In Dead Precedents: How Hip-Hop Defines the Future (2018), Roy Christopher claims that hip hop culture is “inherently futuristic” – on the level of both form and content. This seminar traces and critically examines the textual, visual, and musical cultures Christopher assembles, thereby putting his claim to the test. Asking “What are hip hop futures?” rather than “What is the future of hip hop?” participants will make themselves familiar with the future scenarios and imaginary socialities Christopher discovers in cyberpunk fiction, Afrofuturism, hip hop aesthetics, spoken word and MC lyricism, and related forms of cultural expression. From Filippo T. Marinetti to Sun Ra, from William Gibson to N. K. Jemisin, from Blade Runner to The Matrix, from Afrika Bambaataa to Cannibal Ox, from Jean-Michel Basquiat to Style Wars, from Alice Coltrane to Erykah Badu, and from the Wu-Tang Clan to Run the Jewels – this seminar explores the historically based parallel drawn by Dead Precedents between cyberculture and hip hop culture (or, in other words, between hacking and sampling).
Participants will have to read and analyze a heterogeneous selection of high-level theoretical texts on blackness, intertextuality, media ecology, and related fields, in order to come terms with the ways in which the primary materials negotiate the cultural and political dynamics of gender, race, ethnicity, and class. Each participant will have to be prepared to give a presentation on a specific topic related to a given “futurism.” Aside from additional short fiction, poems, lyrics, and theoretical texts, which will be made available via StudIP, the following two books need to be purchased by the seminar’s participants:

- Roy Christopher, Dead Precedents: How Hip-Hop Defines the Future
- William Gibson, Neuromancer