Hip-hop

pp. 597-606

in: Christopher D. Rodkey, Jordan E. Miller (eds), The Palgrave handbook of radical theology, Berlin, Springer, 2018

Abstract

This essay concerns how hip-hop has both killed and retained the concept of God in a perpetual rising and sublation through its primary cultural forms: graffiti, breakdancing, DJing, and MCing. It reveals hip-hop as a "Silent Partner" in the enactment of postmodern death of God theology, illuminates how the death of God is the premise of hip-hop itself, and observes how the death of God illustrates hip-hop culture's oscillation between the "not true" and the "not a lie" of secular and confessional God language.