992: 15; e.g., Perry Hall in Ziff and Rao 1997), particularly when
individuals do not interact (although, of course, interactions do not

Sampling South Asians 239

necessarily signal identification). Mainstream desis in New York
City, for instance, adopt essentialized and negative ideas of Blacks
that inform their own masculinity, violence, and sexuality (Maira
2002; see also Murray in Roediger 1998: 358). Some of the writing
on Jiggers, or Japanese in blackface, who literally darken their faces
and crimp their hair, concurs (see Condry 2006 for a rebuttal). Jig-
gers in Japan, according to Joe Wood, “consume black culture with
only a fantastically vague sense of what it might mean to do so, and
no appreciation of the ironies involved.” As is the case for deracial-
ized desis, “Whiteness rules their minds in stealth” (1998: 46).
Non-Blacks’ adoption of stereotypical and exaggerated notions
of “Blackness” marketed by media conglomerates illustrates appro-
priative acts that others and distances groups, thereby resembling
the logic of minstrelsy. In fact, the adoption of racialized identities
can advance racism rooted in the principle of bounded groups de-
fined by difference. Othering practices occur when individuals con-
sume decontextualized and uninformed notions of an other in ways
that reinforce essentialist and totalizing notions of difference that
are hierarchically valued. Yet, Eric Lott reveals how these actions
also rupture the seeming fixity of race: “Blackface performance . . .
was based on small but significant crimes against settled ideas of
racial demarcation.” As such, cross-​racial appropriation is about
both “love and theft,” and is mired in contradictions and the limi-
nality of border crossings (1993b: 4). Appropriation as othering can
work through positive stereotyping, such as in the idealization or
exotification of the other, or through demonization.2 Prior to 9/11,
Blacks represented the racial other not only to Whites but also to
“model minority” South Asians, who marked their distance in ver-
bal and nonverbal ways.

Appropriation as Othering: The Use by Desis of the “N-​Word”

Black cultural critics heavily debate the use of the n-​word because
it is adopted so copiously by less-​than-​well-​meaning individuals.3
Unfortunately, these debaters have framed this issue as a Black and
White one, and in so doing have lost important nuances in inter-
minority exchanges. Mainstream college desis’ adoption of urban
styles and slang is the most common form of their appropriation
of Black culture, and it is often accompanied by racist concep-

240 Sampling South Asians

tions of Black people. I often heard young South Asian men use
the term “nigga” to refer to themselves and to their friends, par-
ticularly when there were no Black people around. In the event that
they wanted privately to refer to a Black person in their presence,
they would refer to him or her as kalu, an uncomplimentary alter-
ation of the Hindi term kala, for “black”—potentially the equivalent
for “nigger,” depending upon the context. A desi Berkeley student,
recounting her weekend, exclaimed that she and her friends had
seen “real ghetto kalus” during their trip to the neighboring city
of Oakland as they peered out of the windows of their locked car
doors. These desis literally cannot speak about race. Such elisions
reinforce segregated and distant social relations and the anxiety
and desire that frame some desis’ relationship to Blackness (see
Lott 1993a). Yet Black youth culture has become so popular that
non-Black youths have crafted their own spins on Black slang to
use among themselves. Mainstream desi youths have flipped the
use of the n-​word as a form of camaraderie to fit their own condi-
tions by calling one anther “coolie.” These interactions reveal the
motivating factors of fear and desire, attraction and domination,
closely examined by others (Lott 1993a; Cornyetz 1994; Wood 1998;
Roediger 1998). Blackness is not only constituent of Whiteness but
also frames the conceptions of Asians and their self-​positioning
vis-​à-​vis other groups. Desi youths, too, may be drawn to rap music
for its violence, scatology, and explicit nature (Roediger 1998: 661)
and their desire for Black racialized sexualities as they come of age.
But members of a group do not act in concert. Attending to the dis-
tinctions of appropriation fleshes out the multivalent stances by
desis toward the members of Black communities.
Desis who produce hip hop are often bothered by co-​ethnics
whose racial distancing, misinformation, and adoption of Black
stereotypes comply with anti-​Black racism. Some artists disparage
the way other desis consume Black styles because they feel they are
based on ill-​informed notions of Blacks. The MC Rawj is irritated by
the vicarious thrill of many young Indians who do not know Blacks
but who think they should “listen to this music so we can visit the
ghetto and visit all this crime and lawlessness and activity, but at
the end of the day, we’ll be alright.” These mainstream desis are
like others who substitute the content of controlling media images
for actual information about who Black people “are,” and there-

Sampling South Asians 241

fore believe that hip hop represents the totality of Black people
in America. When it comes to music, mc Chee explains, “a lot of
people, they like the beats, but they’re not really paying attention
to what they are saying . . . There’s a difference between people
that listen to rap and are actually involved with it and understand
what it’s about, or try to understand.” Like Vivek, Chee insists that
“the attempt would be good enough for me.” The Karmacy rapper
KB agrees that the popularity of hip hop and Black styles among
other desis is often decontextualized: “You get these kids who don’t
understand the underlying foundation, they don’t understand why
hip hop is, or what the issues are, or even why some of the artists
in hip hop are talking about some of the negative stuff they are.”
In response, mainstream desis simultaneously glorify these images
and “marginalize what these people in these ghettos and housing
projects are going through,” which makes KB “feel bad personally.”
Although KB and Chee can choose now where and how to live, they
know that this privilege is not equally available to all people. Their
investment in positive race relations urges them to shed light on
these issues, including the n-​word, in their musical productions
and everyday conversations.
Controversy surrounding the n-​word centers on the questions of
who can say it and whether or not its reclamation as a sign of affec-
tion among Black youths is empowering or signals internal coloni-
zation (Asim 2007). Michael Eric Dyson doesn’t intend to ban the
term, but he clarifies that “nigger has never been cool when spit
from white lips” (1999: 107); perhaps he would argue the same goes
for other non-Blacks. Desi artists agree. But instead of focusing on
Black-​White race politics, they emphasize their knowledge of con-
text, respect for the music, and their position as non-White “out-
sider” contributors. Most of those who pen rhymes do not use it in
their lyrics because, based on conversations with their Black peers,
they feel it is neither positive nor appropriate. “I mean,” says Chee,
“coming from my point of view, even from your point of view, we’re
seen as outsiders. I can’t say I fully understand that Black experi-
ence, but I think I have enough knowledge of it where I know that it’s
not right.” The exception to this view was in the event that an MC
wanted to highlight interlocking racisms. For example, in “Every-
thing” from Himalayan Project’s The Middle Passage, Chee raps, “The

242 Sampling South Asians

first son of some / immigrants who ain’t learn quicker / This land
and all in it / ain’t for niggas, spics, gooks, kikes and sand niggas.”
Although some people close to the rapper wanted him to take this
line out of the song, Chee felt that this strategic use of derogative
words made his point about the discriminatory and exclusive prac-
tices of the United States. And by including “sand nigger”—a racist
term used against people of Middle Eastern and South Asian de-
scent—Chee connects the experiences of his family to that of other
oppressed groups, and he makes the point that racists do too.
These adoptions by mainstream desis often mirror forms of White
appropriation; as a result, their actions, including their use of the
“n-​word” while referring derogatively to Blacks as kalus, exemplify
an othering process of decontextualized “interaction.” Yet, even
among Whites, not all White musicians are insincere in their love of
jazz and hip hop, nor do all attempt to use their art to access racial-
ized stereotypes; this is also the case with desis and hip hop. The
artists’ method and awareness of the multivalent politics of Black
cultural adoption distinguishes them from their co-​ethnics. Dis-
tance shapes peoples’ conceptions of other groups and thus their
motivations for appropriating cultural signifiers. Events like 9/11
can drastically alter groups’ perceived social distance. Curiously,
while in the first decade of the millennium many Americans, Black
and White, distanced themselves from “Muslim-looking” others, it
has also been the time that mainstream hip hop culture produced
by Black artists elected to incorporate South Asian sounds, styles,
and women. These actions may connote new crossovers as well as
solidify contentious relations.

Appropriation as Othering:
Images of the Middle East and South Asia in Mainstream Hip Hop
Increased public awareness of Arab music and corporate profit . . . offers
certain opportunities, as well as pitfalls, for political activism. (Sweden-
burg 2002: 44)

For Chee, as for the other artists, part of comprehending the con-
text of hip hop is his awareness of his position within it. On one
of his visits to California he met me for beers and an interview in

Sampling South Asians 243

a San Francisco bar just south of Market Street. Over the course of
the afternoon, he pointed out the circularity and multidirection-
ality of appropriation and the power relations that underlie them.
Like power, culture flows in multiple directions. The goals of main-
stream hip hop artists to continue to capture the imaginations of
global audiences sometimes also reinforce national political inter-
ests in, for instance, the Middle East. Ironically, the mainstream hip
hop music and videos by Black artists that aired on urban radio sta-
tions, BET, and MTV inundated global audiences with orientalist
images of the very region with which the United States was at war in
the early 2000s. Like desi artists, Black hip hoppers stand on slip-
pery ground, at times identifying with national concerns as Ameri-
cans and, at other times, identifying with the exotica and otherness
of Asia. The commodification of “over there” sounds and styles in
mainstream hip hop exemplifies appropriation as othering.
Shifting the focus to how some Blacks take on and refashion—or
sample—non-Black styles and signifiers bears on the debates over
the authenticity and “purity” of hip hop culture. Decisions made
by contemporary producers reveal the polycultural processes of ap-
propriation that comprise—and sometimes compromise—this ex-
pressive form. Analyzing inter-​minority appropriations in popular
culture is similar to revisioning hip hop history: it neither dilutes
nor dismisses the Blackness of hip hop. Rather, we come to see how
political cultural formations emerge dynamically through negotia-
tions that enable emergent and progressive social formations.
Since 9/11 the West has increasingly demonized Middle Eastern-
ers, Muslims, and South Asians, at home and abroad. Americans
have simultaneously witnessed the rising popularity of South Asian
and Middle Eastern commodities that are emblematic of foreign-
ness. This Indo Chic or New Asian Cool includes henna tattoos,
belly dancing, Indian fabrics, and rap songs infused with Indian
music and videos featuring South Asian women (Hutnyk 2000).
In the case of belly dancing, Sunaina Maira describes these “Arab-​
face” practices as a cultivation of “whiteness” in a post-​9/11 context
(2008: 334). Yet how do we interpret non-White Americans’ partici-
pation in these kinds of imperialistic fantasies? Two trends have
drawn consumers’ attention to appropriation in commercial rap
music: American popular culture and media have glorified, demon-
ized, and conflated the Middle East and South Asia; at the same

244 Sampling South Asians

 An image of an “exotic woman” that was common in hip hop videos,
like R. Kelly’s Snake (Remix), in the early 2000s.

time, some mainstream rappers, like Jay-​Z, have voiced their politi-
cal perspectives about the “War on Terror” through widely distrib-
uted music. I address these issues in the following paragraphs.
Popular representations of cross-​racial interactions reflect and
shape broader group dynamics. Perhaps mainstream Black art-
ists and producers include South Asian elements in their products
because they interpersonally mix with desis, but this is unlikely.
After all, like mainstream desis’ adoption of hip hop, the producers
neither translated nor contextualized the South Asian languages
and props they adopted. Some Black rap acts replicate White
American women’s fascination with belly dancing: “Belly dance
performances detach Orientalized femininity from the bodies of
Arab women themselves so that it becomes a form of racial mas-
querade” (Maira 2008: 334). The Afro/Orientalist depictions of
exotic women, poorly translated Hindi, and harems in post-​9/11
mainstream hip hop videos express American nationalism aligned
with Western imperial projects in the Middle East. Thus the contra-
dictions of appropriation surface in popular American forms that

Sampling South Asians 245

 reflect and inform the concerns and hopes of a nation’s citizens.
Mainstream hip hop in the 2000s, much like the mainstream news
media, displaced Brown people from the United States by locating
them in exotic and distant lands.
In 2001, a critical year in global history, a number of American
hip hop songs hit the airwaves that featured the choruses of old
Hindi songs and tablas (an Indian percussive instrument), while
videos highlighted belly dancing and mehndi (henna) wearing
women. I was surprised that year to hear a man yell “atta mujhe ko”
(“I know” in Hindi) on the hit rapper Missy Elliott’s song “Get Ur
Freak On.” Created by the innovative producer Timbaland, the video
also featured tablas and a male East Asian martial artist. Following
this hit, I saw the MTV video “Addictive” by the R&B singer Truth
Hurts (the album was released in 2002) who, in the video, adopts
belly dance type moves over a sampled Hindi film song. The fol-
lowing year, how was I to interpret the R&B singer R. Kelly’s video

The R& B singer R. Kelly holding a sitar while sitting with a Middle
E​ astern-​inspired woman in a desert for his video Snake (Remix).

246 Sampling South Asians

 R. Kelly enters a lush tented harem in the midst of a desert
and enjoys a fighting scene.

“Snake (Remix)”? He trudged through the desert on a camel, was

surrounded by “exotic” women inside a lush harem, and then, after
changing into American military gear and singing in front of an
American flag, left with his boys in a military cavalcade (see page
248). Another crop of South Asian–influenced hits was also re-
leased just after Britain’s Panjabi MC garnered heavy rotation for
his song “Mundian to Bach Ke” a couple of years later.4 On July 10,
2003, BET even aired “Indian Spices”—a countdown show that fea-
tured music videos with “Hindi sounds” or, rather, South Asian in-
fluences. These trends marked the rising visibility of representations
of Brown people—now signifying the Middle East and South Asia,
linking them to Latinos as foreigners—that could open up space
for desi rappers. But desis could not yet compete with the influence
of mainstream Black artists and video producers.
On June 25, 2002, Truth Hurts’ album Truthfully Speaking hit the
stands and sold 105,000 units, primed by the smash success of the
record’s hit single “Addictive.” Featuring the prolific old-​school
rapper Rakim, with identifiably Indian instrumentals and lyrics,

Sampling South Asians 247

At the end of the video R. Kelly and a dancer, wearing camouflage and
representing Chicago, sing in front of an American flag that is unfurled
over the desert backdrop.

“Addictive” reached the number three spot on the R&B/hip hop

singles list to become a summer dance club hit less than a year after
9/11. I first heard about it from Beni B, a Black Oakland-​based DJ
and record label owner, who had quickly gotten his hands on the
wax single. Indeed, no sooner than a weekend after he mentioned
it I attended a party in San Francisco with several desis—my friend
Anita, along with her friends visiting from India—where he played
the track. Standing around with drinks in our hands, we stopped in
mid-​sentence when we heard its opening bars:
Kaliyon ka chaman jabu lantha hai
Thoda resham lagta hai,
Thoda shisha lagta hai,
Hire moti lar the hai, thoda sona lagta hai.
(The garden of the buds looks like magic,
Looks a little like silk,
Looks a little like glass.
Diamonds and pearls together, looks a little like gold.)

248 Sampling South Asians

Was Beni B playing a Bollywood soundtrack? “Oh!” I remembered,
“this is the song he was telling me about!” We moved closer to the
speakers to try to translate the lyrics.
The song is based on a four-​minute sample of Lata Mangesh-
khar’s song from 1981 titled “Thoda Resham Lagta Hai” (“Seems
a Little like Silk”), which was produced by the renowned Indian
composer Bappi Lahiri. Mangeshkar’s original lyrics fill the intro-
duction as well as the chorus, while a young Truth Hurts (nee Shari
Watson) sings the body of the song, relaying how much she enjoys
her man’s lovemaking. In his rap verse Rakim expresses his appre-
ciation for his woman’s devotion through the rough times when he
was just a small-​time drug dealer. Juxtaposed with this raunchy duo
is the Hindi film singer’s voice floating in the chorus. For many lis-
teners, Mangeshkar’s contribution to the song is what made it a hit.
Her chorus is good sounding yet unfamiliar to non-​Hindi speakers.
Lifted straight from the original, the lyrics describe the “beautiful”
but “bittersweet” flower garland exchanged during an Indian wed-
ding ceremony. Despite the different topics and languages deployed
in the song, the slightly sped-​up sampled track is what turns it into
a coherent, danceable whole. “Addictive” has lived up to its name
by generating much attention, from club goers who want to know
what the woman is saying to South Asian Americans who finally
feel represented in mainstream hip hop. And most of the attention
has centered on the timeless yet unresolved debate in hip hop: the
politics of sampling.
One of the most interesting aspects about the debate over the
producers’ use of the Hindi song is the contradiction it illuminates
about who borrows what, how it is interpreted, and the light shed
on these dynamics. Much of this depends upon the awareness a lis-
tener has of the histories of these songs and artists. Some observers
distinguish between the practices of Indian composers like Lahiri,
who produced the original track, and the actions of dj Quik and
Dre, the producers of “Addictive” who sampled the Hindi song.5 As
we will see, Lahiri’s career and the desi party remix phenomenon,
in which South Asian DJs play Indian hit tunes over the latest hip
hop beats, complicate such a neat binary.6 Bappi Lahiri sued the
producers of the song (DJ Quik, Dr. Dre, and his company After-
math) and its parent companies (Interscope Records, Universal

Sampling South Asians 249

Music, and Vivendi Universal) for $500 million.7 In the lawsuit, La-
hiri accuses the world-​famous hip hop producers of “cultural im-
perialism” for taking the sample from Third World artists without
permission and without giving credit to the owners of the original
track, while further describing the act of appropriation as an unfair
theft of which he was a victim. Lahiri won the suit when a Los Ange-
les judge ordered the record off of the shelves “unless and until” the
producers credited Lahiri on the album, which they later did. This
case is relevant for several reasons.
First, Lahiri’s accusations of cultural imperialism are important.
Dr. Dre’s counsel reported that they were unable to find the owners
of the original track. But many listeners, especially those even re-
motely familiar with Indian music, concur with the sentiments of
DJ Rekha, of New York City’s famous Basement Bhangra at SOBs,
who said, “It seems hard to believe they could not locate the song’s
original composers.” Rekha felt that Dre and Quik should have ob-
tained permission for the song. Their failure to do so suggests an
underlying attitude about the relative worth of South Asian music
(i.e., cultural imperialism). While United States–based artists have
found it important to clear samples of recognizable (i.e., West-
ern) sources when they produce an album, particularly in the face
of lawsuits, they seem to hold different standards for music from
other, non-​Western, parts of the world. Many Westerners may find
“foreign-​sounding music” from places like South Asia to be an un-
identifiable sonic lump that can be sampled, pillaged, borrowed,
appropriated, or plagiarized (see Miller 2004). Thus, despite being
American minorities—in this instance, Black producers—Dre and
Quik embody “American” imperialist notions and practices about
culture and ownership.
Native-​born Americans across color lines can realign themselves
against those imagined to be foreign, including people from Asia,
particularly when they have fought numerous wars against East
and West Asian nations. During World War II against Japan, the
Korean War, Vietnam, and now the global “War on Terror” in Af-
ghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan, politicians and the media picked up
on stereotypes of the “foreign” and “untrustworthy” nature of the
Oriental while American styles and products have become increas-
ingly popular in Asia. These various knowledge producers have cir-
culated discourses that temporarily consolidate American Whites

250 Sampling South Asians

 MC Chee Malabar and DJ Rekha at a radio interview.
Photograph courtesy of Richard Louissaint.

and Blacks against Asians—and Asian Americans—through the

rubric of the patriot. Attention to the multidirectional flows of
sampling in and of hip hop and the flows of global capital balance
perspectives in debates over the “theft” and “purity” of cultural ex-
pressions. This paradigm highlights the larger politics embedded
within hip hop, for example, as a culture rooted in the specificity
of Blacks’ experiences in the United States, which come to frame
those of every other group.
In another twist, many desis know Lahiri as the Indian producer
who, without giving credit, remakes songs that turn into hits. As
the India Abroad journalist Jeet Thayil remarks, “Most observers in
the music business find it interesting that Lahiri, who has been ac-
cused of lifting hit songs from all over the world and making Hindi
versions of them, has now taken an American producer to court for
exactly the same deed” (Thayil 2003). On top of that, Harry Anand
did an Indian (re-)remix of Truth Hurts’ “Addictive” called “Kali-
yon Ka Chaman.” These cycles of appropriation complicate—but
they do not eradicate—Lahiri’s charge of cultural imperialism. And
in the end, DJ Rekha opined what Lahiri’s lawsuit is all about—
namely money. “If ‘Addictive’ had been some hip hop song that

Sampling South Asians 251

made no money,” Rekha told Thayil, “they wouldn’t be wasting their
time.” After all, like many sampled artists who have passed their
prime, Lahiri was enjoying renewed airtime because of the lawsuit
publicity and the popularity of the Truth Hurts song.
Cultural productions are embedded in a field of racial power dy-
namics that is itself mediated by the profit motives of global capi-
tal. The marriage of global capital to American multiculturalism has
led to the rise of consumers who purchase their “authentic” identi-
ties—and those of others—through the commodity form that de-
taches itself from the bodies and contexts they signify. Thus, Ma-
donna can take on and off a variety of Asian wardrobes, including
kimonos and saris; similarly, youths consume Blackness through
their engagement with hip hop. It is precisely because so much is
at stake in connecting floating representations to actual bodies and
contexts that debates rage over appropriation.
Desis expressed a range of reactions to the lawsuit by Bappi La-
hiri. Fabian Alsultany, a DJ and the CEO of Globesonic, said that
“Addictive” “is a straight-​up rip-​off of Bollywood. Hip hop is a kind
of musical thievery anyway, they sample everything.” Some hip
hop critics, who called pilfering what others have called innovative
practices, have made the same argument. One online writer, Suhel
Johar, upheld the concept of the copyright law and argued that Dr.
Dre and DJ Quik illustrate a case of “shameless plagiarism.” As he
wrote on an online Indian forum: “The way things are going, more
and more American rap stars may use bits from old Hindi songs. As
long as it’s done through proper channels—wherein the right per-
missions are taken, credits are given and payments made—it’s fine.
But to blindly use pieces of old songs without crediting the source
is unpardonable . . . In the case of Hindi film songs, they [rap stars]
just pick up some tune given to them by the album producer and in-
corporate it without bothering [to find out] who originally created
it and who owns the rights” (“Choli Ke Peeche Kya Hai” Sampled,
www.smashhits.com, accessed June 17, 2009).
Johar highlights the double standard applied to South Asian art-
ists by Black rap producers in the United States who do not feel
compelled to give credit or make payments to foreign sources. Al-
though he calls it a “different matter” when Indians sample, his
next comment nonetheless highlights the dual flows of these prac-
tices: “Surely, it must be made compulsory for any western artiste

