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The radical dissemination of the images of "blackness" throughout the globe has created a moment of crisis in some sectors of the black community. The basic tropes of "blackness"-black culture, black identity, black institutionshave been distorted, remixed, and undermined by the logic of the current global economy. At stake is the preservation of a "modern" blackness-that blackness which was posited and circulated as a buffer against white supremacy, political disenfranchisement, slavery, Jim Crow segregation and the collusion of racist imaginations and commercial culture in the early 20th century. In many sectors "blackness" is literally under siege. It is in this context that many of the contemporary tropes of "blackness" that circulate in commercial popular culture (niggas, hip-hop, the underclass, queers, etc.), particularly in popular music, film, and music video, are perceived as threats to blackness-as tropes of an erosive and inauthentic blackness that is as threatening to the Black Public proper as "death" itself. This sense of threat, has been, perhaps, most powerfully expressed in the debates over the use of the word "nigger" in popular culture. It is my contention that there is a distinct difference in the word "nigger" and the word "nigga" which circulates more widely in the context of American youth culture. The differences in the words and their uses highlight the largely generational divide in "blackness," a divide that hip-hop culture critically negotiates by articulating notions of "blackness" and an attendant black masculinity more in sync with the flow of global capital.

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