Beyond perpetual quests for meaning and presence figured as religious, this paper is an attempt to rethink the religious in Hip Hop culture by examining the uses and effects of the religious within the cultural world of Hip Hop. Moreover, this paper asks, what is accomplished by such uses for particular social groups? Using postmodern theory and social thought, this paper parts from more traditional religious and theological examinations of Hip Hop [such as hermeneutical approaches] to rethink the category of religion for popular cultural analysis beyond a sui generis phenomenological approach which privileges the religious as unique.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.