252 Sampling South Asians

to seek permission of the Indian creator before using even the tini-
est sample. It’s a different matter that some Indian composers need to be
again reminded that blindly lifting western songs is probably the sickest thing
for any creative artiste to do. One simply cannot justify shameless pla-
giarism” (my emphasis). This writer conflates mainstream Black
popular icons with the West, and thus with imperial power, in re-
lation to the East (Indian creators) because he analyzes race rela-
tions through a global lens. American Blacks are not always seen
by all people as non-White others; they are also considered Afri-
can Americans in relation to non-​Western others. Again, the posi-
tions of Blacks, including mainstream rappers, shift according
to the scale of analysis, and a global scale can link Blacks to the
hegemony of America (just as, in other contexts, it links Black and
Brown people). This global conversation on sampling with specific
reference to the debates inspired by Truth Hurts’s song expands
debates about sampling and appropriation beyond the argument
that what is happening to hip hop is part of the history of Whites
stealing jazz and rock ’n’ roll. As a result, we cannot interpret desis’
multiple practices of appropriation of Black cultural forms in the
same way we do that of American Whites.
Through Hindi-​inflected hip hop songs, Black popular culture un-
knowingly provides desi youths with a new set of “shared secrets”
that they deploy to define their communities. Identifiably South
Asian elements in hip hop have enabled second-​generation youths
to claim a part of hip hop as their own. For them, as for Blacks and
South Asians in the West Indies, “music was not simply entertain-
ment: it served socially and emotionally to nurture and show one’s
sense of belonging” (Guilbault 2001: 435). The impact of Indian
musical forms on traditionally African diasporic music has had a
longer history in the Caribbean as expressed in chutney soca and
some dancehall music (Manuel 2000, 2006). In the United States
this came to light earlier in jazz and in hip hop at the turn of the
millennium. As the children of immigrants familiar with both the
Hindi and hip hop songs, desi youths, including the artists I discuss
in this book, felt their varied opinions on hip hop, art, and culture
were warranted since Hindi samples provided them an opening.
Many desi youths, including the artists, responded favorably
to the slew of hit songs. Young desis in the Bay Area mostly liked
Missy Elliot’s “Get Ur Freak On,” for example, because they finally

Sampling South Asians 253

felt represented in the music they had loved for years. Desi art-
ists usually evaluated songs on a case by case basis because music
means so much more than “just beats” (McWhorter 2008). They
tended to disagree with Johar’s interpretation of sampling as
“stealing” by arguing that it was justified. However, they debated
over how “well” artists sample, especially since most of their own
track productions (like their identities) included samples of all
kinds. Some enjoyed songs that incorporated Hindi while others
were disappointed by the lack of originality when producers simply
lifted entire prerecorded tracks without manipulating their con-
tent as soon as South Asian samples became a trend.8 Overall, they
appreciated musical samples that were “done correctly”—that is,
ones that sounded good, were original, and represented the cul-
tures from which the samples came. Others were upset that Blacks
in the industry silenced South Asians in most other contexts, argu-
ing that any representation wasn’t better than none. For instance,
some youths argued that the videos that used Hindi voices as props
stripped desi self-​representation by keeping them as invisible in the
United States as they have been historically. For example, Karan,
an Indo Fijian from Hayward, California, was upset at the use of
the Hindi speaker in “Get Ur Freak On.” “What the hell is he say-
ing?!” the feisty student shouted over the phone. “They don’t even
let him finish his sentence!” He was not upset that an individual
South Asian singer was being silenced but rather that it was an alle-
gory for the silencing of an entire people. Those who shared Karan’s
perspective were not fans of songs like “Addictive,” or Erick Ser-
mon’s song “React,” that borrowed or “ripped off ” unadulterated
samples without (they felt) matching them artistically with the rest
of the song. The desis did not all agree about the meanings of the
sample and the lawsuit, but they did all notice the difficulties of ap-
plying copyright law, based on the assumption of a single author, to
a constantly shifting, internally referential, digital, and communal
culture.
Sampling often upsets those who feel they have been misrepre-
sented and who also often forget the multiple influences upon their
“own” cultures. While hybrid collaborations are so evident in the
Caribbean, in the United States the monoracial logic sometimes
leads individuals to read racial mixing as suspect and obfuscates
syncretic realities and emergent possibilities, particularly between

254 Sampling South Asians

minority groups. Despite the ascendancy of Blacks in United States
popular culture, neither they nor South Asians have full access to
the power of dominant groups that set global and national agen-
das. Nonetheless, the context of war often impels individuals to
pay close attention to the representations of their communities.
Black hip hop producers do not unequivocally represent “the estab-
lishment,” but in some instances agendas overlap. When we move
from traditional sampling debates to analyzing the video of “Addic-
tive” within the political climate of 9/11, we find that Dre, Quik, and
Truth Hurts represent a type of Western cultural imperialism over
the East, shaping and reflecting national perspectives not limited to
Blacks, music, or the present moment.
The “Addictive” music video expresses the creators’ ideas of the
possible origins of its sampled music. The camera is set on the
singer’s hennaed hands swaying over her head in an attempt to
match the “over there” vibe of the song. It takes place in a lush
harem surrounding; its interior is laced with vibrant and intricate
sari-​like fabrics. The effect is sensual and the beauty of the women
and the decor draw the viewer into its aura. Staring at us, Truth
Hurts sings seductively on a plush bed, “He breaks me down, he
builds me up, he fills my cup, I like it rough.” During the Hindi
chorus, the camera pans across a series of Black women mixing
belly dancing with hip hop moves. The harem and dancers repre-
sent a feminized projection of “that region” that hides Brown men
and sexualizes heterosexual interracial contact, which is pursued
by America represented as dominant, male, and Black. The dancers’
clothing complements the decorations; they wear Indian-​inspired
embroidered tops and colorful scarves tied on to their tight-​fitting
jeans, shimmering with each movement of their hips. Then the
scene changes to an American nightclub when rapper Rakim enters
the video sporting 100 percent American urban wear—a leather
jacket and baggy jeans. As Rakim walks down a set of stairs and
into our sights, the set transports viewers back to the United States
from a foreign and remote region. In his deep New York accent,
he raps, “Thinking of a master plan, you know anything you need,
baby, ask your man”—taking part of this line from his old-​school
classic “Paid in Full.” This layered history of sampling extends fur-
ther across time and race: the remix of Eric B and Rakim’s song
“Paid in Full,” by Coldcut, sampled the Israeli singer Ofra Haza,

Sampling South Asians 255

whose singing echoed an “other worldly” addictively danceable
sound that may have inspired this latest pairing.9
The video producer Phillip Atwell presents to viewers a fictitious
yet compelling place where South Asia and the Middle East fuse.
The Hindi lyrics along with the belly dancing and harem scenario
filled with gyrating Black (not Brown) women tell a thousand and
one tales about the American cultural imagination of “that region”
of the world as one filled with beautiful women who are highly sen-
sual and expert dancers available for the male gaze. While Blacks
may occupy a particular position within the racial politics of the
United States, these kinds of new videos reveal a shared yet am-
biguous imaginary of the Middle East and South Asia held by main-
stream Americans, Black and White. But conflating these regions is
especially dangerous above and beyond the fact that the producers
did not gain permission to sample the song. In fact, although
music fans have expressed a renewed interest in sampling, copy-
right, and the ownership of culture because of “Addictive,” they
have devoted less attention to why these songs are popular while

In the same “Addictive” music video, the old-​school rapper Rakim

descends into an American hip hop club setting.

256 Sampling South Asians

America is at war with the real nations that inspire these fantasies
(cf. Fitzpatrick 2002). The videos, including R. Kelly’s harem esca-
pade in “Snake (Remix),” employ othering practices of appropria-
tion by conflating and exoticizing this “region” and its objects out-
side a historical, social, or geographic context (Wolf 1982; Fabian
2002). Producers erase actual Middle Eastern and South Asian
bodies and replace them with Black performers from the West who
nonetheless take on the cultural markers of the missing (indeed,
disappeared ) peoples. This appropriation as othering may be read as
a strategic use of anti-​essentialism (Lipsitz 1994, 2007), whereby
individuals take on “unlikely” identities in order to disrupt differ-
ences and highlight commonalities. But it seems more likely that
the draw to the Middle East and South Asia is a decontextualized
allure that underlies othering practices that are less bent on know-
ing the other than on temporarily donning trappings of exotica.
This exotic, yet attainable, depiction implies a desire for the other
or, more accurately, the desire for a new global playground devoid
of its original inhabitants. Yet the effects become particularly per-
nicious—and possibly ironic—within the context of American for-
eign policies (recall that this song debuted in June 2002, less than
a year after 9/11).
The events since the collapse of the World Trade Center prompted
the sudden growth of interest about that “region” of South Asia
and the Middle East among many Americans; colleges offer more
courses, stores sell more books, and people are actually having
conversations about the Middle East, Islam, and the expansion of
American empire. Yet much of the George W. Bush government’s
agenda had focused on a programmatic demonization of Islam. For
example, in collaboration with the mainstream news media, Bush
and his aides represented areas far beyond Afghanistan as home to
Islamic fundamentalists who were bent on destroying the American
way of life. These depictions, in conjunction with many Americans’
lack of knowledge about the Middle East, allowed the government
to rally the support of a majority of Americans in the “War on Ter-
rorism.” Were these enormously popular videos, which were made
by Black producers and singers and which often represented who
groups “are” to viewers, another mouthpiece for this mission? Is
their timing just coincidental, or is there some other explanation?
The few journalists who have analyzed the Truth Hurts video

Sampling South Asians 257

within the current political context argue that these forms of popu-
lar culture were complicit with the government’s goals. In an in-
sightful article in PopMatters, Chris Fitzpatrick connects the sam-
pling South Asia trend to the invasion of Iraq and comments on
how the “Addictive” video alleviates for viewers the actuality of
war and death in the Middle East. With regard to Afghanistan, he
writes: “Such heightened interest has created a strong market for
the sounds and sights of these regions, so it is not surprising that
U.S. music producers are finding ways to pillage the ‘third world’
for material. . . . By collapsing [the Middle East and India], ‘Ad-
dictive’ convolutes and expands the boundaries of ‘evil’ by making
India part of an ‘anti-​American terror network.’ After all, expanding
‘boundaries’ is what the War on Terrorism is all about, as Ashcroft
and Bush know all too well” (2002; see also Miller 2004). It should
come as no surprise that the American panopticon has shifted its
gaze toward Iran and Pakistan.
While Fitzpatrick rightly points to the danger in homogenizing
various regions, as Orientalism does, he is equally guilty of con-
flating all of “America” into a unified whole. He incorrectly asserts
that the producers of hip hop represent the imperialism of the First
World outright, unmediated by the politics of race. For instance,
while Fitzpatrick concedes that “this is not to say that Truth Hurts
is some secret agent for the United States government, but that
representation is always political,” he still makes a strong connec-
tion between the video and the War on Terrorism. He concludes,
“In such an ugly, war-​ridden reality, ‘Addictive’ provides a reassur-
ing sedative to the average American viewer, conveniently leaving
out mutilations by landmines, refugee camps, resurfacing warlords
and drug lords, suicide bombers, occupations, and those current
and imminent wars in these regions that could destroy them com-
pletely.” Yet attention to the variations in the positions of groups,
which are not static and shift according to scale of perspective,
affects how individuals view group relations. Interpreting popu-
lar culture through race relations at the national and international
scale prevents the inaccurate slippage between the government’s
demonization of the Middle East and Truth Hurts.
Truth Hurts along with her music and video producers and video
dancers are members of a racial group that is historically over-

258 Sampling South Asians

represented in the United States military in comparison to the size
of their national population.10 Americans may gather that the de-
creasing number of Black recruits reflected a growing sentiment
against the war in Iraq by some individuals whose more immediate
concerns included the wars here in America against the poor and
Black. To speak of the effects of this video on “the average American
viewer” without locating the producers of the song—or its audi-
ences that include South Asian and Middle Eastern Americans—
within America’s internal politics too simply ignores the inequali-
ties and differences of perspective that exist within our nation’s
boundaries. Yet it is true that even if popular artists do not intend
to make political commentary, ultimately the effects of these songs
reaffirm Americans’ geographic misperceptions. As such, as Fitz-
patrick comments, these mainstream songs and videos represent a
broader lack of both the awareness and desire to adequately repre-
sent South Asia and the Middle East.
(Negative) representations of “Muslim-​looking” people and the
relations between South Asians and Blacks before and following
9/11 represented not so much a distinct shift as they did a mag-
nified continuation of the complex and shifting images and past
processes that ebb and flow according to geopolitical events. They
also reveal the repercussions of the decisions by the mainstream
media, including news outlets, politicians, and popular culture, to
cast its attention upon previously ignored populations. Consciously
or not, hip hop superstars shape and reflect national—and even
international—concerns and play a central role in advocating both
hegemonic and counterhegemonic discourses. As a result, under-
standing the history of hip hop is as important as locating this
massively influential popular culture within contemporary politi-
cal, economic, and social contexts. We need to unpack hip hop as
an art form that is interpreted through a social lens and is informed
by past and current events. However, it is important also to read hip
hop on its own terms in order to understand that the creation of
these texts takes place both in the marginal and subcultural arenas
of society (as in underground hip hop and the spaces occupied by
desi rappers) and in the smack-​dab center of corporatized (popular)
culture by multimillion dollar and globally renowned artists like
Jay-​Z and Sean “Diddy” Combs.

Sampling South Asians 259

 In fact, the strongest explanation for Black sampling of South
Asian music since 2000 is that South Asian sounds were just the
next big thing to hit hip hop, following the immense popularity of
East Asian influences. The latter include the kanji tattoos in Japa-
nese and Chinese that frequently adorn rappers’ bodies, as well as
the martial arts elements and the “exotic” East Asian women fea-
tured in hip hop videos. “Addictive,” in fact, came on the heels of
a song that initially set the stage for a series that was to follow:
namely, Missy Elliott’s “Get Ur Freak On.” The album Miss E . . . So
Addictive hit stands on May 15, 2001, before the World Trade Center
collapsed. Hip hoppers are ceaselessly able to remain relevant by
consistently changing their sounds through the incorporation of
difference. In this way differences can be crossed over without re-
gard to context and history similar to the obfuscation of real dif-
ferences by multiculturalist ideologies in which representation is
depicted as apolitical and equal.
There were earlier signs of mainstream hip hop’s “Indian” turn.
For example, South Asian women performed in MTV music videos
in 2000. Veena and Neena, the Indian “bellytwins,” produced belly
dance workout videos and collaborated with the West Coast pro-
ducer Dr. Dre.11 In 2001 on the album The Blueprint another famous
rapper, Jay-​Z, rhymed in his song “Girls, Girls, Girls”:
I got this Indian squaw the day that I met her,
Asked her what tribe she with, red dot or feather . . .
Now that’s Spanish chick, French chick, Indian and Black,
That’s fried chicken, curry chicken, damn I’m getting fat.

In these lyrics Jay-​Z runs through a list of conflated sexist and racist
descriptions not, it seems, in order to critique them. Drawing upon
the homogenizing logic of race in the United States, Jay-​Z’s verse
muddies distinctions between Indians (indigenous Americans and
people from India) by substituting “tribe” for “caste.” That Jay-​Z
remarks upon Indians could signify the prevalence of East Indians
in New York, where the MC is from, or it might have been a rhym-
ing convenience. But it was a reference that desi fans and producers
took seriously as they were invested in how mainstream hip hop in-
corporated South Asians.
Some mainstream desi women took unkindly to the reference to
“red dots” in “Girls, Girls, Girls,” but they also felt rappers like

260 Sampling South Asians

 Jay-​Z sits in a room with an “Indian” woman and “asked her what tribe she with,
red dot or feather,” in his song “Girls, Girls, Girls.”

Jay-​Z and Tupac were three-​dimensional and “real” precisely be-

cause they were contradictory and controversial. Yet can we not
love and critique popular artists like Jay-​Z for advocating sexism,
racism, and homophobia across and within racial, gender, and sexual
groups, precisely because of their influence? Jay-​Z’s list of culinary
women urges Americans to reconsider advocates of racism and sex-
ism beyond the White male subject. Blacks engage in realignments
of race that trouble South Asians’ status as model minorities. Jay-​Z
feminizes Indians as women by lining them up with other desirable
women while leaving out representations of Brown men and depict-
ing all of them as foreigners. Indeed, his chauvinism mirrors atti-
tudes of mainstream South Asians toward Blacks and of other Black
rappers toward immigrants. The trend of South Asian women also
inspired a host of other rappers.
The music video “React” features a song by the old-​school Black
rapper Erick Sermon that immediately followed the success of “Ad-
dictive.” In it its producers literally dubbed trivial Eng­lish captions
over the Hindi chorus as women unfamiliar with the language at-
tempted to lip-​synch the words. As Erick begins rhyming:

Sampling South Asians 261

 Ay yo, I’m immaculate,
Come through masculine,
Wide body frame, E Dub’s the name
. . . . . . . . . . . .
Come through, storm the block like el nino,
Scoop up an Arabic chick before she close,
She goes:

And the sampled and unrepresented singer responds in Hindi: “Kisi

ko / kuch pucheka / to kaho to / kya kare to?” The green-​eyed rapper
makes explicit his ignorance about the meaning of the chorus by
rapping, “Whatever she said, then, I’m that.” In the video, he re-
placed the singer with a green pet hand sock to highlight the al-
leged humor of the chorus. But in the full version of the original
song, the woman is singing about a life and death situation: sui-
cide.
Some desi artists saw “React” as the worst kind of sampling—
sampling with complete disregard to context and without the
smallest effort to find out where the sample comes from and what
the singer is saying. It represents a decontextualized representa-
tion of South Asian music literally devoid of the mouth and person
from which the voice emanates. Additionally, Sermon’s description
of the woman as “Arabic,” along with the use of Hindi lyrics from
India, illustrates a general American ignorance of both geography
and non-​European languages. Of course there may in fact be no
“deep meaning” to the mismatching of his lyrics (“Arabic chick”),
the racialized stereotypes of convenience store owners, and the
sound of the chorus. Further, I am not certain that these references
were tied to the increasing visibility of the Middle East in the news
or whether the sample sounded cool and the reference was an at-
tempt to “match” it so that the rapper and singer created a kind of
“conversation.” It relays the message, though, that artists who have
become commercially viable do not need to do their homework—in
contrast to the pressures that Blacks and desi artists themselves put
on non-Blacks and women attempting to make it in the business.
Sampling South Asians is nothing new and should come as no
surprise given that borrowing is foundational to hip hop produc-
tion. Astute fans could even predict this phenomenon, as South Asia
was the next unexplored region in hip hop. The racial politics of the

262 Sampling South Asians

hip hop industry demand a cautionary rather than over-​celebratory
interpretation of the incorporation of actual South Asians. But they
did not remain voiceless or faceless for long. Mainstream hip hop
produced increasing representations of South Asian people and
elements just as the underground desi hip hop artists featured in
this book were attempting to break new ground in the business.
There are proper and improper ways of appropriating—or bor-
rowing and fusing—identities, aesthetics, and ideas. On the one
hand, acts of appropriation can come out of racism and exacerbate
group tensions. So-​called Jiggers and Wiggers who fetishize Black-
ness are like some mainstream desis who emulate yet misunder-
stand Blacks. Such practices embody appropriation as othering;
like other forms of appropriation, this is a two-​way process. That
is, we also see this phenomenon in mainstream hip hop artists’
appropriation and exotification of South Asian and Middle East-
ern sounds, commodities, and women. With racial politics geared
toward questioning the motives of non-Blacks, less attention has
been paid to Black hip hoppers’ sampling of non-Black forms. Ana-
lyzing how Black megastars adopt Asian signifiers reveals their ac-
tions as part of a larger, multidirectional flow of sampling among
individuals whose statuses are uneven and shifting in a culture
rooted in intertextual citation and informed by global events.
At the same time, producing music in a time of war has given
some popular artists a venue to voice their political opinions about
Iraq through studio collaborations with South Asians. Just as desi
hip hop artists work with Blacks in their productions, some col-
laborations reflect appropriation as identification. This occurs
when an individual identifies with another group’s cultural prod-
ucts through a contextualized approach that takes history, power,
and inequality into account. Mainstream hip hop artists including
Timbaland and Jay-​Z collaborate cross-​racially with South Asians to
produce informed polycultural expressions.
“Culture cannot be bounded and people cannot be asked to re-
spect ‘culture’ as if it were an artifact, without life or complexity,”
writes Vijay Prashad. “Social interaction and struggle produces cul-
tural worlds, and these are in constant, fraught formation. Our cul-
tures are linked in more ways than we could catalog, and it is from
these linkages that we hope our politics will be energized” (2001:
148). South Asian American hip hop artists, too, enact appropria-

Sampling South Asians 263

tive acts of identification with Blacks by fusing Black cultural and
racial identities with ethnic, gender, and sexual ones. These pro-
cesses are rooted in varied and individual approaches, contexts, and
ideologies not fully grasped by existing interpretations. Indeed, in
reframing our criteria to evaluate cross-​cultural appropriations and
interracial exchanges through the lens of global and historical pro-
cesses we come to a clearer understanding of the shifting terrain of
race relations and identifications.

Appropriation as Identification
Hip-​hoppers have done more to create a common culture for kids of
different backgrounds than the integration movement. (Reed quoted in
Farley 1999: 178)

While mainstream hip hop has incorporated South Asian elements

into its repertoire, the artists in this study have been busy working
through their local communities to gain access to broader audi-
ences. The intersection of Blacks and South Asians can reveal not
only the problems but also the power of popular culture to engage
populations and the possibilities of sampling as political acts of
identification. Not all cross-​cultural borrowings are racist actions;
not all appropriation is “theft” or “colonization” (Lott 1993b; Lip-
sitz 1994). White men enamored with jazz (and the larger than life
personas of Black jazz greats and their alleged wild lifestyles) in
the first half of the twentieth century often dedicated their lives to
learning and producing this music.12 Certainly, some were drawn
to what they interpreted was its “primitive” aspect of Blackness
and the “rawness” expressed in some forms of bebop and later in
free jazz, much as many are drawn to hip hop today. But some of
these White musicians also inserted themselves into “the scene,”
spent time with Black players, and took part in desegregating club
spaces (Jones 1963). These examples speak to some, but not all, of
the motivations of Asian Americans in hip hop who simultaneously
attempt to express minority identities.
Racially explicit music, according to Deborah Wong, “speaks
to the uneasy position that Asian Americans negotiate between
Blackness and Whiteness” (2004: 272). Wong emphasizes the im-
portance of the racialized components of listening to and making

264 Sampling South Asians

Black music for individuals who find few models of Asian American
expression. The appeal of Black music to Asian American jazz musi-
cians parallels hip hoppers one and two generations later. Japanese
rappers also challenge audiences’ assumptions of, in the words
of Ian Condry, the “misappropriation and misunderstanding” of
Black expressive forms (2006: 25). The lyrics of MCs in Japan reveal
“an affinity between African Americans as disenfranchised citizens
in the United States and Japanese youth unable to see their concerns
adequately addressed in their own political system” (206). South
Asians in America also feel voiceless within larger structural pro-
cesses. Their lives abound with examples of appropriation as iden-
tification—in fact, for many of them hip hop is their culture.
Context is central to analyzing how and why individuals appropri-
ate. Cross-​cultural exchanges dialogically inform the artists’ iden-
tifications. Like the rappers in Japan who use hip hop to comment
on immediate global events, some Americans use hip hop to ar-
ticulate their post-​9/11 concerns. The increased sampling of Hindi
film songs in mainstream rap during a period of heightened Brown
visibility coincided with a number of hip hoppers—desi, African
American, Puerto Rican and White—using their art to express their
views on the “War on Terror.” During this period, some Blacks in
the industry have collaborated with actual South Asians, thus help-
ing pave the way for greater desi representation. It is no coincidence
that these exchanges have increased since 2001 and that the music
they create provides glimpses of new social formations.

Collaborations: Mainstream Black Hip Hoppers and South Asians

Jay-​Z is among the commercial rappers who first incorporated
South Asian music into hip hop tracks. In some cases, his pro-
ducers sampled Hindi music without apparent knowledge of its
context. In other cases, he worked with South Asians to create
cross-​cultural, cross-​national, and cross-​racial musical products.
One of the hottest club hits in summer 2003 was the remix of the
Eng­land-​based Panjabi MC’s “Beware of the Boys” and his collabo-
ration with Jay-​Z. This cross-​Atlantic effort marked a turning point
for the presence and representation of South Asians in Black popu-
lar culture: hip hoppers had now officially moved past sampling
Hindi songs for their rap hooks (choruses) to produce an Eng­lish

Sampling South Asians 265

and Punjabi rap song recorded in real time, though not in the same
studio. Jay-​Z, a member of the Musicians United to Win Without
War coalition, even used the remix of this song (and others to fol-
low) to air his views about the United States occupation of Iraq:
We rebellious, we back home
Screamin,’ “Leave Iraq alone.”
For all my soldiers in the field
I will wish you safe return.
But only love kills war
When will they learn?

This was not the only reference to the war by Brooklyn’s Jay-​Z.
Indeed, he later collaborated with Raje Shware, a Philadelphia-​
based Indian American singer. Raje Shwari was “discovered” by
a top producer Timbaland, who billed her as the hottest new hip
hop act. She was the featured singer on the hits of some hip hop
heavyweights: she recorded with Missy Elliot and 50 Cent, for ex-
ample, and she provided the Hindi hook in “Nas’s Angels” on the
Charlie’s Angels soundtrack.13 I recall seeing her dressed in traditional
Indian clothing sitting in the back of a cab in Slum Village’s hip hop
video “Disco” (why are South Asians always associated with cabs?).
The desi hip hoppers I talked with were not aware of Raje Shwari
when Timabaland commissioned her to re-​sing an older popular
Hindi song on Jay-​Z’s track (thereby avoiding any copyright law-
suits), especially since her voice could have been yet another sample
(Americans picture Hindi speakers occupying space in South Asia
rather than in American music studios). However, when radio sta-
tions played “The Bounce,” young desis recognized the chorus as
the Hindi original “Choli Ke Peeche,” an award-​winning song from
the Bollywood hit film Khalnayak.
In the original song the demure yet teasing voice of Alka Yagnik
suggestively asks, “What is beneath your choli?” (the blouse that
South Asian women wear with their saris). This song, deemed “vul-
gar” by censors in India, was popular among diasporic South Asians
in the early 1990s. Gayatri Gopinath describes the empowering
potential of this song and the pleasures its viewers gain from the
disruptive and queer sexuality of the dance sequences that contest
heteronormative state discourses (2005: 100–11). In the hip hop
song Raje Shwari provides her own rendition of the same words,

266 Sampling South Asians

although her collaboration with the male producers reinscribes
a heteronormative, albeit cross-​racial, reading. Timbaland’s use
of “Chole ke Peeche” also advances his sampling practices be-
yond using tablas and Hindi one-​liners. He employs an “actual”
South Asian American woman (who had worked for years on her
own R&B—not Indian—music) to sing the sample in real time.
And she has a face—namely by appearing in the video for the song
(although still conforming to ideas of what Indian women “look
like”). Timbaland pushes hip hop forward by incorporating new
sounds and styles and exposing them to mainstream audiences.
The increasing representations of South Asians in popular culture,
who themselves change the looks and sounds of hip hop, is one by-
product of this. These cross-​fertilizations, including Black rappers’
commentaries on current events, encourage hip hop’s openness to
the contributions of South Asians, especially if desi artists make ag-
gressive claims to their presence.
Jay-​Z does not limit his references to 9/11 to his remix with Pan-
jabi MC. In “The Bounce” he raps:
Rumor has it “The Blueprint” classic
Couldn’t even be stopped by bin Laden
So September 11th marks the era forever
of a revolutionary Jay Guevero.

Here Jay-​Z adorns his persona with the revolutionary aura of Che
Guevara; and he infuses bin Laden, the Muslim in hiding, with the
power to stop most things but not Jay-​Z’s album (the audio CD
of The Blueprint came out on September 11, 2001). Like some desi
rappers, Black artists too use hip hop to express their beliefs about
the war with specific reference to bin Laden. They also refer to his-
torical parallels to expose the structural processes that underlie
America’s wars in non-​Western nations. Some rappers refer to bin
Laden in their rhymes by demonizing him as an enemy of the state
or, alternately, identifying with him as America’s most wanted.
Lyricists also use bin Laden as a foil against which to (re)prove that
the state has chosen Blacks as its “worst enemy,” thereby critiqu-
ing Bush who “hates Black people,” as the rapper Kanye West suc-
cinctly put it. The song “Bin Laden” by Immortal Technique, along
with the Italian/Puerto Rican DJ Green Lantern and with appear-
ances by Mos Def and Eminem, updates and echoes the Muslim

Sampling South Asians 267

convert Muhammad Ali’s antiwar sentiments that it wasn’t the Viet-
namese that oppressed him.14 On the controversial track that says
that Bush was responsible for the World Trade Center attack and
that Americans sold chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein after
the election of Ronald Reagan, the Peruvian-​born Harlemite Im-
mortal Technique raps:
All they talk about is terrorism on television
They tell you to listen, but they don’t really tell you they mission
They funded Al-​Qaeda, and now they blame the Muslim religion
Even though bin Laden, was a CIA tactician
They gave him billions of dollars, and they funded his purpose
Fahrenheit 9/11, that’s just scratchin’ the surface

The chorus “Bin Laden didn’t blow up the projects / It was you,
nigga / Tell the truth, nigga / (Bush knocked down the towers) / Tell
the truth, nigga / (Bush knocked down the projects)” illustrates a
relatively common interpretation of the war in Iraq, the hunt for
bin Laden, and the war on terrorism. Rappers, including those who
are Muslims, connect justifications for overseas wars to the same
logic that undergirds the government’s closing and policing of low-​
income housing (the projects) populated by working-​class minori-
ties in American cities.
There is no single way that American hip hop artists have sampled
Middle Eastern and South Asian references, and these actions
reflect the diversity of sentiments across mainstream and less com-
mercial hip hop. And, although we all face the repercussions of
presidential policies, even artists at the center of American popular
culture distance themselves from the decisions of politicians. Even
if these explicitly political statements do not get picked up by major
labels more invested in decontextualized representations of other-
ness, the new technologies of YouTube and MySpace spread these
messages far and wide. New software also makes it possible for
increasing numbers of people to become music producers in their
home studios. They contribute to hip hop’s critical commentary on
current events by sampling from and analyzing news broadcasts
and politicians’ speeches, for example. Many of the themes—such
as the antiwar perspectives of the rappers mentioned above, on one
hand, and the patriotism and military bent of R. Kelly and Mystikal
(who served in the military) on the other—reflect its multiple per-

268 Sampling South Asians

spectives. Hip hop culture simply cannot be reduced, and neither
should all appropriative acts be deemed inappropriate.
Perhaps both sets of artists—Timbaland and Raje Shwari; Jay-​Z
and Punjabi MC—were motivated to work together because of busi-
ness, aesthetic, or political and social considerations; who knows
whether or not they expressly sought to advance positive interracial
relations in the United States? Nonetheless these sonic collabora-
tions prove hip hop’s openness to South Asian sounds, styles, and
people. Within the parameters of our capitalist system, there is
still room for new, individual voices and the effects, however unin-
tended, that accompany them. Desis are slowly, yet actually, “on the
radar” of hip hop. For example, an Indian American rapper, the1-
shanti, signed on to Rawkus Records, a well-​known hip hop label
that also signed the Japanese rapper Kojoe. In fact, Afrika Bam-
baataa, “the godfather of hip hop culture,” named the1shanti the
“India Bambaataa”: “You have our blessings (Afrika Bambaataa and
The Universal Zulu Nation) as long as you use your name in the good
of your people and the good of yourself.”15 Other diasporic sub-
continentals are also finding their niche in the hip hop business.
Chee Malabar was approached by a subsidiary of one of the largest
record companies as a potential artist on their label. And while the
emergence of desi rappers may not change existing social, political,
and economic structures of inequality, they are nonetheless more
and more able to self-​represent with the music they love. Main-
stream hip hop’s sampling of South Asia may be a short-​lived trend,
but the integration of South Asians’ music into hip hop proper may
prove to have a longer, more lasting impact on Americans’ percep-
tions of desis.

Desi Hip Hoppers:

The Appropriation of Hip Hop as Identification with Blacks
The cross-​racial identifications of hip hop desis reconfigure racial
boundaries in ways that connect South Asians to Blacks at precisely
the moment when global events restructure these relations. They
draw from the models of Blackness and hip hop culture to craft po-
liticized Brown identities that are hip hop while reconfiguring what
hip hop is. For some non-Blacks, rap music heightens their aware-
ness of Black history and the lives of people struggling with eco-

Sampling South Asians 269

nomic disenfranchisement, and it can foster cultural understand-
ing despite their social distance (Bernstein 1995; Roediger 1998;
see also Gilroy 1987). Polycultural sampling may give rise to posi-
tive interracial interactions that lead to deep friendships (Arlyck
1997: 272; Rivera 1997). It may in one example lead, as Zaid Ansari
suggests, “to whites ‘becoming X’—that is, losing that quality in
whiteness that ‘keeps them accepting oppression,’ including their
own oppression” (quoted in Roediger 1998: 363). The sampling
practices of hip hop desis model some politicized uses of Black
popular culture that resist disabling processes.
As non-Whites, desis can understand and unite with Blacks in the
struggle for equality without forgoing their ethnicity. D’Lo engages
music, for example, to show desi youths how to sample and meld
influences in informed ways that reject nationalisms and identi-
tarian politics. When D’Lo was young, s/he studied South Indian
Karnatic music, and every Friday s/he attended a bhajan (Hindu
devotional songs) session where s/he loved to sing. Even as s/he
became increasingly involved in hip hop, D’Lo returned to the bha-
jan sessions on his/her visits home from college:
But every time I came back home I’d go to bhajan and there were kids
and we’d sit around and you know how you go double-​time? Like
you’d sing a bhajan and then you’d do your second round in double-​
time, you know? [S/he does a sample and laughs]. So, when I did that,
I used to play hip hop beats, and either I’d bring my DV 7 Yamaha
with pads in it [laughs] or I’d go syncopated on their off beat. So
. . . they’d be like here: [clap, clap], and I’d be like [clap-​clap clap,
clap-​clap clap]. So, my mom would be like, “Stop it!” and all the kids
would be edging toward me, and we’d all be having a dope time with
the double-​time! Everybody loved coming to bhajan whenever I was
there! We’d all go nuts, it was dope! [Laughs]

D’Lo’s lively narrative expresses a process of polycultural (and poly-

rhythmic) fusion that is foundational to hip hop and that makes
it open to adoption. These practices also reflect how, as Fred Ho
and Bill Mullen note, “African Americans and Asian Americans
have mutually influenced, borrowed from, and jointly innovated
new forms in culture . . . and politics” (2008: 3), just as Asians and
Blacks have done in other diasporic locations as well.

270 Sampling South Asians

 South Asian American performers eschew the myopic focus by
audiences on the racial status of non-Blacks in hip hop. They see
their musical identities through more intangible paradigms—
using “authenticity,” for example, to discuss, maneuver among,
and bridge (although not transcend) meaningful boundaries. They
want to be known as “authentic artists,” not as “Indian rappers.”
Authenticity separates them from those who simply “appropriate.”
But they do not consider authenticity to be a color blind or reified
ideology. Rather, desis identify with hip hop in explicitly racialized
ways by recasting constructed divisions of race. Invested in distinc-
tions between good and wack music, they concur that to be authen-
tic one needs to “come correct” and make good music. Thus, they de-
ploy authenticity as an anti-​essentialist “realness” that is not tied to
being Black or South Asian, being poor or wealthy, being straight or
gay, or being male or female. They recuperate authenticity from an
essentialist trap by defining an authentic artist as one who has the
right ideology and approach, rather than a particular identity.

Anti-​Essentialist Authenticity:
Knowledge, Respect, and Dedication
The bottom line is that we just be ourselves. I don’t try too hard to “act
like” them. Meaning in terms of slang, using the n-​word. Talking about
their culture and race. And still I’m accepted. This is all because of tal-
ent.—Rocky, a Canadian Punjabi MC
Rap is based on sampling. It’s a way of giving back to the community. Say
you sample off Aretha Franklin or Diana Ross—it’s like it’s acknowledging
their past. It’s like if me or you were doing hip hop and we sampled Ravi
Shankar because that’s what our parents listened to.—Chee, Himalayan
Project MC

Capitalist interventions in art and cultural production often deploy

essentialist authenticity in dangerous ways (Jackson 2005). Corpo-
rate interests sign a pact with dominant racist discourses to sell
their products and ideas that maintain the status quo. They do this
by linking “authenticity” to particular identities, including the idea
that authentic rappers are Black, or that women (i.e., their body
parts) should be seen and not heard. Reductive and stereotyped

Sampling South Asians 271

concepts of race and gender are in the vortex of capitalist com-
modification of difference and sameness. In light of these claims,
what are these desis’ notions of being “authentic artists,” and how
do they employ them in anti-​essentialist ways in their approach to
identity politics? The answer lies in their approach of knowledge,
respect, and dedication to life and music rather than appeals to a
pure or necessary racial or gender identity. Anti-​essentialist au-
thenticity as an approach is an alternative to identity-​based evalua-
tion and resists corporations’ attempts to hijack the full humanity
of minorities through the commodification of racism.
In taking my clue from desi artists I dislocate authenticity from
the body and instead use it to refer to an individual’s context-​based
perspective. The artists’ global race consciousness is one example
of this, and the way they sample is another. Although individuals
may belong and hold firm to their identifications with preexisting
categories, this political understanding of difference emphasizes
the constructed and divisive nature of racial categories. These art-
ists are neither interested in doing away with race, nor feel that they
can transcend its impacts. Rather, they are bent on artistic integrity
and attend to hip hop as a racialized field of possibility. But can they
speak up to corporate interests that profit from the more dangerous
conceptions of authenticity? If an artist’s biggest aim is to be heard,
how do desis negotiate the constraints of corporate interests that
create the very reductive and essentialist conceptions that the art-
ists wish to challenge?

Maintaining Artistic Integrity within the Constraints of Capitalism

If maintaining integrity, or being real, means staying true to one-
self and is central to the artists’ definition of authenticity, then desi
artists can almost by definition not seek corporate support. Inde-
pendent labels may take risks on new artists and offer them con-
trol over their product, but they provide little distribution. On the
other hand, larger labels offer bigger budgets and vast networks
of promotion, but push their artists to craft particular sounds and
images. Indeed, almost all of the desi artists are unsigned or else
have signed to their own independent labels such as Rukus Avenue
Records, Karmacy’s label. The politics of race infuse this situation,
of course: because the mass consumer base seems to accept the

272 Sampling South Asians

idea that only Black artists are authentic, non-Blacks face a difficult
time attracting attention and legitimacy.
As the artists see it, commodification spreads culture, includ-
ing music, to new markets while tying it deeply to local and, when
popular, global capital. It often reduces the complexities of people
and their products to palatable packaged essences (of “soul,” “cool-
ness,” “exotica,” etc.) that line the shelves of stores and cyber mar-
kets. Some artists comment that tastes and production technolo-
gies, hostage to consumer demands, have oversimplified more
complex sounds. And they criticize some successful Black artists
for aligning with big business. As a writer for popular hip hop
magazines, Jonny has seen how the artists he grew up listening to
have changed. In an email to me, he wrote: “Hip-​hop is a business,
not an art. And when groups you thought would make music just
for the art of it—for example, De La Soul—start tailoring it for the
business, it makes you lose some faith.”
These issues come into play as the artists weigh the pros and cons
of artistic integrity and authenticity over mass distribution. At one
point I spoke with Karmacy’s KB about whether or not signed artists
still have responsibility for the content of their music. His response
emphasizes the power plays between record labels and their artists:
“The responsibility is on the artist, but the artists get their arms
twisted by the record labels because the labels have the power.” He
concedes that artists choose to make albums, but once that decision
is made they enter a business in which “it’s about selling albums.”
Someone who lacks backing may be a “phenomenal artist,” but the
“problem is, you’re just standing on a soapbox, [and] nobody hears
you.” Ultimately, “there’s a trade-​off that the artist has to make”
between having “something important to say and wanting people
to hear it.” In the final analysis, rather than feeling trapped, he ar-
gues that “artists definitely have the ability to maintain their artis-
tic integrity.” But, according to these performers, judgments about
their authenticity emerge from their own assessment of the consis-
tency of the messages in their music and their choices in the mar-
ket rather than from listeners’ evaluations. This does not mean they
let themselves easily off the hook; their self-​appraisal as “real” hip
hoppers rests upon a complex web of factors: how they negotiate
their identities; their dedication; their musical knowledge, content,
and quality; and their promotion and distribution choices.

Sampling South Asians 273

 Perhaps most central to their definition of authenticity is the con-
sistency of integrity and image in performance and in one’s every-
day life outside the expressly commodified music world: Do your
lyrics express who you are and do you live the way you say you do?
If hip hop becomes your life, that disjuncture between being a hip
hopper and just being does not exist. Self-​proclaimed “conscious
rappers” who act in not-​so-​conscious ways signal inauthenticity.
“My problem,” Jonny says, “is not in [their] contributing to corpo-
rate culture but in [their] waxing revolutionary in their personas . . .
It’s hard to be the people’s revolutionary when you’re contributing
to promoting a shoe company that uses sweatshops.” Rappers who
sold fans on hip hop in the first place through their focus on revo-
lutionary change now appear to only sell superficial revolutionary
personas. In the eyes of many, hip hop seems to have lost its poten-
tial for social change specifically because of corporate co-​optation
that demands—and will pay for—particular and oppressive enact-
ments. At this point these issues remain largely theoretical for these
desi artists: of course they want to remain independent to make ex-
ecutive decisions over their product, but often they remain indepen-
dent because major labels have not yet approached them (see Wang
2006). South Asian rappers and producers are still marginal to the
big business side of hip hop, and they produce and promote their
products with limited funding. It is difficult at this point to state
definitively how desi artists deal with the constraints of big busi-
ness except to say that they often critique capitalism and conspicu-
ous consumption while trying to make music and live lives that re-
veal who they are and gain a fan base (Sharma 2007). Throughout
this process, they do not constrain themselves by or conform to
a particular image or identity. Authenticity is not about identity or
essence at all; rather, it defines an approach of knowledge, respect,
and dedication.

Authenticity Equals Knowledge, Respect, Dedication

You know, I feel like [one needs to approach hip hop] just as a Black child
who grows up needs to learn his history, read, actively look out, you
know. It’s also talking to people and chillin’ with people, you know, but
it’s also taking it seriously: studying . . . Doing work, social justice, what-
ever . . . So, yes, being with people, associating, relating, like being a part

274 Sampling South Asians

 of a community is one way . . . Or at least interacting with [people]. And
then another part is more active: read a book! Or seven!! [chuckles]—
Vivek, MC, activist, lawyer

The desi artists frame their understanding of authenticity in hip

hop within broader United States racial politics. Their approach to
hip hop based on knowledge, respect, and dedication also reflects
a perspective on life that deflects attention away from privileged
identities in favor of critical ideologies. Their process of becoming
legitimate music producers parallels the process of academics as
they become experts: they work to learn the historical genealogy of
their particular topic, and they gain membership to a community
by cultivating the cultural capital that reflects their dedication and
respect. And, of course, they must be good at their craft. Respect
for people and the variety of their expressions defines for artists the
line between the appropriate and inappropriate forms of borrow-
ing. Sampling means that no identity is pure, and authenticity in
this sense rejects the concept of an essentialist identity in favor of
the sincere representation of one’s thoughts. As a result, the art-
ists do not erase, denigrate, or overly celebrate particular cultures
over others in order to experience Blackness or seek soul.16 These
ongoing practices of respect enable desi artists to sample and ap-
propriate while they remain authentic. They reveal how individuals
create identity dialogically and how groups socially construct racial
meanings through power relations, but always with the caveat that
racial identity is not so fluid as to be unimportant or disregarded.
Authenticity is a beleaguered term; it is so tied to dangerous
notions and oppressive economic forces that some argue against
it. However, like race (an even more contested term), it is a concept
that frames Americans’ comprehensions; it is also a concept that
people can choose to infuse with new meanings. “What happens,”
John Jackson asks in his ethnography of race in America, “when we
think of race in terms of sincerity and not just authenticity” in order
to pull apart these two terms? (2005: 13). One of the limitations
of racial authenticity is that it tends to reduce people to particu-
larized and static racial scripts. For instance, were they to assign
authenticity as a barometer of following expected scripts, these art-
ists would certainly be—and in fact have been—deemed “inauthen-
tic desis.” But because they have so often pushed up against the

Sampling South Asians 275

inadequacies of older definitions, desi artists hold on to the con-
cepts of authenticity and race by remixing their meanings into em-
powering ones. “Realness,” so loaded a term in hip hop, both ridi-
culed and worshipped, is among those concepts that the artists find
useful. Rather than being singular and scripted, realness to them
is the value of an individual who is consistent in their ideologies
(thoughts), practices (actions), and articulations (words). The art-
ists do not reclaim and rearticulate these almost-​orphaned terms
to claim that skills trump race or that race is irrelevant: rather, they
argue that acknowledging race and difference is critical, but one’s
race is not deterministic (see Condry 2006; Wang 2006). Appropri-
ating authentically and knowledgably is the key.
The artists use the same criteria of their self-​e valuations to ex-
amine the practices of others. “Now,” MC Rawj pontificates, “the
originators [of hip hop] aren’t all Black. And it’s just like jazz. It’s
basically what’s happening to hip hop: it’s been removed from its
original nest, regardless of who makes it . . . And other people are
starting to cultivate it.” He continues by stating, “I think it’s just
like religion. When you’re lower and lower on the ladder of spiri-
tuality, you start debating over small shit and miss the big picture.
But any true believer of one religion could sit down with a true
believer of another and there won’t be any issues between them.
There’s a certain plane, that as soon as you cross a certain line, it’s
not an issue anymore.” Rawj’s example of religion is instructive as
it shifts the discussion from music and race to beliefs and values.
Being a “true believer” unhinges belonging and production away
from identity politics and the body and bolts them to ideology—
how one thinks, one’s perspective and worldview.
Knowledge, respect, and dedication—as private and social prac-
tices—explain these desis’ claims as legitimate artists. Jonny as-
serts the importance of his musical intelligence above all else. So-
cial capital, or expressing one’s knowledge of culture (Bourdieu
1986), and hustling to create and spread one’s message is highly
valued within a culture that to outsiders seems like coded terrain.
One desi DJ from New York discussed with me how these values
define an approach to cultural ownership: “I think that nobody has a
place in composing any kind of music because everyone has a place
in composing all music. I don’t care if a Ugandan decides to start
producing Punjabi folk giddha if that’s what he or she feels a pas-

276 Sampling South Asians

sion for.” Emphasizing historical knowledge, the DJ continued by
stating, “I would have an issue if he or she was doing this without
knowledge or respect for the history of that music, but the notion
of ‘place’ or ‘right’ doesn’t apply here.” Desi artists adopt the prin-
ciples of hip hop culture as a value system that frames their lives.
Chee echoes and adds to the New York DJ’s sentiments. He as-
serts that in order to understand and respect hip hop one must
know the context from which it came: “It’s supposed to build on
the past. It’s supposed to build on the culture.” Chee first heard hip
hop in the late 1980s and as he became interested in becoming an
MC he knew he had to go back and pick up albums that were out
before he came to this country because, as he says, “I understood
that for me to understand hip hop, I’d have to know where it came
from”—just as we need to understand where these desis came from
in order to fully appreciate their music. Regarding desis who just
fuse music for beats, he remarks that “they don’t know where it
comes from. I understand that Indians are trying to form an iden-
tity based on something else and add on to it. But a lot of that is
disrespectful to Black culture. If you want to build on anything, you
have to appreciate [it]. That’s where it goes back to sampling, you
have to understand the time frame, when it was recorded, why it
was recorded, what was going on socially.” Like Deejay Bella’s con-
nection between music and history, Chee’s work “builds” upon cul-
tural knowledge, much like the concept of research in the academy.
He finds that sampling can build community when one privileges
an informed awareness. The performers’ definitions of an authentic
being challenge the central arguments against such an idea—that
authenticity presumes original and untouched origins. Shifting au-
thenticity to a matter of values rather than preordained identities
reveals the constitutive role of polycultural sampling and appro-
priation in the everyday practices of all peoples. Sampling also plays
a role in group relations by reflecting the dialogic and relational
processes through which actors cross divisions to form alliances
rooted in a shared sense of belonging. Music, as global histories re-
veal, has been the basis of such intersections and is the foundation
upon which new sonic and social formations are being built.
Excavating the roots of both music and people is critical for those
who plan to create lasting impacts with their own cultural expres-
sions. “Music is a legacy,” Chee announced while we were discuss-

Sampling South Asians 277

ing Bob Marley’s musical genius. “When an artist does something,
records something, that’s going to live on. The recorded word is
going to live on, regardless, long after the artist is gone.” Marley’s
authenticity to this MC stands on the fact that “he actually lived
what he believed” in the face of capitalist and colonialist interven-
tions. Chee celebrated the fact that Marley “didn’t do it for the radio,
he didn’t do it for the money.” The desi MC’s respect for the reggae
musician led to his close scrutiny of how others have sampled Bob
Marley. What matters is not the background of any artist appro-
priating Marley but whether or not the ideology of the sampler or
the product is in line with what they sample. For this reason, many
of the artists disagreed with sampling religious songs on tracks
that feature hedonistic lyrics. Chee applies these criteria to his own
productions of music. He uses jazz music and his father’s Malayali
prayers on his album; he raps about the legacies of colonialism and
slavery in his lyrics; and he speaks of being an Indian immigrant
and a minority in America. In doing so, he enacts the processes of
sampling—adapting and changing hip hop as people do to all cul-
tures.
This parallels Chee’s process of identity and community forma-
tion, as he samples from his Malayali, Djibouti, American, and hip
hop cultures, just as D’Lo and Vivek do. Thus, according to their
own definitions, these artists are also authentic desis. Even those
who most often rap about racial matters—including Chee, D’Lo,
AbstractVision, Humanity, and Vivek—they all use hip hop to re-
frame their commitments to other South Asians. They adopt Black
popular culture as a complement to, not a replacement of, their new
identities as American minorities.
Yet and still, the relative invisibility of Brown faces in hip hop
tells us that South Asians and Blacks still have a long way to go in
the development of broad-​scale positive interracial relations. It also
points to the central role of sampling and polycultural formation in
taking us there. The lives and lyrics of desi artists help explain why
these individuals would identify with a group that many consider to
be their inferior. We see why they find hip hop to be the appropri-
ate platform for the expression of racialized identities and political
perspectives. How they go about making music, forming their iden-
tities, and moving across seemingly bounded communities is one
model for how to develop such cross racial alliances. They act based

278 Sampling South Asians

on their awareness of how global histories—particularly those that
have lurked in the shadows—create both meaningful and meaning-
less group differences. Hip hop desis illustrate what putting knowl-
edge to work looks like and they call upon authenticity to critically
assess how one thinks, lives, and articulates one’s position in the
world.

Conclusion
The desi artists did not bring South Asians and hip hop to the main-
stream. This was accomplished, instead, by the emergence of com-
mercial hip hop hits that incorporated Hindi film music and Indian-​
inspired styles and women in the early 2000s. Pop culture’s unlikely
marriage of those who have been constructed as model and not-​so-​
model minorities reminds us how individuals exert agency by push-
ing back on imposed identities and narrow expectations. In their
collaborations with Blacks and their coproduction of one kind of
Black culture, these hip hop desis turn oppressive racial categories
into empowering paradigms to forge coalitions that the logic of
race aims to dissuade. Brown performers encourage scholars to re-
formulate debates about essentialism, authenticity, and identity
politics. Sampling is widespread, and the goal of this analysis is
not to strictly condemn or condone it but rather to understand how
and why individuals sample and how this practice might be consti-
tutive to the formation of all individuals and social formations—
including emergent ones.
The artists’ lives illustrate sampling and the cut ’n’ mix practices
of hip hop. Hip hop, Jonny says, is “a mentality that goes against
conformity, taking material things and objects that are around you
and re-​doing it.” Similarly, Vivek’s “strange position” as an agent
who pulls together disparate groups in dance- and music-​filled
celebrations also illustrates the art and politics of appropriation.
These adult performers warn us against strictly negative interpre-
tations of such cross-​fertilizations. Other Americans may see such
choices as “unnatural,” when, in fact, they illustrate phenomena
applicable to all Americans who also sample as a kind of intercul-
tural citation. When MC Vivek was asked to present the principle
of collective work for a Kwanzaa celebration of family, commu-
nity, and culture, he chose to draw on an Indian parable about the

Sampling South Asians 279

figure of Birbal. He disrupts our assumption that the Birbal story
is “his” and that the holiday created by Maulana Karenga for Afri-
can Americans is “not his.” Who and what constitutes a group that
“owns” culture? Where do individuals and groups draw “their” cul-
ture’s boundaries? Through the time and commitment that Vivek
puts into his membership in multiple communities, he disregards
commonsense divisions. The way he moves his body in dance epito-
mizes sampling as he melds Puerto Rican and Black break dancing
techniques from the United States with moves from Gujarati dandia
raas and West African dance, all the while claiming these new pro-
ductions as expressions of who he is. “Race” and “culture” blur in
these instances of cross-​pollination that also express the identities,
lives, and consciousness of desis like D’Lo, Chee, Bella, and kb.
Their experiences and interpretations disrupt biological and social
notions of Blackness, desiness, culture, and difference. And their
life-​long commitments reveal a “level of sincerity and emotional
legitimacy” that frames these choices (Jones 1963: 151).
Intercultural borrowings are external representations of deeper
political exchanges. The desi artists’ attitudes about race expressed
in song and speech differ from those of Wiggers and Jiggers who
take on fantastic and stereotypical conceptions of the other in order
to reassert their difference. In such cases, cultural transgressions
are “dangerous” (Lipsitz 1994) and reassert White supremacy (or
“multiracial White supremacy” [Rodriguez 2006]) and Black inferi-
ority. This occurs in the appropriations by some mainstream desis
who draw upon Black cultural signifiers. Blacks also take part in the
process by, for example, orientalizing Asia and Asians. That I con-
trast mainstream desi appropriation as othering with the way that
desi artists approach hip hop is not a convenient contrast; in fact,
it often defines the difference between these sets of desis.
Through a nexus of ideologies and practices, these artists claim
membership across cultures in ways that replicate their cross-​
boundary identity and cultural formations. Desi hip hoppers act
upon their ideologies by cultivating interracial peer groups and
engaging in political activism. In sampling from other communi-
ties and cultural legacies they also claim a culturally relevant ethnic
identity. Hip hop does not lead D’Lo or Vivek away from their
sense of desiness. D’Lo enjoyed and remade bhajans into a relevant
second-​generation context by replaying them in his/her own style.

280 Sampling South Asians

His/her literal fusing of bhajan and hip hop beats and Vivek’s hy-
brid dance productions mirror how hip hop itself arose; the multi-
tude of these cultural formations destabilizes hegemonic projects
promoting race, ethnicity, and culture as stable categories.
When “culture” is considered to be “owned” by a demarcated
group it is rendered static by trapping individuals within fabricated
categories that reaffirm the logic of racism based on naturalized
differences. The anti-​essentialist views of South Asian American
artists unlink Blackness from authenticity in the realm of hip hop.
While disrupting accepted conceptions of ethnicity and race, Brown
performers actively create themselves by growing and “building” as
they (re)make music and American culture. Sampling, the musical
“version” of intertextual citation or quotation, is one method they
employ to re-​fuse new ways of being in the world. In the process,
they offer new generations new samples to choose from.
As hip hop exemplifies, creating culture is a communal rather
than individual process. The desi artists also adopt the foundational
ideologies of hip hop that eschew the notion of a single author;
as a result, one can argue that there is no pure ownership of hip
hop or, indeed, any culture. Taking part in Black popular cultures
also means participating in a historical legacy that one should be
informed about. Appropriation and sampling potentially express
identification because they acknowledge those who have helped
create the art form. Shout outs (to recognize or pay tribute to
someone) and intertextual citations are a routine aspect of hip hop
music. In calling upon history and context in their lyrics, desi art-
ists perform historically constituted and emergent identities em-
bedded—but not trapped—within a set of power relations. Rather
than claiming hip hop as theirs to own, we can perceive of these
rappers and DJs as participants within larger cultures—of hip hop,
of diasporic South Asians, of America—in which they themselves
are constantly in the process of becoming, always growing, always
changing (Hall 1996a).
The artists recuperate authenticity as a non-​identitarian anti-​
essentialist ideology and approach. Knowledge, respect, and dedi-
cation are part of their critical consciousness and worldview that
include thoughts on race and inequality. Their lives and lyrics chal-
lenge the purity and meanings—but not meaningfulness—of race.
They acknowledge confining structures while pushing across con-

Sampling South Asians 281

structed historical barriers that define and limit identifications
across difference. Desis in hip hop contest the politics of identity
centered on ethnicity as narrow, and on the same grounds they also
contest the racial politics of the hip hop industry. In presenting
themselves as authentic artists who have a legitimate place in Black
popular culture, the performers in this project have earned the re-
spect of fans across color lines.
Polyculturalism is useful for understanding the impurity and
cross-​fertilization of culture and race and sampling as a way to in-
terpret the formation of identities (Kelley 1999; Prashad 2001). The
obvious role of sampling in the formation of desi identities and
hip hop culture offers a strong, but not singular, example of these
processes. South Asians and Blacks must expand existing concep-
tions of race, culture, and ownership by reconsidering how we are
to frame what constitutes identity, community, and politics. The
artists are committed to forging political communities based on
shared interests that concern people across a range of categories,
and they do this through appropriative acts that signal identifica-
tion. Hip hop’s desis have not only crafted and expressed unique
and individual identities informed by multiple processes but also
have reshaped daily interactions between Blacks and South Asians.
What they offer is a politics of interest—an alternative to identity
politics—rooted in identification across consequential differences.

282 Sampling South Asians

 Conclusion
Turning Thoughts into Action through
the Politics of Identification

Political intention adheres to every cultural production.

—Richard Iton, In Search of the Black Fantastic
This is about people of color. It’s something that’s a lot about being a
Black person in America, but it can also transfer over because the politics
transfer. So it’s not an imitation. It’s the politics.—Ravi, hip hop record
label founder
Someone told me to remember.
To archive the past
to witness the present
and speak to the future.
—D’Lo, “When You Have No Choice”

The Black experience is foundational to race relations in the United

States, where it affects the choices and lives of American desis.
South Asians in America, despite our collective unwillingness, must
look to and learn from the perspectives of America’s racial other.
From these lessons South Asians not only come to better under-
stand ourselves but also learn how to advance social justice agendas
that benefit all people. Creating solidarity, Vijay Prashad reminds
us, depends on commitment, sacrifice, and identification across
sameness and difference (2000: 193). In learning the histories of
other groups, communities can form longitudinal and structural
understandings of the processes that shape our lives. This book
emerged from my concern over the gaps between Asians and Blacks
at precisely the moment in post-​9/11 America that these groups
should unite against systemic processes that cross over to affect
multiple populations. As an ethnography it represents a model of
contemporary productive Black and Asian relations forged through
popular culture.
As atypical South Asian Americans, hip hop’s desis challenge
ethnic expectations by pursuing nontraditional choices in careers,
politics, and love. In the 1980s and 1990s they were moved by the
messages of rap music as they struggled to find a place in their
neighborhoods and schools, whether they lived in a predominantly
wealthy and White residential area or as the only desi family on a
mostly Black block. Hip hop educated them about how to speak
up on the issues they faced, and it enabled them to cultivate re-
lations across color lines. It also reaffirmed their nonconformist
and critical ideologies by urging them to question the status quo
to articulate strong identities and claim space in a nation still un-
familiar with them. They approach hip hop’s tricky race politics just
as they daily negotiate their minority status—namely, by learning
their own history as well as that of those whom they consider kin.
As part of the hip hop generation these young adults express new
racialized gender and sexual identities through their own perfor-
mances of hip hop in the 1990s and 2000s. Hip hop becomes for
them the perfect vehicle through which to articulate their multi-
scalar identities as South Asians, as the children of immigrants,
as minorities, and as Americans. Their excavation of hip hop paral-
lels scholarly methods of critical analysis. As Brown producers of
a Black art form, they understand why, when, how, and where hip
hop was created and, in the process, they are able to articulate vari-
ous paradigms of hip hop culture that make room for them—most
often on the margins, sometimes known as the underground. From
this position, desi rappers and DJs dispatch their own messages of
ethnic pride, race consciousness, and a desire to rock the crowd.
Despite numerous obstacles, the majority of these artists are well
into their third decades of producing a form of Black popular cul-
ture that is as old as they are.
Hip hop is and has always been more than “just music,” and

284 Turning Thoughts into Action

this is a central draw for the participants in this study. As an ex-
pressly racialized form, hip hop culture is necessarily political and
deeply implicated in—and not just reflective of—power relations in
America. The desis addressed in this book attempt to harness the
political potential of Black popular culture, including the founda-
tional practices of hip hop, to express and enact social change. Their
multiple forms of social action align them with both the struggles
of older generations and the activist members of their generation
(Das Gupta 2006). While many have posed the hip hop generation
to stand in contrast to the civil rights generation (which in both con-
ceptions most often neglect Asian Americans), these young adults
have learned of these pasts and see their consciousness-​raising
efforts as part of this legacy. They have learned about the ideologies
of the Chinese American activist Grace Lee Boggs (1998) and her
African American husband James Boggs. Their perspectives mirror
that of Yuri Kochiyama, a Japanese American woman who was in-
spired by Malcolm X. Their rhymes not only sample Malcolm X but
also update critiques of capitalism and racism. These desis studied
historical political crossovers and use this knowledge to craft their
own forms of cross-​racial activism.
Desi artists understand their engagements with hip hop to be
as explicitly political as their social activist work. Blurring the line
between art and politics, their activism crosses racial, class, and
national boundaries and is an extension of the racialized political
identities that they forge through hip hop. Vivek’s music, such as
the song “One Struggle,” articulates the ideological groundwork
that frames his work as a Human Rights Watch researcher on popu-
lations at risk of contracting HIV in Bangladesh. His written report
on this topic reflects the same global race consciousness and desire
for social justice that he articulates in rhyme: he argues for collabo-
ration with disenfranchised populations, speaks truth to power,
and indicts authority figures for their counterproductive responses.1
Vivek’s efforts in cofounding a number of organizations inside and
outside the United States, including in Sierra Leone, form a more
recognizable “political” expression of the “wider Black conscious-
ness” that he already expresses in a musical form that some schol-
ars have erroneously deemed apolitical (McWhorter 2008).
Hip hop’s desis do not appropriate hip hop only to fight their own
battles; through music they build community and use their art to

Turning Thoughts into Action 285

fight battles alongside Blacks. Motivated by compassion, these art-
ists extend their identifications with disenfranchised people on a
national and global scale through multiple modes of political activ-
ism that include hip hop performance. Explaining his decision
to move to Sierra Leone, Vivek told Gulati, a writer for Little India
magazine: “I know there are people suffering everywhere, even in
America . . . but the suffering in Sierra Leone is so acute that I feel
compelled and actually privileged to be able to make a difference.”2
Vivek says he is “addicted” to social change, and other desi hip hop
artists share his compulsion; it is also what draws them to hip hop
as the most effective tool for expression.
Deejay Bella was inspired in 1988 by the Human Rights Now tour,
where she was drawn to a graphic poster that asked “Do you want
to stop torture now?” In response the fourteen-​year-​old Bella began
to work with Amnesty International, at a time when she was already
deeply drawn to music. She wanted to do “actual political work, and
it had to do with the worst issues. The ones that people don’t talk
about, that are real,” and much of Amnesty’s work at that time in-
corporated music. As part of running the chapter at her junior high
school in Las Vegas, in collaboration with the University of Nevada,
she assisted in organizing concerts and hosting speakers. The gov-
ernor of Nevada even proclaimed an official Human Rights Day in
response to these efforts. Her education on the connections among
minorities paralleled her development as a DJ. In high school she
visited maquiladoras (exploitative factories on the United States–
Mexico border) as well as prisons housing immigrants along with
the criminal population—experiences that motivated her to con-
tinue her work. “It educated me,” she said. “To me it just educated
me about reality about political suppression . . . It could get you
upset about how our government is, by far. But it also motivates
you to do something about it and it just keeps you in your fire to be
an activist and work for those issues.” She provided pro-​bono work,
as Vivek did, for an organization that aided Latino refugees seeking
political asylum. Chee’s music and his “day job” also overlap, as he
works on behalf of disadvantaged populations through organiza-
tions like the Posse Foundation in New York and Youth Built in Los
Angeles, which prepares minority youths for college. As adults, the
majority of the desi artists live and work in Black neighborhoods
in Oakland, Brooklyn, Los Angeles, and Chicago. They take part in

286 Turning Thoughts into Action

anti-​prison demonstrations by creating albums whose profits go
to educating people about the prison industrial system, and they
support affirmative action. These individuals who work abroad and
across communities are motivated by the connections they have
formed with Blacks through hip hop culture.
Most of the desi artists have come to terms with the sense of
ethnic ambivalence that marked their earlier years. Hip hop culture,
in fact, has brought them back to their ethnic communities and
becomes the mode through which they engage younger and older
generations. For example, KB, the South Indian MC from Rich-
mond, California, was disturbed by the divisions among desis on
the Berkeley campus and created a South Asian panethnic organi-
zation along with a fellow student, a Jat Sikh from northern India.
The Hindu-​Muslim riots in Mumbai, India, in 1992—the same year
that the Los Angeles riots took place—especially motivated KB and
his cofounder to “create a healthy forum” for representation that
countered divisions and highlighted commonalities among desi
men and women. In this effort KB wanted to foster the idea that
South Asians in America should not be motivated by the same divi-
sions apparent in India, especially as desis from across the subcon-
tinent are “all South Asian Americans, whether we want to be called
that or not.” Similar to the goals of KB’s group Karmacy, the orga-
nization “was basically the empowerment of creating a voice. I look
at creating a voice as the first step in having an identity.” Thus KB’s
fight for a South Asian voice through his campus efforts mirrors his
goals for Karmacy to be another form of panethnic representation
of its members’ South Asian American experiences.
The events of September 11, 2001, politicized sectors of the
American populace that had been among the most invisible. Some
South Asians, including middle-​class Hindu Indians in Silicon Val-
ley, took this opportunity to shore up historical rifts by distinguish-
ing themselves from Muslims, just as Koreans in the United States
had distinguished themselves from Japanese during World War II.
The rising anti-​Muslim sentiment dovetailed with some Hindus’
own longstanding anti-​Muslim animosity, thereby highlighting
the complexities of a post-​9/11 panethnic identity. Nonetheless,
the subsequent violent targeting of Sikhs and Indians as well as
Arab and Muslim Americans revealed how quickly a group that had
been under the radar of American society could become racialized

Turning Thoughts into Action 287

and deflated into all-​encompassing stereotypes (Omi and Winant
1994). Yet some desis had already been expressing these ideas,
notably in arguing that as racialized American minorities South
Asians must engage with race and racism. The experience of 9/11
provided them with another opportunity to seize upon national and
global events to illustrate further connections with other groups
across time, space, and race.
South Asian and Black relations were also impacted by 9/11. The
desi artists in solidarity with Blacks were troubled by racial realign-
ments, and they used their music to critique George W. Bush and
the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, to align South Asians with Blacks
in the United States, and to express their understanding of oppres-
sion and inequality. In forums held in the Bay Area about the im-
pending war in Afghanistan, local Black youths pointed to the wars
on their blocks that they fought (against police brutality, crime, vio-
lence, and poverty)—ones that nobody cared about—so why should
they support or care about a war abroad? Some Blacks also felt that
the attention paid to Brown people—the racial profiling, detention,
and racism—offered a temporary if bitter relief to America’s most
wanted who had routinely been victim to these practices (Hassan
2002). The shared experiences of Brown and Black people with
racial profiling and incarceration might have made some South
Asians aware of how quickly a model group can turn into America’s
enemy within, but their overall responses revealed their privileging
of distance from Blacks, and vice versa.
D’Lo had been involved in mainstream desi activism but felt it
replicated many of the limitations and expectations that s/he ex-
perienced with other mainstream desis in college. As an active anti-
war protester, D’Lo was frustrated by others’ inaction—a view s/he
addresses in his/her performance piece “Eyes Closed in America”:
We all livin’ in fear of detainment
Tears constipated
Every move pre-​meditated
Watching the shit get worse while we wait and
Still choosing to remain complacent

But we know from D’Lo’s story that 9/11 was not his/her wake up
call. D’Lo had already been performing for numerous organiza-
tions, including Diasporadics, South Asian Women Creative Circle

288 Turning Thoughts into Action

(SAWCC), and the now defunct Desh Pardesh in Canada. In find-
ing the insular politics and gossip within these groups distressing,
D’Lo expanded his/her work to include anti-​police brutality cam-
paigns. S/he used his/her poetry as part of his/her work with Art-
ist’s Network of Refuse and Resist as well as with Desis Rising Up
and Moving (DRUM)—an organization whose efforts aim to better
the conditions of working-​class desis. As D’Lo rhymes:
Paranoid over phone’s being bugged
Revolutionary thoughts tug
Constantly
Though we scheme harder at keeping
those thoughts at bay
Wondering what it would take
With the atrocities of Bush’s campaign
Bringin’ memories of Hitler’s reign
Seem in vain
Any efforts for change
Futile attempts at breaking the chains
And shackles on ankles
Of slave mentality
Meanwhile
Muslims in modern day internment camps
Meanwhile
bombs on Afghanistan n Iraq
Meanwhile
New York’s rebuildin’ on burial grounds
Meanwhile
Palestine’s still on lock down

While growing up, D’Lo was drawn to action because of the racism
and homophobia s/he faced; witnessing police brutality against
American minorities and growing anti-​Muslim sentiment pushes
him/her to draw increasingly broader systemic connections among
oppressed peoples. In echoing many of the connections made by
other artists, D’Lo joins the struggles of people across the globe by
linking their domination to similar structural processes that intern,
lock down, and enslave our mentalities. This is the artist’s expres-
sion of a global race consciousness.
Hip hop culture is formative to the investment of these artists

Turning Thoughts into Action 289

in local and global Black and South Asian communities. It is also
the vehicle through which they provide alternatives to discourses
of difference that divide Asians and Blacks as distant and compet-
ing groups. Music and formal political action infuse one another
to form a solid basis for turning a critical consciousness into so-
cial action. The cross-​fertilization that constitutes the lives of hip
hop desis also challenges reified conceptions of race, ethnicity, and
belonging. By critiquing new forms of racism, including the sub-
stitution of “culture” for “race” in discussing group difference in
America, desi artists also recuperate other uses of cultural forma-
tions that are not rooted in shared ethnic and racial ancestries. Hip
hop is not a culture in the traditional sense used by anthropolo-
gists to refer to groups with common ancestry that share values
and common practices. But, barring shared ancestry, hip hop com-
munities consist of individuals who do share common practices,
references, and values. Culture, particularly historically and race-​
conscious popular culture, plays a powerful role in articulating the
possibilities of interracial coalitions.
Because the foundational practices of hip hop are expressly po-
litical as resistant forms of community formation in the face of dis-
enfranchisement, these artists understand its relevance and politi-
cal potency as a vehicle for social change. As a result, many of the
MCs exclaim that they are speaking “prophesies,” and they believe
in their art as a starting point for a revolution through spreading the
(counterhegemonic) word. They particularly draw upon the theme
of revolution in their lyrics as a way to wage war with a militarized
racist state. Their songs not only expose master narratives of the
past but also offer knowledge and “conscious lyrics” as an alterna-
tive to contemporary discourses of history, belonging, and capital-
ism. On the song “Bridge Techniques” (originally recorded in 1997),
we hear Chee’s trademark upbeat staccato rhyming style telling lis-
teners who he is and what he is ready for:
Rhyme excellence, mixed with intellect militance,
To kill ’em since, rap city citizens don’t pay dues,
Guerilla grammar, straight from Kerala to Beirut . . .
. . . Chaotic elements is melanin with terrorist adrenaline,
To set the revolution, like V. I. Lenin,
Pennin’ manifestos signed Chirag Menon.

290 Turning Thoughts into Action

His lyrics, replete with violent metaphors of war and aggression,
cunningly highlight Chee’s personality and his critique of America’s
foreign policy. In this lyrical battle with the powers that be, Chee
most often takes on the persona of the enemy of the (nation)
state—which is later how the government and mainstream society
positioned many Brown people following 9/11. On one track Chee
critiques the hypocrisy of America toward immigrants of color by
asserting that the letters “U.S.A.” stand for “U Shouldn’ta Arrived.”
To battle oppression, the artists also evoke militarized meta-
phors in their lyrics by calling upon their words as true knowledge
with revolutionary potential, just as early rappers used rhymes as
metaphorical bullets. They elucidate how their music contributes
to a counterhegemonic discourse of “truth,” whether addressed to
ethnic, immigrant, or broader communities. Indeed, MCs such as
KB, Chee, AbstractVision, Humanity, D’Lo, and Rawj do not just
uncover the inner workings of power in society but also offer their
words of wisdom as “conscious knowledge” by telling their audi-
ences what time it is. In fact, theirs is a rising voice of subaltern
histories that articulate the processes of hegemony, consent, and
resistance. Yet MCs are not just using their voices to reveal con-
spiracies and boast about MCing skills. Ultimately, for many of
these artists, rapping is a form of social action in which they ar-
ticulate a clearly counterhegemonic viewpoint based on knowledge
and political consciousness. In “Passage to India,” KB raps that he
and his fellow MCs
Seem like prodigies, we ought to be put up on pedestals,
We’re bringing mental foes to challenge the status quo.
Yo, perceptually we’re flexing in a brand new direction,
We’re here to question the whole basis of your perception.

One may critique the MCs for presenting their perspectives as

“truth” (coming from the mouths of “prodigies” and “prophets,”
no less). But perhaps we may interpret this strategy both as a sign
of the strength of their beliefs and the power of the spoken word.
AbstractVision and Humanity, the Pakistani cousins from Staten
Island who formed Abstract/Humanity, illustrate this erudition of
“consciousness exhibited through rhymes” more eloquently than
any thesis.
These two MCs, along with another cousin, DJ Ali, infuse hip hop

Turning Thoughts into Action 291

with the unique perspectives of young Muslim men in New York.
According to the inside of their CD jacket, they are two “MC’s fight-
ing indirect oppression.” On their now-​defunct Web site they ex-
plain what it means to be mentally enslaved: “Our debut album,
Politrix, is about how slavery is not limited to just the physical as-
pect. People out there think they are liberated just because they
have freedom of their own life. However, that freedom is largely
manipulated and distorted by higher powers to work in their favor.
The point is that commercialism, consumerism and patriotism can
heavily distort one’s perception of the world. They can also pre-
vent one from finding their own beliefs by settling for ones given
to them.”3 In the song “Mental Slavery” the rappers argue that we
must seek a counterhegemonic understanding and reclaim (previ-
ously silenced) histories from within and expressed through hip
hop:
They be makin’ the lives of the masses somethin’ to hate
Crime, hate, murder and the women they rape
Make my strong mind lose track of time
I sit and wonder, how could they be so blind?
Well, it’s all in the name of makin’ that dollar
But I sit here to write so I can holler
The feelings that need never be ignored
We’ll give em’ something that they ain’t never explored
The torture we feel each and every day
Will be displayed for the establishment
The ravishing—feelings of hurt and despair
Will become bare as I ride on top of these snares
My rhymes manifest the rare
Art that is revolution
At times, it’s the only solution
Sacrifices made, and some lives lost
But to get ahead, yo, you gotta pay the cost

When the rappers state that “Art is that revolution / At times, it’s
the only solution” we are reminded of Chee’s signature as he at-
tempts to “set a revolution” through “pennin’ [lyrical] manifestos.”
Humanity and AbstractVision rap about reclaiming power; but
their lyrics are conspicuously raw and filled with death and blood,
thereby signaling the difficulties of what they are up against. These

292 Turning Thoughts into Action

rappers are among the numerous MCs who assign hip hop—and
their own voices—a critical role as the tool for bringing about
necessary change. It is not a coincidence that the desi MCs have
chosen conscious rap as the form through which to articulate their
politically charged perspectives. They echo the way that many Black
rappers have turned microphones into swords as rhymes morph
into verbal and metaphorical battles against the powers that be.
From these examples it becomes clear that theories are clearly
inadequate, such as those on contemporary blackface that assume
that youths unequivocally map Black identities upon their own
racialized bodies without a process of translation (see Lott 1993a,
1993b; cf. Lhamon 1998). The artists’ activism may be the most rec-
ognizable political expression of a global race consciousness, but
it has infused their music from the start. In fact, hip hop has led
them to this worldview. My concept of a broader race conscious-
ness incorporates a conception of Blackness applicable to people
of African descent and to non-​African peoples, without the intent
of either erasing the importance and particularity of Blackness to
people descended from Africa or negating how formative their ex-
periences are. Instead, this concept disrupts racial categories by
revealing the fabrication of homogenized conceptions of Black-
ness and desiness. In paying attention to and acknowledging the
distinctions among various racialized groups, these Brown art-
ists do not deny or attempt to transcend race, or conflate all dif-
ference as equal. Recognizing how important these identities are
but also finding nodes or meeting points at the crossroads (Lipsitz
1994) nurtures cross-​racial collaborations that come together for
shared purposes. A global race consciousness enhances our think-
ing of race, community, identity, and politics in inclusive, and thus
stronger, ways.
The artists are all aware of these racial politics, and macro-​level
structural paradigms do not leave desi MCs feeling helpless. In-
stead, they call upon their words to expose these processes for what
they are. These MCs assert that we are not simply cogs in the ma-
chine; instead, we have the agency to develop our own understand-
ing of the world. As Humanity raps:
But there ain’t no length long enough to measure my strength
Unlimited powers I hold

Turning Thoughts into Action 293

 They call me strong and they call me bold
Ain’t no lies, deceit or deception
Gonna challenge my direction
. . . . . . . . . .
Ain’t no surprise
Why I choose to use my views insteada’
Bein’ deceived by crews
Of corrupted policies
Pervasive fallacies

This young MC decides to draw upon his own resources and experi-
ences to craft ideas that challenge powerful corporate and political
groups aiming to keep Americans locked in “mental slavery.”
Music is the medium through which some desis claim space in
the United States and make race for South Asian Americans. Hip
hop is a powerful lens through which to examine Asian/Black re-
lations not only because of its enormous popularity as a global
form but also because hip hop culture is explicit about race, differ-
ence, inequality, and power. In the desi artists’ range of lives and
lyrics, documented here for the first time, we see alliance build-
ing across race, class, gender, sexuality, and immigrant status that
models how to develop and sustain solidarities across differences
that matter. Sampling is central to this process; Brown artists craft
new identities and communities by drawing from a range of avail-
able sources and crossing over multiple community boundaries to
weave together influences of disparate groups.
Hip hop—a polycultural production based on fusing and meld-
ing various influences into cohesive yet ever-​changing expres-
sions—encourages individuals to knit together their own identi-
ties. Throughout this book, I have used the trope of sampling to
describe how some individuals manage, contest, and construct
ethnicity, race, gender, and sexuality (as well as, of course, their
music). It also applies to their political consciousness, as it is in-
formed and expressed through relations with Black peers, hip hop,
and social action. These potentially political cut ’n’ mix technolo-
gies can provide an anti-​essentialist approach to authenticity, com-
munity formation, and identity expression. Sampling practices
forge identities, cultures, and communities, including hip hop, in
a way that highlights historical and collaborative formation and es-

294 Turning Thoughts into Action

chews the notion of a single author or original moment of creation.
Brown hip hoppers must nonetheless contend with existing racial
politics.
The desi artists are individuals who take action to locate them-
selves within—and alter—existing hierarchies of race in the United
States. They must also attend to their locations within Black popu-
lar culture—and do so with knowledge, respect, and dedication.
The relevance of context in understanding not only Black people and
their cultural formations but all people across time and space be-
comes evident in this approach. By calling upon connectivities—
historical, political, sonic, cultural, and racial—some members of
the new second generation deal with difference explicitly by chal-
lenging co-​ethnics’ desire to sidestep racial matters. Together their
lives and lyrics illustrate the politics of identification, in which they
cross sui generis categories in order to come together to advance
shared goals not restricted to one group.
Hip hop is indeed still a political counterhegemonic voice of re-
sistance and an agent for social change. The participants in this
study prove this clearly. Neither their small numbers nor the cor-
porate co-​optation of much of hip hop is grounds for discount-
ing their voices. I specifically look at the role of Black popular cul-
ture in developing alliances across difference because that is where
we can find models of cross-​racial organizing for social justice
through resistant cultural forms. The seeds of theories of action
can be found here—in their articulation of power, history, and in-
equality. In challenging divisive and incomplete culturalist theories
of difference—biological notions of difference in drag—the artists
study and further elaborate upon macro-​level structural processes
that explain migration, community formation, and racialization.
America is founded, they rap, on inequities inherent in capitalism
and the exploitation of particular groups on the basis of “race.”
These processes continue today, albeit in disguise, through color-
blind discourses, multiculturalism, and the more explicit anti-​
immigrant nativism and the ongoing exploitation of minority and
poor workers. Hip hop’s desis draw upon the power of rap to con-
vey and excise these structural inequalities.
Corporate co-​optation cannot fully dilute hip hop’s political
potential. AbstractVision reveals that he has made it through the

Turning Thoughts into Action 295

murky waters of corporate global domination and omnipresence by
choosing “the spirit” instead of the dollar. His song is in essence a
call to the masses for revolution, to “liberate the nation”:
My style is rare
Consciousness exhibited through rhymes
Of bare
Tell all stories of injustice—don’t trust this
It’s monopolization—mental slaves gotta liberate the nation
These corporate conglomerates act like high-​tech armaments
And abuse their power
. . . . . . . .
Their lies received by the millions of fools all over the globe
Seen through consumerism they be destined to fold
They choose the dollar while I choose the spirit
Realize the truth in my conscious lyrics

In putting pen to paper these lyricists become the kind of educa-

tors that they found in some of the first rappers they listened to in
their youth. Like the old-​school veterans, this new school of hip
hop continues the tradition of unpacking how power works, how
systems oppress, and how knowledge empowers.
This is an emerging face of Asian American youth whose col-
laborations balance out the scholarly attention paid to conflicts be-
tween Asians and Blacks. Revealing the grounds upon which differ-
ent groups can come together while acknowledging specificities is
how any broad-​based alliance can become even more inclusive. In
our increasingly diverse nation, appropriation is not simply a Black
and White debate or a top-​down imposition. South Asian youths
adopt forms of Blackness in problematic and promising ways—the
reverse is also true. The multiple flows of cultural cross-​pollination
between two American minorities destabilize essential identities
and caution against celebrations of both hybridity that assumes
pure origins and unequivocal claims to individuals “owning” cul-
ture. It also disrupts race, and in contending and not transcending
it desis remake race. They alter the contours of both desiness and
Blackness and of desi sexualities and gender roles, thereby freeing
race, gender, and sexuality from the grasp of biology, stereotypes,
oppression, and disempowerment.

296 Turning Thoughts into Action

 Although these desis contend with the politics of hip hop they
are more bent on expressing hip hop as politics. Hip hop is po-
litical because it produces and encourages activisms; hip hop, as
KRS-​One says, is also knowledge. And, as Michel Foucault (1980)
reminds us, knowledge is power. This culture is so expansive that
it affects the ideologies and affiliations of youths and adults; it also
shapes their actions—how and whether they vote, who they be-
come, and to what issues they commit themselves. Yet books that
try to grasp the fullness of hip hop—its past, producers, messages,
politics, multiple constituencies, and futures—continue again and
again to reduce it to the same debates and major players. Hip hop
has expanded, as has the political voice of its producers—Blacks,
non-Blacks, men, and women. Hip hop creates activists by giving
youths their first lessons in alternative thinking, challenging the
master narratives they learn in school, making them multilingual,
and tightening their poetic and artistic skills. The politics of hip
hop is not just in the official arenas of voting or running for office;
the kinds of politics we see these artists partaking in and advancing
is everyday politics, detailed ethnographically, in living change that
is as much Public Enemy as it is Gandhi.
In standing up to normative discourses within the United States
and in their ethnic communities hip hop desis represent just a few
of the many hip hop soldiers who have fought for representation
and pushed for social change throughout the world. Hegemony is
never total, Antonio Gramsci (1971) reminds us: ruling ideas and
relations of power face ongoing resistance from below. Unequal
relations and constructed group differences that appear static are
neither natural nor inevitable. Neither must we reproduce such
conditions inevitably, particularly between two minority groups. As
non-White immigrant groups enter the United States it is possible
that they, too, will experience racism that could lead newcomers
to form alliances across color lines based on their shared status
as non-Whites. That some have chosen hip hop to articulate these
feelings should come as no surprise. South Asian Americans em-
ploy hip hop to make their voices heard and to engage in something
that brings them and others intense pleasure. They also use it to do
what this Black popular form has always done: envision alternative
futures and express hope as a youth culture. In order to use their

Turning Thoughts into Action 297

consciousness, lyrics, and lives as one model for coalition building,
it is important to consider other crossovers among divided groups.
Comparative racial studies beyond Black and White that uncover
collaborative and conflictive relations between groups, particu-
larly non-White groups, enable us to envision new communities
of belonging. Similarly, additional research on comparative dias-
poric studies outside of the nation can only provide global, and
therefore more accurate and significant, information on historical
parallels and processes that help explain patterns across nations,
including why divisions between Asians and Africans seem so pro-
found. Analyzing other racially ambiguous groups through Mixed
Race studies, for example, is yet another critical arena for advancing
racial theory and accounting for the current potency that race con-
tinues to hold for people across the globe.
These studies are critical in light of the increasing gaps and con-
flicts among communities of color in the United States. The grow-
ing social science literature on Black and non-Black participants in
hip hop culture attests to the increasing significance of Black popu-
lar culture as the arena in which youths across races come to know
one another. It is true that many of these interactions are not fueled
by well-​informed progressive politics. Yet, the maintenance of in-
equality, the persistence of structural racism, and the continued
gaps among and within communities of color all compel me to
foreground the counterhegemonic ideologies and worldviews that
can push forward broader interracial progressive politics. Mem-
bers of these social movements are not grounded in narrow identity
politics that limit the range of their concerns but rather on broader
conceptions of identification. South Asian American youths who
fit uneasily within America’s Black and White binary are drawn to
the innovative and creative processes of hip hop production be-
cause it parallels in many ways their own process of identity for-
mation. Having created identities and cultural products anew,
they present remixed ideologies and ways of being that allow both
South Asians and Blacks to reconsider what race, community, cul-
ture, and belonging stand for and look like—both now and in the
future. Finally, the experiences and perspectives of these artists,
like this study, resist conceptions of a colorblind, race-​neutral, or
post-​racial America. Race is central to South Asian Americans and
the development of new second-​generation identities. The ever-​

298 Turning Thoughts into Action

hopeful D’Lo, who always looks forward, reminds us what we work
toward:
But Finally . . .
Falling into deep sleep
Behind eyes closed we CAN’T be blinded no more
Envisioning a new world for us all
Where poor ain’t a word no more
Where
all the colors of race would be revered as gold
Where class only means the school you go
Where
the only wars would be against discrimination
Where there’s free education
Coz as a community
We kept on resisting
To the point where we were all running things.

Turning Thoughts into Action 299

 Notes

Introduction: Claiming Space, Making Race

1. The first generation refers to adult immigrants; the 1.5 generation
generally refers to individuals immigrating before the age of thirteen;
and the second generation is the first United States–born generation.
2. My cohost was Samip Mallick at the University of Chicago. The par-
ticipants included MC Abstract/Vision and DJ Ali, MC Kabir, MC Chee
Malabar, DJ Rekha, and the United States debut of the Malayali hip hop
group from Malaysia, Yogi B and Natchatra, featuring Yogi B, MC Jesz,
and Dr. Burn. See the Hiphopistan Web site, http://hiphopistan.uchicago
.edu. And see YouTube (http://www.youtube.com) “AAS Roundtable”
Parts 1–4 for the panel presentation, which was co-​chaired by Bakari Kit-
wana and me.
3. The artist MC Rawj now goes by his proper name, Roger.
4. D’Lo, who identified as gay and later as a male, prefers to disrupt
gender pronouns “he” and “she” in order to remind others of the flexi-
bility of gendered identities. I agree with disrupting naturalized links be-
tween gender and sex, and for purposes of clarity in my references to
D’Lo, I will refer to D’Lo by the pronouns “s/he” and “his/her.”
5. Bella goes by the name Deejay Bella; in other references to individu-
als who spin records, I refer to them through the alternate spelling, “DJ.”
6. Dandia raas is a traditional Gujarati stick dance performed on Nav-
ratri, a celebration of the god Rama and the goddess Durga.
7. Segmented assimilation addresses the influences of Black and White
Americans on second-​generation immigrants by describing how a range
of variables (skin color, socioeconomic status, access to a strong ethnic
network) leads to “upward,” “linear,” or “downward” pathways of as-
similation. In highlighting multiple outcomes this theory corrects the
notion of a monolithic nation and a one-​way path of assimilation. This
theory takes racialization into account and posits that ethnicity plays a
central role in the “assimilation” of non-White immigrants. However, in
addition to its troubling interpretations of United States–born Blacks,
these scholars also assume that the children of immigrants will adopt an
ethnic identity when they in fact may not.
8. The album was produced in the United Kingdom where rapper Slick
Rick, also on the record, is from.
9. In the 1960s and 1970s predominantly Eng­lish-​speaking and highly
skilled Hindu Indian men and women from urban centers across India
arrived in a booming postwar American economy (Prashad 2000: 4) and
settled in suburbs and cities across the United States. For more on the
second wave of Indian immigration, see Saran 1980; Knoll 1982; Jensen
1988; Helweg and Helweg 1990; Hing 2004.
10. In the early 1900s the first wave of Indians, mostly Sikh men with
farming and military backgrounds from Punjab, arrived on the West
Coast. They settled in Washington, Oregon, and California and worked in
agriculture and in the fishery and lumber industries. Their numbers were
small compared to immigrants from other Asian nations, but with the
rising anti-​Asian fervor on the West Coast they were ineligible for citizen-
ship and remained aliens, unable to legally own land or vote. Barred from
marrying White women and accompanied by few Indian women, some of
these men married Mexican women whom they met while laboring in the
fields (Leonard 1992). In the 1980s the third wave of immigrants, many
of whom entered through the family reunificiation policy written into the
Immigration Act of 1965, included men and women from across South
Asia who entered a troubled American labor market without the safety
net of professional skills. They diversified South Asian America and often
became domestic helpers, cab drivers, and workers in newspaper stands,
convenience stores, and gas stations (see Khandelwal 2002; Das Gupta
2006).
11. The assault by cultural critics on the misogyny, scatology, violence,
and drugs in hip hop followed its mainstream popularity in the 1990s.
Concerned suburban parents and prominent politicians blamed young
Black men for debasing the Black respectability of an earlier generation
(see McBride 2005). C. Delores Tucker called rap music “pornographic
smut” and, along with Tipper Gore, aimed for censorship (Kelley 1996;
Lipstiz 1998a).
12. The combination of a recession, middle-​class flight, and height-
ened police surveillance increasingly confined urban Blacks to communi-

302 Notes
ties without resources. Crack cocaine affected members of these commu-
nities in the 1980s, which the government used to justify the increasing
criminalization of nonviolent offenders who were housed in growing
factories: American prisons. For more on the rise of the prison indus-
trial complex, see Parenti 1999; Davis and Dent 2001; Rodriguez 2006;
Gilmore 2007.
13. Examples include the Bay Area rappers Paris, Boots Riley of the
Coup, and Oakland’s hip hop-​based pro-​education, anti-​prison youth
movements in the 2000s.
14. Incidentally, Bodhi Dharma, a monk from India, introduced Shao-
lin kung fu to China. Although Buddhism is commonly ascribed to East
Asia, it originated in India.
15. This ethnography extends into the 2000s, when technological ad-
vances in music production, promotion, and distribution gave these art-
ists considerable freedom from the need to be signed.
16. For more on rotten coconuts and rotten bananas, see Format maga-
zine, http://formatmag.com/fashion/hoodman/.
17. Copyright law tends to be based on the notion of a single author.
The communal formation of hip hop has continually been challenged by,
and challenges, this restriction on sampling practices (Sharma 1999).
18. Those who support the thesis that South Asians are honorary
Whites point to their structural and economic integration; their appar-
ent model minority trappings; conceptions of the Aryan or Caucasian
roots of Indians; and their anomalous categorization as White in the 1970
census.
19. The literature on South Asians contends that “socio-​economic
repression has stimulated political involvement and opposition while
middle-​class or elite status has abated it” (Clarke, Peach, and Vertovec
1990: 22). This interpretation posits that working-​class people are at the
front lines of racism and are therefore the ones to develop progressive
identities and alliances (Das Gupta 2006). The class status of wealthier
minorities may shield them from the severity of racism, but it does not
“whiten” them. For a discussion of Asian Americans in relation to White-
ness, see Okihiro 1994; Tuan 1999; Wu 2002; Zhou 2004.
20. Girmit is a metaphor Prashad draws from the contracts that Indian
indentured laborers signed on their way to Trinidad and Fiji. See Ghosh
2008.
21. Celebrating all identities as hybrid (e.g., Gross, McMurray, and
Swedenburg 1996) can elide both power differences and the fact that, at
particular times and places, individuals present their identities as fixed
(i.e., Hall’s “positional identities” 1995: 66).

Notes 303
 22. Indians and Africans are the two largest populations in the former
British colony of Trinidad. Their post-​independence relations have been
tense and even violent as they jockey for economic and political power.
23. I had fruitful conversations about these global connections with
my Northwestern colleagues Richard Iton and Barnor Hesse, along with
Rhoda Reddock at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad.
24. We also see this in the United Kingdom (see Hall 2000: 221–25).
25. The political songs of British Asian bands like Asian Dub Founda-
tion and FunDaMental piqued the interest of Cultural Studies scholars on
both sides of the Atlantic. See Vivek Bald’s documentary Mutiny; Sharma,
Hutnyk, and Sharma 1997; Hutnyk 2000; Bakrania 2004.
26. Sam Rao, director of the Indo-​American Community Service Cen-
ter in Santa Clara, was an invaluable resource who introduced me to im-
portant members of the South Asian community and invited me to spe-
cial events.

Chapter 1: Alternative Ethnics

1. In 2004 Richmond was ranked California’s most dangerous city, ac-
cording to a report by Morgan Quitno (http://www.morganquitno.com).
Just north of Berkeley, Richmond was, according to the 2000 census, 36
percent Black and just over 12 percent Asian, of which only 1.2 percent
were “Asian Indian.” In 1980, when the artists were preteens, Asians were
just under 5 percent of the city while the Black population was approxi-
mately 48 percent (“A Community Transformed: Richmond, California,”
University of Virgina Faculty Webserver, http://faculty.virginia.edu.
2. “White identified” is a term that some of the artists used to refer
to mainstream desis who say they do not “see” race or feel impacted by
its effects and who identify as “American.” Scholars have also suggested
that individuals may turn away from ethnicity to attain a higher status
(De Vos 1975). Palumbo-​Liu (1999), however, reminds us that the class
status of Asians who experience socioeconomic mobility does not mean
they have gained equal social acceptance by Whites as White. Attention
to the effects of non-White status has been one of the most critical con-
tributions of the literature on “new immigrants.” Leonard (1992) uses
the concept of “ethnic options” to explain ethnicity among Punjabi-​
Mexicans in California to be flexible, socially constructed, and affected
by social structures and history. More recent scholarship has offered “hy-
brid” and “third spaces” to explain the lives of, for example, Asian Ameri-
can youths. Their Asian and American lives are not considered discrete or
pure, and both the individual, particularly youths, and their social for-
mations are considered culturally hybrid (Chaudhry 1998). This literature

304 Notes
portrays South Asian subjectivities that are aware of and that occupy the
margins and peripheries rather than conceptualizing two bounded and
distinct cultures or “worlds.”
3. “Reactive ethnicity” theorizes one immigrant response to racism
and one’s new minority status by turning inward, thereby highlighting
a particular invention of tradition that emphasizes praiseworthy narra-
tives. It helps explain the ethnic insularity of South Asian immigrants
(Portes and Rumbaut 2001).
4. During the 1990s, Californians witnessed the rise of anti-​immigrant
and anti-​Black policies including the oversized military industrial com-
plex, the banning of affirmative action, the cutting of welfare, the mili-
tarization of the border, and Pete Wilson’s Proposition 187 that with-
drew social services from “illegal” immigrants. Due to their legal, class,
and racial status, many Asian Americans, including South Asians, were
shielded from these policies and often supported discourses that justified
this backlash.
5. In 1990, more than 45 percent of Indians in America spoke Eng­lish,
even within their homes (Lessinger 1995: 15). A few families owned
rental properties or small businesses.
6. I assessed class status based on family income, property ownership,
and the artists’ descriptions of their quality of life. Fremont is home to
an increasing number of Indian and Chinese professionals, while just
over 3 percent of the city’s population is Black. In 2000, 37 percent of
Fremont was Asian, of which 10 percent were Asian Indian (Geography
at Berkeley, Fremont Project, http://geography.berkeley.edu). Fremont
is fifteen miles from Santa Clara, the home of a number of large com-
puter companies and The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) (cofounded by Kan-
wal Rekhi of Silicon Valley fame). Unlike the younger third- and fourth-​
generation members now living in Fremont, the artists grew up in the
1970s and 1980s when only 7 percent of Fremont’s population consid-
ered themselves Asian according to the 1980 census; indeed, they were
often the only South Asian children on their blocks—just like those from
Black cities.
7. For additional histories of transposed epithets, see Prashad 2000:
24; see also Purkayastha 2005: 28.
8. Over the course of a decade, D’Lo shared with me his/her poetry,
sending me individual poems and collections of poems, which I could
then draw from for this book. In addition, if I was interested in incor-
porating a particular piece I heard during D’Lo’s live or online perfor-
mances, s/he would email me the transcription of the poem. I did not
transcribe any of D’Lo’s lyrics and they are kept in the original format-
ting. I had access to the other MCs’ recordings and either transcribed

Notes 305
them myself, checking the accuracy with the individual artist, or asked
them for their written transcriptions of their songs.
9. Some Muslims may be more willing to forge cross-​national affilia-
tions in response to their marginalization by Hindus. These tensions also
emerge among desi youths who attempt to create panethnic communi-
ties. For more on Muslims in America, see Abraham and Abraham 1983;
Mohammad-​Arif 2002; Mamdani 2004; Schmidt 2004.
10. Included in this scholarship are illustrations and critiques of the de-
velopment of essentialized and hybrid ethnicities through consumption
and nostalgic re-​creations of “the homeland” in the remix club culture of
desi youth (Maira 2002). Others examine the internal class, gender, and
sexual politics of ethnicity within South Asian cultural organizations in
colleges (Purkayastha 2005) and political organizations that serve the
needs of exploited workers, women, and queer desis (Das Gupta 2006).
These new studies explore transnational networks and diasporic settle-
ments, gender and sexuality, and the politicization of underrepresented
groups. See also Singh 1996; Prashad 2000, 2002; Shankar 2008.
11. Rawj is referring to the television sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-​Air,
in which the rapper and actor Will Smith plays a Black urban youth from
Philadelphia who moves in with his wealthy uncle’s family in the sub-
urbs.
12. According to an analysis of the 1990 census by Ghasarian and Levin
(1996), 3.2 percent of “Asian-​Indian” women and 2.9 percent of “Asian-​
Indian” men were separated or divorced. The rates are even higher for
United States–born South Asians; second-​generation Indian Americans
have the highest rate of divorce among all United States–born Asians (see
Gupta 1999: 32). While divorce is rare among South Asians, as are most
discussions about this taboo topic, Gupta (1999: 218) argues that divorce
rates are increasing, especially among the second generation and particu-
larly among women.
13. Caste, too, is an important (albeit changing) identity linked to reli-
gion in India, but it is essentially irrelevant to the artists’ self-​conception
and did not factor into their relations with others. Rarely did the topic
arise during fieldwork, even in the context of marriage, possibly due to
the precedence of racial, ethnic, and religious differences.
14. In his discussion of Deepak Chopra as the embodiment of United
States orientalist ideology, Prashad expounds on the ideology of capital-
ist accumulation that Chopra advances by stating that “capitalism and
New Age orientalism embrace each other” (2000: 62).
15. It is also the case that many desis, hip hoppers or not, did not be-
friend co-​ethnic peers because of their smaller numbers and concentra-

306 Notes
tion in the 1970s. The situation is quite different for the third generation
that is coming of age in neighborhoods where South Asians are some-
times the largest Asian population.
16. For statistical information by campus, see the University of Califor-
nia Office of the President, http://statfinder.ucop.edu.
17. Abercrombie and Fitch caused a furor among Asian Americans in
2002 by selling racist T-​shirts showing images of slant-​eyed “oriental”
men wearing rice-​paddy hats accompanied by the offensive words, “Two
Wongs Can Make It White.” Although company spokesperson Hampton
Carney stated “We personally thought Asians would love this T-​shirt,”
numerous student protests across the country forced Abercrombie and
Fitch to pull the line.
18. Rumbaut draws from a broad-​scale survey on second-​generation
immigrants from Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean, whom he
groups into four categories of self-​identification in response to the open-​
ended survey question, “How do you identify, that is, what do you call
yourself ?” Such survey questions have difficulty assessing the context
of the respondents’ answers and do not allow for multiple and situa-
tional responses. The four overall responses to this question were as fol-
lows: 27 percent identified by national origin (“Jamaican”); 40 percent as
hyphenated Americans (“Filipino-​American”); 11 percent as unhyphen-
ated Americans; and 21 percent as racial and panethnic categories (“His-
panic,” “Asian”). See table 2 in Rumbaut 1994: 764.
19. By “cool on them,” D’Lo means “thanks, but no thanks” to the
idea of socializing deeply with Indians on campus. His/her description
of racism highlights the power of interpersonal and group dynamics to
shape individuals’ sense of self and relation to others. D’Lo racialized
and distanced him/herself from Indians as a group like Whites due to his/
her negative experiences.
20. This may refer to the demolition of the Babri Masjid and the sub-
sequent Hindu rioting against Muslims.
21. The dhol, popularized in bhangra music, is a drum used in the Pun-
jabi music of northern India.
22. Artwallah is a four-​day annual South Asian diasporic arts festival
in Los Angeles in which a number of the MCs in this book have taken
part.
23. See the video on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com.
24. Sardar Patel was a principal figure in the Indian nationalist move-
ment and a close friend of Mahatma Gandhi.
25. Food metaphors such as “rotten coconut” are commonly used by
students to refer to particular people as “race traitors.” The more com-

Notes 307
mon ones include “oreos”—black on the outside, white on the inside;
“bananas”—yellow on the outside, white on the inside; “coconuts”—
brown on the outside, white on the inside. Surprisingly, young Asian
Americans have begun to use these metaphors to describe themselves.

Chapter 2: Making Race

1. They may be similar to Korean immigrants in New York City, who
“are not detached bystanders but rather are profoundly implicated in the
American racial order from the moment they arrive in the United States—
not because they wish to be but because each group’s position is invari-
ably defined in relation to those of other groups” (Kim 2003: 12).
2. Asians often signify the rational, mental part of the mind/body dis-
tinction made during the Enlightenment. Whites, in constructing them-
selves in relation to Blacks, also consider themselves to be rational,
whereas Blacks signify physicality (sexuality, the threat of violence) and
other excesses of the body.
3. Filipinos were in Louisiana in the second half of the eighteenth cen-
tury. See Bautista 2002; see also Renee Tajima-​Pena’s film My America . . .
Or Honk if You Love Buddha (1997).
4. The murder of the Chinese American Vincent Chin by two White
auto workers from Detroit who blamed Japan for unfair competition and
job losses and the Dotbusters attacks in New Jersey mentioned in chap-
ter 1 are just two examples. See the documentary Who Killed Vincent Chin?
by Christine Choy and Renee Tajima-​Pena (1987).
5. See Parker 1995 for a similar case in Britain.
6. See Marquez, forthcoming, for the case of Latino and Black paral-
lels.
7. A battle rapper is one who freestyles in competition against another
rapper. During the competitions they are evaluated for innovative and
clever rhymes about their opponents.
8. One can see this phenomenon on the videos posted on YouTube of
Jin; see his song and video “Learn Chinese.”
9. N.W.A. (Niggaz with Attitude), is a late-​1980s Los Angeles rap group
comprised of some of the most famous West Coast “gangsta rappers,”
including Eazy-​E (who has since died of AIDS), the prolific producer
Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, DJ Yella, and MC Ren.
10. This divide became less prominent as their artistry developed.
Today, Bella buys and spins records but also writes and sings; others, like
D’Lo and Sammy, produce musical tracks and rhyme on stage.
11. College radio stations took off in the 1980s and gave rap music
some of its first air time. The stations tended to be run by students and

308 Notes
offered programming alternatives to mainstream or corporate-​controlled
stations.
12. Dr. Jinah Kim posed the question in this intriguing way.
13. Many, in fact, are Asian American, including Jonny’s fellow writers
Jeff Chang and Oliver Wang.
14. See www.timapforjustice.org
15. See the listing provided on the Web site CD Baby, http://cdbaby
.com/cd/Himalayan.
16. See the rappers Jin, Mountain Brothers, and The Pacifics for other
Asian American examples.
17. Reaching a crescendo in 2009, the Tamil Tigers have been fighting
the Sri Lankan government for an independent state in this island nation
off the southeast coast of India. Tamils are outnumbered by the Sri Lan-
kan Sinhalese, a mostly Buddhist population. See chapter 4 for D’Lo’s
application of hip hop to express concern about the war.
18. You can find the online video to this song on YouTube, http://www
.youtube.com/watch?v=5QocPeO4s_s.
19. There are other precedents: Ho Chi Minh, leader of the communist
revolutionary forces of North Vietnam, lived in New York where he at-
tended the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and was
introduced to the influential ideologies of Marcus Garvey (Abdul-​Jabbar
2007: 79).
20. This quote is from his speech “Oppose Racial Discrimination by
United States Imperialism,” delivered on August 8, 1963. Peking Review,
Volume 9, no. 33, Aug. 12, 1966, pp. 12–13.
21. From “King’s Trip to India,” the King Papers Project, Stanford Uni-
versity, http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/.
22. These musical crossings also influenced jazz artists, such as John
Coltrane’s collaboration with Ravi Shankar. South Asian remix DJs and
music producers have discerned and used these percussive overlaps by
layering discrete musical traditions to produce new diasporic sounds that
form the basis of desi subcultures in Eng­land and the United States (see
Sharma, Hutnyk, and Sharma 1996; Maira 2002).
23. This section heading, “Soundtrack to the Brown Experience,” is a
line from Chee Malabar’s song “Thoroughbred” on his solo album Oblique
Brown (2006).

Chapter 3: Flipping the Gender Script

1. When I attended hip hop shows and clubs with other desi women,
men often sexualized and exoticized us, saw us as sisters, or lumped us
in some other form or fashion.

Notes 309
 2. Jonny, a hip hop journalist who attended another branch of the Uni-
versity of California, also worked at a college radio station and experi-
enced a remarkably similar musical evolution.
3. Hip hop was very popular in the Bay Area in the 1990s, while reggae
and dancehall followed at mainstream clubs the following decade.
4. Eng­land’s M.I.A. is perhaps the most famous Sri Lankan songstress
who incorporates hip hop sensibilities into her global sound. See also the
British Asian female MC Hard Kaur.
5. Growing up and in college, D’Lo identified as a gay woman and as
a boi. Over time, D’Lo has begun to identify as a male who loves women.
Therefore, I speak about many of D’Lo’s past experiences growing up and
in the music industry as a woman. Now a transgender male-​identified art-
ist, D’Lo aims to disrupt fixed gender categorizations and, with that in
mind, I use the pronouns “s/he” and “him/her” to refer to D’Lo.
6. For more on youth cultures, see McRobbie 2000; Lee and Zhou 2004;
Maira and Soep 2004.
7. Popping and locking, or pop locking, is a dance style that emerged
on the West Coast in the early phases of hip hop. It features sharp robotic
movements combined with waving limbs. Some dancers combine move-
ments from both break dancing and pop locking. The Twilight Players,
which consists of three Punjabi brothers in Eng­land, are perhaps some
of the most well-​known pop lockers: www.twilightplayers.com.
8. See Rivera 2003 for an analysis of Puerto Rican women in hip hop,
and see Rose 1994 on dialogues between Black men and women in hip hop.
9. A number of strong women in hip hop have faced speculation about
their sexuality, including Queen Pen, Queen Latifah, and Da Brat, whom
some hip hop audiences have presumed were lesbians; the latter two have
undergone feminizing makeovers, possibly in response.
10. Note how the show’s title smartly refutes gender and sex attribu-
tions as D’Lo replaces the more traditional “one man show” with a “one
D’Lo show.”
11. Oakland’s Deep Dickollective is among the well-​known groups of
homo hop, or queer hip hop, and the PeaceOUT World Homo Hop Fes-
tival took place in the early 2000s in the same city. See the documentary
Pick up the Mic (dir. Alex Hinton, 2006).
12. Countless sisters have bemoaned this “old school” or “traditional”
gender double standard that favors boys.
13. Elders call potential brides and grooms “girls” and “boys” despite
their age, especially before marriage.
14. DasGupta and Das Dasgupta 2000 discuss similar American desi
gender dynamics in which desi girls seem too Americanized to make

310 Notes
proper wives for Indians boys with the “raja syndrome.” Young desis
in the Bay Area widely discussed the phenomenon in the late 1990s of
United States–born men going to India to “import” a wife because they
were “unable” to find “proper” wives in America. See also Gupta 1999.
15. Illustrating the dangers of a “positive stereotype” of Asian Ameri-
cans as model minorities who are associated with brains and not brawn,
the Democratic campaign against Republican Bobby Jindal’s successful
run for governor of Louisiana (the first non-White governor since Recon-
struction) included ads that stated: “Bobby Jindal: Big Brain. No Heart.”
16. “Jungle fever” refers to Spike Lee’s movie from 1991 about inter-
racial relationships.
17. See Sepia Mutiny, http://www.sepiamutiny.com/sepia/archives/
003575.html (site visited on February 3, 2009).
18. I am not saying that this form of acceptance is either “good” or
“bad.” It is, however, something that allows women easier access to and
acceptance among Black men.
19. Du Bois’s internationalist lens on race and decolonization linked
Blacks in America to the experiences and (sometimes idealized) models
of Asians in Asia; scholars who focus on the United States–based impli-
cations of his work may overlook this.
20. The term b-​boi is a spin on b-​boy, or break boy.

Chapter 4: The Appeal of Hip Hop

1. Speaking of polycultural influences, Vijay Prashad explains the
Indian etymology of the word “thug” to Michael Eric Dyson (2001: 113–
14).
2. “Is Hip Hop Black Culture?” Davey D’s Hip Hop Corner, www.daveyd
.com (site visited on January 9, 2009); see also Perry 2004.
3. Reagan granted reparations and Bill Clinton signed a formal letter
of apology to those Japanese who had been interned during World War II.
This begs a comparison with the lack of reparations granted to African
Americans for their enslavement.
4. See, for example, the Hiphopistan event described in the introduc-
tion.
5. Wang (2007) discusses the influence of Public Enemy on other Asian
American hip hop artists. Note once again the generative importance of
the college radio station. Additionally, while some critics question the
“authenticity” of college-​educated desi artists, they do not apply the
same doubt toward college-​educated Black rappers, including the mem-
bers of Public Enemy.

Notes 311
 6. Consequently, Party Music (2001) is the name of one of The Coup’s
albums.
7. Armond White’s assertion that “it is impossible for any White rapper
to achieve originality” (1996: 194) is not only wrong but rests on argu-
ments about “essence,” sensuality, and ethnicity that cannot hold up to
the evidence provided in hip hop culture.
8. Undoubtedly there is a younger generation of desis who rhyme and
who may be more concerned with posturing than positivity. The artists I
met reflect a segment of a particular generation, most of whom are influ-
enced by the Bay Area culture. These artists have produced and performed
for nearly twenty years, which led to their visibility and my learning about
them. Those who contributed to this project contend with changes in the
hip hop business that have accompanied its increasing popularity and
capitalist incorporation. Today’s youth will, of course, be drawn to dif-
ferent aspects of hip hop because hip hop, itself, has changed.
9. This analysis by KB is curiously countered by some of his own lyrics,
discussed in previous chapters. I suggest that the marketing priorities of
Karmacy and the larger label Rukus Avenue Records to attract desi audi-
ences may have impacted this divergence.
10. Although these definitions are highly contested, hip hop is some-
times distinguished as either “commercial hip hop” or “underground hip
hop.” Commercial hip hop is that which is played on major radio sta-
tions. “Underground hip hop” may not reach broad audiences, may be
independent or signed to smaller record labels, and is sometimes syn-
onymous with today’s “conscious hip hop” (hip hop with politically
conscious lyrics). Technological advances have made music production
and promotion more democratic, thereby allowing artists alternatives to
lobbying for a major record label deal. Thus, desi rappers feel a sense of
increasing autonomy and may face less pressure to alter their image or
content.
11. See the film Black Is . . . Black Ain’t by Marlon Riggs (1994).

Chapter 5: Sampling South Asians

1. A desi founder of an independent hip hop record label company
made this clever distinction between “wrapping” and “rapping.”
2. Aaron Bobrow-​Strain helped me clarify these two concepts.
3. The radio shock jock Don Imus’s infamous racist comments toward
the Rutgers women’s basketball team in 2007 compelled hip hop entre-
preneurs, including Russell Simmons, to protest the use of the terms
“nigga,” “bitch,” and “ho.”
4. Among the hits was “Nas’s Angels,” a rap song with a Hindi chorus.

312 Notes
In addition, Lil’ Kim’s La Bella Mafia featured at least three tracks with
identifiably South Asian music.
5. The song was from the Hindi film, Jyoti, starring Hema Malini and
Jeetendra. According to Kevin Miller (2004), DJ Quik first heard the song
while watching the film on television. Another story says he accidentally
bought the record.
6. Many DJs in fact sell remixed tapes featuring commercial hip hop
beats without any sample clearances.
7. The same Indian company, Saregama, filed another suit in 2007
against the use of samples on The Game’s rap song “Put You on the
Game,” produced by Timbaland.
8. Fans also expressed this kind of ire in reaction to the early produc-
tions of Sean Combs.
9. My thanks to Richard Iton who pointed out this history to me.
10. Some argue that this is due to a “racial draft” that targets minority
and working-​class Americans while safeguarding middle-​class Whites
from fighting our wars; additionally, some Blacks without economic
means may feel that their ability to afford college and travel the world
is limited and the military offers these incentives. This racial profiling is
also reflected in the past recruitment tactics used by the American mili-
tary to appeal to young urban minorities by advertising on Hummers on
high school and community college campuses.
11. Born and raised in northern California, the Punjabi bellytwins have
danced (along with their snakes) in front of Hillary Clinton and Arnold
Schwarzenegger and have performed with Michael Jackson and Ricky
Martin.
12. White women were also enamored with these same jazz greats, but
they often entered the scene through intimate relationships with them.
See Jones 1963; Monson 1995.
13. Timbaland hired the Indian American Raje Shwari to re-sing many
of the Hindi choruses used in his songs. Her Web site (accessed Novem-
ber 28, 2008, now defunct), featured a picture of the Taj Mahal accom-
panied by classical Indian music as the following statement appeared on
the computer screen: “Every once in a while, someone totally different
and innovative comes along to change the face of music forever.” A new
screen emerged with the same backdrop of the Taj Mahal during dawn
or dusk: “Only because what this particular artist proposes to offer the
music world is something that has never been done before.” In the final
touch, a personalized message from Raje Shwari signs off with a causal,
“Get with you later!”
14. Green Lantern, in collaboration with Russell Simmons, released a
Barack Obama “Yes We Can” mixtape. The Bay Area rapper Paris refers to

Notes 313
Muhammad Ali on his track “Bush Killa,” in which he raps: “Yeah, toler-
ance is gettin’ thinner / ’Cause Iraq never called me ‘nigger’ / So what I
wanna go off and fight a war for? / You best believe I got your draft card!”
15. See www.the1shanti.com for more on the collaboration with Afrika
Bambaataa.
16. My thanks to Laura Helper-​Ferris for sharing this interpretation
with me.

Conclusion: Turning Thoughts into Action

1. Vivek’s full report, “Ravaging the Vulnerable,” can be found at Human
Rights Watch, http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/bangladesh0803/index
.htm (site visited on November 12, 2009).
2. Richa Gulati, Little India, http://www.littleindia.com/news/134/
ARTICLE/1461/2007–04–03.html (accessed November 30, 2007).
3. http://www.webdust.net/abstracthumanity (Web site no longer ac-
cessible).

314 Notes
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 Index

Abercrombie and Fitch, desi con- 5; gender and sexuality and,

sumption patterns and, 64, 139–40
307n17 Ali, Muhammad, 268, 313n13
Abstract/Humanity (desi group), Ali (desi DJ), 10
291–92 All About the Beat (McWhorter), 196
AbstractVision (desi rapper), 10, Alliance of South Asians Taking
118–19, 131, 201, 278, 291–92, Action (ASATA), 35–36
295–96 Amin, Idi, 30
Abu-Jamal, Mumia, 128 Amnesty International, 209, 286
“Addictive” (Truth Hurts), 246– anti–affirmative action policies,
49, 251–52, 255–60, 313n5 impact on desis of, 17
affirmative action: college experi- anti-Asian backlash in U.S., 95,
ences of desis and, 57–73; im- 308n4
pact on desis of, 17 anti-essentialism: appropriation
Africa, Indian expulsion from, 30 in hip hop and, 279–82; authen-
African diasporic music, Indian ticity and, 271–79; Blackness of
musical influences in, 253–54 hip hop and, 215–16, 257–58,
Afrika Bambaataa, 100, 269 312n7. See also essentialism
Afro-Asian identity: appropriation Apache Indian (British Asian art-
of Middle Eastern/South Asian ist), 125–26
images and, 245–64; evolution appropriation: desi hip hop and
of, 29–33; gender and sexuality role of, xi; by desi hip hoppers,
and, 140–89; global-historical 269–71; as identification, 264–
connections of South Asians 71; Middle East/South Asian
and Blacks and, 118–29 hip hop images and, 243–64; as
Afro-Orientalism, Black-desi ro- othering, 238–64
mance and, 177–80 Artists Network of Refuse and Re-
agency: of desi hip hop artists, sist, 128, 149, 289
Artwallah festival, 79, 82, 149, Bay Area rappers, 18, 43–44,
307n22 303n13
Arun (desi DJ), 117, 221, 231, 234 Beni B (Black DJ), 248
Asian Americans: appeal of hip “Beware of the Boys” (Panjabi
hop for, 197; Blackness of hip MC), 265
hop and, 213–16; Black rappers’ bhajan, 270, 280–81
influence on, 311n5; compara- bhangra music, 125–29
tive racial studies through bharatanatyam dance movements,
multisited ethnography and, 78
33–36; ethnic identity and, Biggie Smalls (Black rapper), 215
39–41, 304n2; gender and sexu- Big Pun (Puerto Rican rapper), 215
ality issues for, 142, 169–71; “Bin Laden” (Immortal Tech-
global-historical connections nique), 267
of, 120–29; hip hop and, 10–13, bin Laden, Osama, 267
17–23; identity politics and, “Bird in the Hand, A” (Ice Cube),
27–29; multiple racial affinities 204
of, 112, 309n13; multiracialism Black British identity: emergence
of hip hop and, 218–30; post– of, 32–33; global-historical con-
September 11 era and identity nections of South Asians and,
of, 130–35. See also desis; South 125–29
Asian Americans Black Entertainment Television
Asian Dub Foundation (British (BET), 20
Asian group), 126, 201, 304n25 “Black Men, Asian Women”
Asma (desi radio producer), 49, (article), 176–77
107–8, 152–53, 209 Black Nationalism, influence on
assimilation: desis’ college experi- desi hip hop of, xi, 179, 192,
ences and, 60–74. See also seg- 203–12
mented assimilation Black Panthers, 43, 102, 128, 194
Association of Indians in America, Black Power movement:
29–33 Afro-Asian identity and, 31;
authenticity: Afro-Asian identity Brown Pride and, 203–12; ex-
and, 32–33; anti-essentialism ceptional desis and, 43–44; in-
and, 271–82; Blackness of hip fluence on desi hip hop of, xi,
hop and, 212–16, 223–30; com- 192, 204
modification of hip hop and, Blacks and Black culture:
217–30, 249–52; desi college ex- Afro-Asian precedents for,
periences and desire for, 62–73; 29–33; appropriation of,
desi hip hop artists and, 20–23, 238–64; Black masculinity and
191–92, 303n16 Brown identity in, 180–85;
Brown women in, 149–56; com-
Babri Masjid (mosque), 307n20
munity formation in, 209–12;
Bahamadia (Black rapper), 310n11
desi hip hop artists and, 2–5,
Baraka, Amiri, 21, 199, 215, 222
10–13, 88–91, 160, 191–212,
Basement Bhangra, 250
222–30; desi racialized sexu-
battle rapping, 104, 222, 308n7
ality and, 161–65; female art-

336 Index
 ists and, 171–80; gender and affinities and, 111–17; post–
sexuality in, 139–40, 149–56; September 11 attacks and, 130–
global-historical connections 35, 287–99
with South Asians and, 117–29; Brown Like Dat: South Asians and Hip
history of hip hop and, 17–23, Hop (Nijhon), 8
302n12; middle-class desis and, Bush, George H. W., 204
105–9; Middle East/South Asian Bush, George W., 257–58, 267,
hip hop images and, 244–64; 288
multiracial affinities and, Busta Rhymes (Black rapper), 215
99–104, 109–17, 218–30; owner-
Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop (Chang), 215
ship of hip hop and, 212–16;
capitalism, authenticity of hip hop
polycultural sampling and,
in the face of, 271–79
25–29; post–September 11 era
Caribbean music: Blackness of hip
racial realignment and, 133–35;
hop and, 125–26; hybrid col-
power dynamics in, 246–54;
laborations in, 254–55
second-generation desis and,
caste system, desi hip hop and,
95–99; South Asian and Black
306n13
relations and, x, 234–38; in
censorship of hip hop music,
United Kingdom, 32–33, 107–9.
302n11
See also Brown identity
Chang, Jeff, 18, 215, 309n13
Black Students Union, 43
Chee Malabar (desi rapper), 9, 12,
“Blood Brothers” (Karmacy), 78
49, 54, 71, 251, 309n23; on ap-
Blueprint, The (Jay-Z), 260, 267
peal of hip hop, 208, 211–12;
blues, hip hop and, 208
on appropriation and other-
Blues People (Baraka), 199
ing, 242–45; on authenticity
Bodhi Dharma, 303n14
in hip hop, 277–78; on desi
Boggs, Grace Lee, 285
sexuality, 163–65, 169–70; eth-
Boggs, James, 285
nicity expressed by, 75–77, 149;
Boots Riley of the Coup (Black
global-historical connections of
rapper), 204, 312n6
desis and Blacks and, 119–29;
“Bounce, The” (Shwari), 266–67
mixed-race environment of,
“Bridge Techniques” (Himalayan
100–101, 103; multiracial affini-
Project), 290
ties of, 114–17, 222–23, 269,
Broken World (Himalayan Project),
280; political activism of, 286–
119
87, 290–92; post–September 11
Brown identity: appropriation
era and, 131–35; on sampling in
and, 264–71; Black National-
hip hop, 271
ism and, 203–12; comparative
Chicano culture, 194, 197, 199,
racial studies through multi-
215
sited ethnography and, 34–36;
Chin, Vincent, 308n4
gender and sexuality and, 141–
Chinese Americans, history of hip
56, 180–85; global-historical
hop and, 19
connections to, 121–29; in-
“Choli Ke Peeche” (Yagnik,
fluence on desi hip hop of, xi,
Rathod), 266–67
21–23, 192–212; multiple racial

Index 337
Chuck D (Black rapper), 201–5, second-generation desi racial
208 consciousness and, 96–99
Civil Rights Act of 1964, 115–16 “Colour Line” (Asian Dub Founda-
Civil Rights Movement, 116 tion), 201
classism: and appeal of hip hop, Coltrane, John, 309n22
190–91; college experience Combs, Sean “Diddy” (Black pro-
of desis and, 63–73; desis in ducer), 259, 313n8
racially mixed neighborhoods commodification of hip hop:
and, 48–51, 99–104; ethnic authenticity in face of, 271–79;
identity and, 304n2; ethnic in- desi hip hop artists and, 216–
sularity and, 44–47, 305nn5–6; 32, 312n8
exceptional desis and, 41–44; community formation: Black
first-generation desi racial music and, 209–12; desis in
consciousness and, 94–95; racially mixed communities
middle-class desis and, 105–9; and, 49–51; through hip hop,
racial consciousness of desis 286–99; polycultural sampling
and, 91–99; South Asian Ameri- and, 23–29
can hip hop artists’ ambivalence comparative racial studies:
concerning, ix–xi; South Asians methodology for, 33–36; politi-
as honorary Whites and, 25–29, cal activism and, 296–99
303n19 Condry, Ian, 24–25, 265
clique formation, desi college ex- Connerly, Ward, 17
periences and, 57–73 consumption patterns of hip hop:
co-ethnicity: appropriation college experience of desis and,
and othering and, 241–64; 63–73; and of multiracial hip
middle-class desis and, 107–9; hop, 216–30, 312n8
second-generation desis and, 99 Cookie Crew (group), 153
Coldcut (group), 255 copyright law, 303n17; commer-
college education: Black-desi cialization of hip hop and, 252
stereotypes concerning, 96–99; corridos (ballads), 201
desis’ view of, 57–73; Indian crack cocaine, history of hip hop
hegemony and non-Indian and, 302n12
South Asians and, 65–69; racial crosscultural borrowing: appro-
differences in experiences of, priation and identification in,
102–4 264–71; ethnic hip hop and,
colonialism: Afro-Asian prece- 10–13; global-historical connec-
dents and, 29–33; appeal of hip tions of hip hop and, 125–29,
hop and, 201–2; first-generation 222–33; political activism and,
desi racial consciousness and, 289–99; religious hegemony
93–95; global-historical con- and, 53–57; in South Asian and
nections of South Asians and Black relations, 235–38
Blacks and, 118–29; Hindu reli- cross-racial studies, comparative
gious hegemony and, 53–57 racial studies through multi-
colorism: desi romance and sited ethnography and, 34–36
sexuality and, 178–79; culture: appropriation of, 263–64,

338 Index
 279–82; desi artists’ view of, of, 88–91; defined, ix; ethnic
56–57. See also multiculturalism; identity of, 39–41; exception-
polyculturalism alism of, 41–44; female artists
Cypress Hill (group), 78, 215 and, 171–80; first-generation
racial identities among, 93–95;
Da Brat (Black rapper), 151, 310n9
gender and sexuality and, 138–
dandia raas (Gujarati stick dance),
89; geographic concentrations
10, 301n6
of, 8–10; global-historical con-
Dark Princess: A Romance (Du Bois),
nections with Blacks and, 117–
178
29; heterogeneity of, 40–41;
Davey D (Black DJ), 192, 200,
Hindu religious hegemony
213–14
and, 52–57; hip hop produc-
Davis, Angela, 124–25
tion by, x–xi, 6–10, 51–57,
Dead Prez (group), 201
85–87, 106–9, 216–30, 308n10,
Deejay Bella (desi DJ), 9–10, 46,
308n12; history of hip hop and,
53, 301n5; on appeal of hip
17–23; Indian hegemony and
hop, 196, 202, 208, 211; Black
non-Indian South Asians and,
hip hop and, 150–56; on com-
65–69; insularity and classism
munity formation through
of, 44–47, 305nn5–6; mar-
hip hop, 211; on family pres-
riage attitudes of, 159–60,
sures, 166; gender and sexu-
165–71, 310n14; “model mi-
ality issues for, 142–46, 183–85;
nority” label for, 14–16, 302n10;
global-historical connections
multiracial affinities of, 48–51,
of hip hop and, 125, 226–30,
91–104, 109–17, 220–30,
277, 280; middle-class back-
279–82, 306n10; panethnicity
ground of, 106; political activ-
and, 69–73; politicization of,
ism of, 286; production by,
194–95, 283–99; polycultural
106–8, 308n10; Sistrens created
sampling and community for-
by, 186–87
mation of, 23–29; racial con-
Deep Dickollective (group),
sciousness of, 1–5, 216; racial-
310n11
ized masculinity and, 160–65;
Def Poetry Jam (TV series), 146
second-generation desis and
De La Soul (group), 273
hip hop culture, 13–17, 43–44,
Desh Pardesh (Canadian arts fes-
218–20; sexuality expressed by,
tival), 289
156–85; stereotypes of hip hop
Desi Rap: Hip-Hop and South Asian
in, 191–92; third-generation,
America (Nair and Balaji), 8
306n15. See also Indian Ameri-
desis and desi culture: appeal of
cans; South Asian Americans
hip hop in, 190–212; appropria-
Desis Rising Up and Moving
tion of Blackness by, 238–64,
(DRUM), 289
269–71; college experiences
dhol (drum), 78, 307n21
of, 57–73; comparative racial
Diasporadics (American arts festi-
studies and, 34–36; conserva-
val), 288
tive backlash against, 197–98;
“Disco” (Slum Village), 266
consumption trends among,
Disturbing Silence (group), 149
238–39; cross-racial identities

Index 339
DJ Quik (Black rapper), 249–52, brace of, 40–41, 51–57, 190–91,
255 218–30; South Asian American
DJ Rekha (desi DJ), 250–52 production of, ix–x
D’Lo (desi artist), 9, 45–47, 52–53, ethnicity: alternative modes of,
64–66, 68, 70–71, 301n4, 37–41; college experiences of
305n8, 307n19; on appeal of hip desis and, 57–73; desi con-
hop, 198, 203, 205, 210; Black ceptions of, 88–91; hip hop as
hip hop and, 150–56; Black expression of, 73–85; hybrid
masculinity and Brown identity identities and, 303n21; multiple
and, 180–85; on Brown iden- racial affinities of desis and,
tity, 206–8; global-historical 119–17; polycultural sampling
connections of South Asians and, 23–29; South Asian Ameri-
and Blacks and, 118–19, 127–29, can hip hop artists’ ambivalence
283; multiracialism of hip hop concerning, ix–xi
and, 105–9, 224–26, 270, 278, “Eyes Closed in America” (D’Lo),
280; music production by, 149, 288
190; political activism of, 209–
family influences: desi mar-
10, 288–91, 299; post–Septem-
riage pressures and, 165–71;
ber 11 era and, 131–35; trans-
desis’ multiracialism and,
gender identity of, 142, 146–49,
49–51, 306n11; Hindu reli-
156–58, 178, 183–85, 310n5;
gious hegemony and, 51–57;
WADDAG group formed by, 187
for second-generation desis,
Dotbusters violence, 308n4
96–99; South Asian American
double consciousness of race:
hip hop artists’ ambivalence
first-generation desis and,
concerning, ix–xi
92–93; multiple racial affinities
family reunification policy (Immi-
of desis and, 111–17
gration Act of 1965), Indian im-
Doug E. Fresh and the Get Fresh
migrants and, 14–15, 302n10
Crew (group), 14, 302n8
Fanon, Franz, 228
Dr. Dre (Black producer), 249–52,
Fat Joe (Puerto Rican rapper), 215
255, 260
Fear of a Black Planet (Public
Du Bois, W. E. B., 31, 178, 311n19
Enemy), 203
Dyson, Michael Eric, 242, 311n1
Feenom Circle (group), 12, 94,
education, desi hip hop culture 164–65, 224
and influence of, 54–57 female artists: Black male busi-
Elliott, Missy (Black rapper), 246, ness environment and, 141–56,
253–54, 260, 266 309n1; desi and Black culture
Eminem (White rapper), 239, 267 and, 139–89; in desi hip hop,
Eric B (Black rapper), 255 266–67; hip hop misogyny and,
essentialism: Afro-Asian identity x–xi, 151–56, 158; romance and
and, 32–33; multiple racial af- marriage among, 171–80; sexual
finities of desis and, 111–17. See ambiguity for, 180–85; woman-
also anti-essentialism ist and queer-friendly spaces
ethnic hip hop, 10–13; desi em- for, 185–87

340 Index
50 Cent (Black rapper), 217, 266 Giroux, Henry, 118
“Fight the Power” (Public Enemy), global capitalism, multicultural
196, 203 music production and, 249–52
Filipinos: history of hip hop and, global race consciousness: au-
19–20, 200; in Louisiana, 308n3 thenticity in hip hop and, 271–
first-generation desis, racial con- 79; desi hip hop and, 225–30;
sciousness of, 93–95 polycultural sampling and,
Fitzpatrick, Chris, 258–59 26–29; post–September 11 era
Flores, Juan, x and, 130–35; South Asian and
Foucault, Michel, 202, 297 Black relations and, 234–38; of
Foxy Brown (Black rapper), 153 South Asian hip hop artists, 1–5
Fresh, Doug E., 14, 302n8 Gopinath, Gayatri, 266
Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, The (TV Gramsci, Antonio, 297
series), 306n11 Grand Puba (Black rapper), 204
“From Silent Confusion to Blaring Green Lantern (Italian American
Healing” (D’Lo), 45, 156–57 DJ), 267, 313n15
“Fuck tha Police” (N.W.A.), 204 Guevara, Che, 267
FunDaMental (British Asian
habitus, desi sexuality and, 187–89
group), 33, 126, 304n25
Halberstam, Judith, 161
Game, The (Black rapper), 313n7 Hall, Stuart, 28–29, 32, 50, 88–89
Gandhi, Mahatma, 12, 123–25, hapa (mixed race individuals),
297; hip hop ethnicity and, 74 13–14
gangsta rap, 18, 200–201, 204 Hard Kaur (British Asian rapper),
garba (Gujarati dance), 144 33, 310n4
Garvey, Marcus, 123, 309n19 Haza, Ofra, 255
Gates, Daryl, 204 Hebdige, Dick, 202
gender: authenticity in hip hop hegemonic status of desis, 41–44,
and, 271–79; college experi- 52–57, 65–69
ences of desis and, 62–73; com- Himalayan Project (album), 119–20
parative racial studies through Himalayan Project (group), 9,
multisited ethnography and, 75–77, 104, 115, 131, 242–43
35–36; consumption patterns of Hindu hegemony of Indian Ameri-
desis and, 64–73; desi culture cans, 52–57, 65–69
and negotiations of, 156–85; “Hiphopistan: South Asians in
desis in racially mixed commu- Hip Hop” (event), 6–10, 301n2,
nities and, 49–51; double stan- 311n4
dard concerning, 159–60, 166– hip hop music and culture: Bay
71, 310n12; marriage pressures Area popularity of, 144, 310n3;
on desis and, 165–71, 310n14; Blackness of, 212–16, 221–30;
South Asian hip hop and, 138– in college experience of desis,
89. See also sexuality 63–73; copyright law and,
“Get Ur Freak On” (Elliott), 246, 303n17; cross-racial identi‑
253–54, 260 fications in, 88–91; cultural
“Girls, Girls, Girls” (Jay-Z), 260– criticism of, 16–17, 302n11;
61 demographics of, 8–10; desi

Index 341
hip hop music and culture (cont.) Hyder, Rehan, 32, 114, 126–27, 1
participation and production 37
in, 6–10, 51–57, 85–87, 106–9,
Ice Cube (Black rapper), 200, 204
193–212, 216–30, 308n10; em-
Ice T (Black rapper), 204
powerment through, 187–89;
immigrant status, multiple racial
ethnicity expressed in, 73–85;
affinities of desis and, 111–17
female artists in, 141–56, 171–
Immigration Act of 1965, 14, 41,
80, 309n1; historical perspec-
302n10
tive of, 17–23, 302n12, 303n15;
Immortal Technique (Peruvian
middle-class desis and, 105–9;
rapper), 267
Middle Eastern/South Asian
Imus, Don, 312n3
images in, 243–64; as political
Indian Americans: hegemony of,
tool, 197–212, 257–64, 283–99;
65–69; hip hop culture and,
roots and ownership of, 192–
21–23; immigration patterns of,
212; sexuality and gender roles
14, 302nn9–10. See also desis;
in, 156–85; South Asian and
South Asian Americans
Black collaborations in, 234–38,
“Indian Spices” (TV show), 247
265–69
Indo-American Community Ser-
history, global-historical con-
vice Center (ICSC), 36, 304n26
nections of South Asians and
Indo Chic, 244
Blacks and, 118–29
Indo-Fijians, college experiences
Ho, Fred (Chinese American jazz
of, 67–69
musician), 118, 270
insularity, of South Asians, 38–39
Ho Chi Minh, 309n19
interminority relations: authen-
“homeland” myth: desi identity
ticity in hip hop and, 278–80;
and, 71–73; desi remix culture
desi hip hop culture and,
and, 306n10; Hindu religious
99–104; desi racialized sexu-
hegemony and, 53–57; hip hop
ality and, 161–65; gender and
ethnicity and, 74–85
sexuality and, 140–89; mar-
homophobia in hip hop indus-
riage and romance and, 165–80;
try, 151
middle-class desis and, 106–9;
homosexuality: desi college ex-
Middle East/South Asian hip
periences and, 62–73; D’Lo’s
hop images and, 244–64; mul-
identity and, 142, 146–49; hip
tiple racial affinities of desis
hop culture and, 149–56, 158,
and, 111–17; racism and, 2–5
310n11; middle-class desis and,
Iton, Richard, 283
105–9; South Asian attitudes
concerning, 181–85; woman- Jackson, John, 275
ist and queer-friendly spaces, Jainism, 53
185–87 Jamaicans: global-historical con-
Humanity (desi rapper), 118–19, nections of South Asians and,
131, 199–201, 278, 291–94 126–29; history of hip hop and,
Human Rights Now, 286 19
Human Rights Watch, 209, 285 Japan, hip hop culture in, 24–25,
hybrid identity: class and, 304n2; 265
panethnic identity and, 69–73 Japanese Americans: appropria-

342 Index
 tion of Blackness by, 238–40, Khalnayak (Ghai), 266
263–64; internment of, 287, Kibria, Nazli, 62, 93–95
311n3 Kich, George, 110
Jay-Z, 245, 259–63, 265–67, 269 Kid Frost (Chicano rapper), 78, 215
jazz music: hip hop comparisons King, Martin Luther, Jr., 12, 123–
with, 199, 204, 215–16, 264– 24
65; racial crossings in, 222, King, Rodney, 128
309n22; White fascination with, Kitwana, Bakari, 160
264, 313n12 Kochiyama, Yuri, 123–24, 285
Jin (Chinese American rapper), Kojoe (Japanese rapper), 269
19–20, 121, 309n16 Kool Herc (Black DJ), 19, 100, 215
Jindal, Bobby, 311n15 Korean immigrants, 287, 308n1
Jonny (desi hip hop journalist), KRS-One (Black rapper), 297
1, 10, 46–47, 59–61, 310n2; Kuttin Kandi (Filipina DJ), 150
on appeal of hip hop, 193–94, Kwanzaa festival, 279–80
198, 205–6, 210–11; on authen-
La Bella Mafia (Lil’ Kim), 312n4
ticity in hip hop, 274, 276, 279;
“La Di Da Di (We Like to Party)”
middle-class background of,
(Doug E. Fresh), 14
106; on multiple racial affinities
Lady of Rage (Black rapper),
of desis, 111–13; music produc-
310n11
tion by, 107–8
Lahiri, Bappi (Indian producer),
Jungle Fever (Lee), 169, 311n16
249–52
Jyoti (Chakravorty), 313n5
Latino rappers: Blackness of hip
“Kaliyon Ka Chaman” (Anand), 251 hop and, 213–16; ethnic identity
kanji tattoos, 260 politics of, x; multiple affilia-
Karmacy (group), 9, 11, 38, 54, 71, tions of, 78, 200
74–75, 77–85, 168, 312n9 Lee, Bruce, 19
KB (desi rapper), 9, 11; on appeal “Legitimizing the Spirit Within”
of hip hop, 195–96, 210–12; on (D’Lo), 53
appropriation and othering, Lil’ Kim (Black rapper), 153, 312n4
242; on authenticity in hip hop, liminality: of desis in mixed-race
273; on classism, 48–49; col- neighborhoods, 51; South Asian
lege experiences of, 57–58, 65, ethnic identity and, 27–29
98–99; ethnicity expressed by, Lipsitz, George, x, 22–23, 125–26
37–38, 72–74, 88; on family in- Little India (magazine), 286
fluences, 96; global-historical Lott, Eric, 179, 240
connections of South Asians
Maira, Sunaina, 21–22, 62–64,
and, 128–29; on marriage and
161, 173, 175, 244
family pressures, 167–71; on
Malcolm X, 1, 12, 123–24, 208, 285
multiracialism of hip hop, 218–
Malcolm X Jazz Festival, 177
21, 312n9; political activism of,
Mangeshkar, Lata (Indian singer),
287, 291
249
Kelley, Robin, 195, 257
marginalized groups, Blackness
Kelly, R. (Black R&B singer), 246–
adopted by, 108–9
48, 268

Index 343
Marley, Bob (reggae artist), 125– mind/body dualism, South Asian
26, 278 immigrants and, 308n2
marriage and divorce: desi expec- misogyny in hip hop, 151–56, 158
tations concerning, 159–60, Miss E . . . So Addictive (Elliott), 260
165–71; desi multiracial affilia- Mississippi Masala (Nair), 29
tions and, 49–51, 306n12; of “Misunderstanding” (Rawj),
female artists, 171–80 102–3
masculinity: Black hypersexuality mixed race studies, multiple racial
stereotype and, 141, 172–80; affinities of desis and, 28, 109–
Black masculinity and Brown 17, 136
identity, 180–85; Blackness of model minority myth: desi racial
hip hop and, 213–16; female consciousness and, 94–95;
desi artists and tropes of, x–xi, desis in mixed-race neighbor-
153–56, 180–85; Indian racial- hoods and, 48–51, 101–4; ex-
ization of, 21–23; racialized ceptional desis and, 42–44;
sexuality of desi men, 160–65 for Indian immigrants, 14–16;
“Masters Too” (Feenom Circle), middle-class desis and, 105–9;
75–76, 94 polycultural sampling and,
Mathew, Biju, 42 25–29, 303n18; racialized sexu-
Mazumdar, Sucheta, 97 ality of desi men and, 161–65;
MC Lyte (Black rapper), 151, 153 Reaganomics and deindustrial-
MC PraCh (Cambodian rapper), ization and, 194–95
19, 209 Mos Def (Black rapper), 267
MC Trouble (Black rapper), 153 Mountain Brothers (Chinese
McWhorter, John, 196 American rap group), 19, 127,
media images: appropriation of 309n16
Black culture in, 240–64; for- Movement, The (Karmacy), 74,
eign stereotypes in, 250–51; 83–84
gender stereotypes in hip hop Moynihan Report (1965), 194
and, 152–56; of urban Blacks, Mullen, Bill, 118, 177, 270
190–91 multiculturalism: Blackness of hip
“Mental Slavery” (Abstract/ hop and, 214–16; desi ethnic
Humanity), 292 insularity and, 47; desis in
Mexican Americans, history of hip mixed-race neighborhoods and,
hop and, 19, 208 99–104; exceptional desis and,
M.I.A. (British Asian artist), 33, 42–44; second-generation desis
310n4 and, 16–17, 19
middle-class desis: college experi- multilingualism, Karmacy’s use
ences of, 63–73; contact with of, 77–85
Blacks and hip hop of, 105–9 multiracial affinities of hip hop,
Middle East, hip hop images of, 109–17, 213–16, 312n7; desi hip
243–64 hop artists and, 217–33
Middle Passage, The (Himalayan multisited ethnography, com-
Project), 115, 119, 131, 242–43 parative racial studies through,
“Middle Passage, The” (Himalayan 33–36
Project), 76

344 Index
“Mundian to Bach Ke” (Panjabi “No Shame” (D’Lo), 46–47
MC), 247 Not in Our Name war protest, 149
musical production: Blackness “Nuttin Nice” (Himalayan
of hip hop and, 213–16; Black Project), 119
ownership of, 237–38; gender Nuyoricans, 215; history of hip
and sexuality issues in, 142–46; hop and, 19, 100, 200, 208
power dynamics in, 246–53, N.W.A. (Niggaz with Attitude)
263–64; racial identity and, (group), 18, 106, 197, 204,
135–37 308n9
Musicians United to Win Without
Oasis (dance club), 177
War coalition, 266
Obama, Barack, 313n15
Muslims: Black/desi connections
Oblique Brown (Chee Malabar), 9,
to, 129–30; class aspirations
132–33, 309n23
of, 55–57; ethnic insularity
“Oblique Brown” (Chee Malabar),
of, 306n9; hip hop images of,
133–34
244–64; political activism of,
Omatsu, Glenn, 43–44
291–99; post–September 11 era
Omi, Michael, 27
images of, 130–35, 255–57;
“One Cry” (Jin), 120–21
South Asian attitudes concern-
“One Struggle” (Vivek), 226–29,
ing, 287–88
285
Mystikal (Black rapper), 268
Orientalism: American racism
Naipaul, V. S., 119 and, 95; appropriation
Nair, Mira (Indian filmmaker), 29 of Middle Eastern/South
Nas (Black rapper), 200 Asian images and, 245–64;
“Nas’s Angels” (Nas), 266, 312n4 Black-desi romance and, 177–
Neal, Mark Anthony, 151–52 80; of desi women, 171–80;
“Neil” (Karmacy), 168 global-historical connections
Nepali immigrants, desiness and to, 122–29; post–September 11
panethnic identity of, 69–73 era and, 131–35
New Asian Cool, 244 otherness: appropriation as, 238–
“new cosmopolitans,” in South 64, 280–82; South Asian and
Asian community, 55–57 Black relations and, 234–38
New Right politics, “new cosmo- “Outcasted” (Karmacy), 82, 128–
politans” in South Asian com- 29
munity and, 56 outsider status, multiple racial af-
Nihjon, Raeshem (desi finities of desis and, 109–17
filmmaker), 8 ownership of hip hop: debate over,
Nimo (desi rapper), xiii, 9, 11, 212–16, 223–30; South Asian
78–80, 82–83, 221 and Black relations and, 234–38
“1964” (Himalayan Project), 115
Pacifics, The (Filipino American
non-essentialism, global-
group), 309n16
historical connections of South
“Paid in Full” (Rakim), 255–56
Asians and, 122–29
Pakistani immigrants: Blacks
non-Indian South Asians, 65–73,
and, 174; global-historical con-
118

Index 345
Pakistani immigrants (cont.) Pop Master Fabel (Puerto Rican
nections of South Asians and dancer), 19
Blacks and, 118–29 PopMatters (magazine), 258
Palumbo-Liu, David, 94–95, popular culture: appropriation of
304n2 Middle East/South Asian images
panethnic identity: desi hip hop by, 244–64; commodification of
and, 222–30; desiness and, hip hop and, 279–82; desi hip
69–73, 307n18; global- hop artists and, 195–212; power
historical connections to, 121– dynamics in, 255
29; hip hop and, 12–13; Indian “positive stereotypes” in desi cul-
hegemony and non-Indian ture, 165–71, 311n15
South Asians and, 69; political Posse Foundation, The, 286
activism of desis and, 287 “Postcards from Paradise” (Hi-
Paris (Black rapper), 313n15 malayan Project), 121
“Part 3: Sri Lankan Boi” (D’Lo), Pough, Gwendolyn, 183
64, 190–91 power dynamics: desi hip hop
Party Music (Coup), 312n6 and role of, xi, 220–30; desi
“Passage to India” (Karmacy), sexuality and, 187–89; hip
80–81, 83, 291 hop as tool for, 197–212,
Patel, Sardar, 81, 307n24 283–99; hybrid identities and,
PeaceOUT World Homo Hop Fes- 303n21; interminority rela-
tival, 310n11 tions and differences in, 102–4;
peer evaluation in hip hop music, multiracialism of hip hop and,
104, 308n8 220–30; music production and,
Perry, Imani, 213 246–53; South Asian and Black
pimping, desi female artists and, relations and, 234–38
183–85 Prashad, Vijay, 23–24, 26, 31,
police brutality: D’Lo’s references 42, 56, 94, 96, 126, 263, 283,
to, 146–49; global-historical 303n20, 311n1
connections and, 127–29; hip Presley, Elvis, 239
hop references to, 204; inter- professional status: desi hip hop
minority relations and, 104–6 artists and role of, 54–57;
“Police Brutality” (D’Lo), 127–28 ethnic insularity and, 44–47,
political activism: authenticity in 305nn5–6; of exceptional desis,
hip hop and, 272–79; hip hop 42–44
as tool for, 197–212, 257–64, Proposition 21 (California), 197
283–99; minority activism and, Proposition 187 (California), 197
194–95; panethnic identity and, Public Enemy (group), 10, 196–
70–73; racialization of, 108–9 97, 200, 202–7, 209, 231, 297,
polyculturalism: community for- 311n5
mation and, 23–29; desi hip Puerto Ricans: history of hip hop
hop appropriation and, 269–71; and, 19, 100, 200, 208; women
in hip hop music, 192–212, in hip hop and, 310n8
280–82; political activism and, Punjabi MC (British Asian artist),
287–99 201–2, 265, 267, 269
pop locking, 148, 310n7 Purkayastha, Bandana, 76

346 Index
“Put You on the Game” (The relations and, 1–5, 56–57, 135–
Game), 313n7 37, 171–80, 235–38, 264–71. See
also global race consciousness
Queen Latifah (Black rapper), 151,
Radano, Ronald, 234
153, 201–2, 310n9
Radhika (desi fan), 61, 71–72, 153,
Queen Pen (Black rapper), 310n9
175–76
“racial draft” in military, 259, Raimist, Rachel (filmmaker), 150
313n10 Rainman (Chinese American rap-
racialized hip hop, 10–13; Black- per), 119
ness and, 212–16; desi pro- “raja syndrome” in desi culture,
duction of, x–xi; gender and, 165–66, 310n14
138–89; global-historical con- Rakim (Black rapper), 202, 247–
nections of Blacks and South 49, 255–56
Asians in, 117–29; historical “Ramble-Ations: A One D’Lo
context for, 20–23 Show,” 157–58, 184, 310n10
racism: Afro-Asian identity and, Rao, Sam, 304n26
29–33, 88–91; appeal of hip hop rap music: by British South Asian
and, 196–212; appropriation musicians, 33, 304n25; on
and identification and, 264–71; college radio stations, 107–8,
appropriation and othering and, 308n11; influence on desi hip
240–64; authenticity in hip hop hop of, x–xi
and, 271–79; college experi- “Rapper’s Delight” (Sugarhill
ences of desis and, 59–73; com- Gang), 100
parative racial studies through Rastafarianism, 53, 123, 125–26
multisited ethnography and, Ravi (desi label founder), 199,
33–36; desi ambiguity con- 283
cerning, 91–99, 217–30; desi Rawj (desi rapper), 8–10, 12, 49,
ethnic insularity and, 44–47, 52, 301n3, 306n11; on ancestry
240–64; ethnicity and, 37–41; and ethnicity, 75–76; appeal of
first-generation desis and, hip hop for, 211–12; on authen-
93–95; gender and sexuality ticity in hip hop, 276; on Black
and, 140–89; hip hop artists’ culture, 99–100, 127, 222; col-
ambivalence concerning, ix–xi; lege experiences of, 60–61, 64;
history of hip hop and, 18–23; on desi multiracial conscious-
middle-class desis’ contact ness, 94–95, 99, 102–3, 222–23;
with, 105–9; military draft and, on desi sexuality, 164–65; on
259, 313n10; multiple racial family and marriage pressures,
affinities, 109–17; panethnic 166–67; political activism of,
identity and, 69–73; political 291
activism of desis and, 287–99; Rawkus Records, 269
polycultural sampling and con- “React” (Sermon), 261–62
struction of, 23–29; racialized reactive ethnicity, 40–41, 305n3
sexuality of desi men, 160–65; Reagan, Ronald, 17, 194, 204,
reactive ethnicity and, 305n3; 311n3
second-generation desis and, “Rebel Music” (Himalayan
95–99; South Asian and Black Project), 131–32

Index 347
reggae music: Blackness of hip self-racialization, by South Asian
hop and, 215; ethnic groups in, hip hop artists, 20–23
151 September 11, 2001, attacks (9/11):
reggaeton, 215 desi identity and, 72–73; history
religion, Indian Hindu hegemony of hip hop and, 20–23; Middle
and, 52–57 East/South Asian images fol-
reparations for African Ameri- lowing, 244–45, 257–64; politi-
cans, 311n3 cal activism in wake of, 287–99;
research methodology, com- racial realignments following,
parative racial studies through 130–35, 226–30; South Asian
multisited ethnography and, and Black relations in wake of,
33–36 236–38
resistance ideology, appeal of hip Sermon, Erick (Black rapper),
hop and, 199–212 261–62
Richmond (California), 37, 304n1 sexism in hip hop culture, 149–56,
Rock Steady Crew (dance group), 257–64
19 sexuality: Black-desi comparisons
Rocky (Canadian desi rapper), 197, of, 96; Blackness of hip hop
271 and, 213–16; desi college experi-
Rodney, Walter, 31 ences and, 62–73; in desi cul-
Roediger, David, 161 ture, x–xi, 156–85; desi double
Rose, Tricia, 151 standard concerning, 159–60,
Ruff Ryder Records, 20 310n12; in desi hip hop, 266–
Rukus Avenue Records, 78–80, 67; of female artists, 171–80;
126, 163, 210–11, 272, 312n9 multiracialization of hip hop
Rumbaut, Ruben, 307n18 and, 246–47, 255–57, 260–64;
power and, 187–89; racialized
Sammy (desi rapper), 126, 163,
hip hop and, 138–89; racialized
210–11, 218, 220–21
sexuality of desi men, 160–65.
Samoans, history of hip hop and,
See also gender
19
Shakur, Tupac (Black rapper), 204,
sampling: as appropriation, 249–
261
55, 262–64, 279–82; authen-
Shankar, Ravi (Indian musician),
ticity in face of, 271–79; com-
309n22
munity formation and, 23–29,
Shante, Roxanne (Black rapper),
303n17; ethnic hip hop ethnog-
151, 310n11
raphy and, 12–13, 51–57; politi-
Shaw Brothers (film producers), 19
cal activism through, 294–95
“Show, The” (Doug E. Fresh), 14
San Juan, E., Jr., 37
Shware, Raje (desi artist), 266–67,
Saregama, 249–50, 313n7
269, 313n13
Scott, David, 29
Sikh, Jat, 287
second-generation desis, racial
“Silent Scream” (Himalayan
consciousness of, 95–99
Project), 133
segmented assimilation, ethnic
Simmons, Russell, 146, 312n3,
hip hop ethnography and, 13,
313n15
301n7

348 Index
Simpsons, The (TV series), 142 65–69; insularity and classism
Sistrens gathering, 186 of, 44–47; marriage and family
“6 in the Mornin’” (Ice T), 204 pressures for, 165–71; multi-
slavery: Blackness of hip hop and, racial affinities of, 37–41, 111–
214–16; global-historical con- 17; musical identity of, 270–71;
nections of South Asians and political activism of, 194–95,
Blacks and, 118–29; minority 283–99; post–September 11 era
status in U.S. and, 32 and, 130–35; second-generation
Slick Rick (Black British rapper), desis and, 13–17, 95–99; sexu-
302n8 ality and gender identity issues
sliding signifiers, multiple racial for, 158–85; socioeconomic
affinities of desis and, 109–17 conditions for, 25–29, 303n19.
Slum Village (group), 266 See also desis
Smith, Will (rapper and actor), South Asian Women Creative
306n11 Circle, 288–89
“Snake (Remix)” (Kelly), 246–47, Spinderella (Black DJ), 150
257 Sri Lankan immigrants: college
soca music, 126 experiences in U.S. of, 65–69;
social justice: desi hip hop as tool D’Lo’s tensions with, 181–85;
for, xi, 55–57, 283–99; hip hop global-historical connections
and, 196 of South Asians and Blacks and,
Song, Min, 97–98 118–29, 309n17
Souled Separately (Feenom Circle), strategic ambiguity, multiple
94, 224 racial affinities of desis and,
Southall Black Sisters, 30 109–17
South Asian Americans: Afro- Strauss, Neil, 231
Asian identity and, 29–33; anti- student organizations, desi bond-
Black attitudes of, 88–91, 171– ing through, 59–60
80; authenticity of hip hop by, Sugarhill Gang (group), 100
214–16; collaboration with Swap (desi rapper), 9, 11, 78–83,
Black hip hoppers of, 265–69; 221
as female hip hop artists, 142– Sweet Tee (Black rapper), 153
56; first-generation racial iden- syncretism, Hindu religious hege-
tities among, 93–95; gender and mony for desis and, 53–57
hip hop and, 138–89; genera-
Tamil Eelam, 120
tion classifications for, 4, 301n1;
Tamil Tigers, 309n17
global-historical connections
the1shanti (desi rapper), 269
with Blacks and, 117–29; hetero-
The Indus Entrepreneurs (TIE),
geneity of, 40–41; hip hop cul-
305n6
ture within, 41–44, 211–12; hip
Third World Liberation Front, 43
hop images of, 243–64; as hon-
“Thoda Resham Lagta Hai”
orary Whites, 25–26, 303nn18–
(Mangeshkhar), 249
19; immigration patterns of,
Thompson, Robert, 210
14, 302n9; Indian hegemony
“Thoroughbred” (Chee Malabar),
and non-Indian South Asians,
309n23

Index 349
Thuc Phi, Thien-bao, 161, 178–79 125; multiple racial affinities
thug, image of desis and, 190–91, of, 114–17; political activism of,
311n1 285–86
Timbaland (Black producer),
WADDAG (group), 187
246, 263, 266–67, 269, 313n7,
Wang, Oliver, 19–20, 121, 125, 202,
313n13
309n13, 311n5
TLC (group), 153
War on Terrorism: hip hop refer-
Trinidad: global-historical con-
ences to, 244–64, 267–71;
nections of South Asians in,
political activism of desis and,
126–29; Indian and African
288–99
populations in, 304nn22–23
wealth accumulation: desi hip hop
Truthfully Speaking (Truth Hurts),
culture and influence of, 54–57;
247
desi racial consciousness and,
Truth Hurts (Black R&B singer),
94–95; second-generation
246–49, 251–53, 255–59
desi identity and, 15–17; South
Tseng, Judy, 127
Asians as honorary Whites and,
Tucker, C. Delores, 302n11
25–29, 303n19
Twilight Players (British Asian
West, Kanye (Black producer), 267
dance group), 310n7
West Indies: cross-culturalism in,
Twine, Frances, 170
210; Indians in, 30, 304n22
Umoja educational organization, “When You Have No Choice”
114–15 (D’Lo), 207–8
United Kingdom: Afro-Asian iden- White, Armond, 312n7
tity in, 31–33, 304n24; Asian White culture: appropriation of
music in, 201–2; Black music in, Black culture by, 238–39, 263–
107–9; global-historical con- 64; appropriation of Middle
nections of South Asians and, East/South Asian images by,
125–29 244–64; Blackness of hip hop
United States: Afro-Asian migra- and, 213–16, 312n7; commodi-
tion to, 31–33; anti-Asian back- fication of hip hop and, 216–30;
lash in, 95, 308n4 desi ethnic identity and, 39–41,
Universal Negro Improvement 44–47, 304n2; desi intermar-
Association, 309n19 riage and romance and, 169–
upward mobility, desi culture and, 71; first-generation desis and,
100–104 93–95; history of hip hop and,
21–23; polycultural sampling
Vivek (desi rapper), 1–2, 10–11, 29,
and, 25–29; second-generation
53, 165; on appeal of hip hop,
desis’ view of, 96–99
197; on appropriation in hip
White supremacy, 2–5
hop, 242, 279–80; on authen-
Williams, Teresa, 113, 136
ticity in hip hop, 274–75, 278;
Wilson, Pete, 204
on Black consciousness, 217,
Winant, Howard, 27
225–30; on desi stereotyping,
Wince at the Sun (Himalayan
191; on global-historical con-
Project), 119–20, 131
nections of South Asians, 123,

350 Index
Wong, Deborah, 22–23, 197, 264– Yellow Panthers, 194
65 Yo! MTV Raps (TV show), 14, 106,
Wood, Joe, 240 148
Youth Built, 286
Yagnik, Alka (Indian singer), 266
Yo Yo (Black rapper), 310n11
“Yankee Hindutva,” 42

Index 351
 Nitasha Tamar Sharma is an assistant professor
of African American studies and Asian American studies
at Northwestern University.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sharma, Nitasha Tamar, 1973–
Hip hop Desis : South Asian Americans, Blackness, and a global race
consciousness / Nitasha Tamar Sharma.
p. cm. — (Refiguring American music)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-8223-4741-5 (cloth : alk. paper)
isbn 978-0-8223-4760-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. South Asian Americans—Music—Social aspects. 2. Rap (Music)—
Social aspects—United States. 3. Hip-hop—Influence. 4. South
Asian Americans—Race identity. 5. United States—Race relations.
I. Title. II. Series: Refiguring American music.
ml3918.r37s53 2010
782.421649089'914073—dc22 2010006794