Prefuse73Abstract

Abstract for "Extinguished Words and Uprock Narratives: the Post-Human Hip Hop of Prefuse 73":
Hip hop is often fashioned as a postmodern form of cultural political resistance, a pushing against the hegemonic forces of a dominant and colonizing cultural discourse. By sampling from the past and the master culture, the story goes, hip hop figures a new discourse, allows new stories to be told, and provides a dance around (and with) hegemony. Consequently, much theorizing about hip-hop is steeped in the language of postmodern media theory and postcolonial discourse. What would it mean, however, to think about hip-hop in terms other than “subaltern” and “signifyin(g)?” Can hip-hop be discussed in terms outside of nationalist/political discourse?

In attempting to answer those two questions, I would like to explore the work of hip hop producer Prefuse 73 and the various ways his work can be described as “post-human.” To refer to something as being “post-human” is to evoke, at least in academic circles, a specific set of machinic relations, and my essay will partly explore these evocations. That said, Prefuse’s music is, on a very literal level, post human. Where rap is primarily a vocal form in which the rapper tells a story over a beat, Prefuse 73 makes music by blending vocal and instrumental samples, all of which are manipulated. Receiving sharp criticism amongst many hip hop fans for his manipulation of the MC, his music would appear to be working within a different cultural landscape, albeit one that is still, clearly, connected with hip hop.

By scrambling the MC’s rhymes, Prefuse 73 is creating a style of rap music that evokes the second, more theoretical meaning of “post-human.”1 I will show that this denial of the primacy of the human MC evokes an existence that is closely enmeshed with computer technology and digital consciousness. Instead of serving as a vehicle for the expansion of a nationalist political agenda, Prefuse 73, I will argue, is attempting to evoke the chaos of a networked, post-human society. That said, I will go onto argue that the recognizable character of the music that still marks it as hip hop is a tentatively positive affirmation of the ability of the culture to transcend the complicated informational landscape of the now.

Having made the argument for the post-human politics at work within Prefuse 73’s music, I will conclude by offering a new, theoretical term for discussing the post-human condition. Where the standard hip-hop trope of the “scratch” is often used to evoke the DJ’s ability to reorder hegemonic cultural forces, I will conclude with a consideration of the “glitch,” a technique used by producers such as Prefuse 73 and Matmos, wherein audio samples of music, speech, and ambient noise are rendered illegible and reshaped into a new music terrain. Where the “scratch” figures a remixing of culture, the “glitch” shows a way to scramble reality, revealing much of what is at stake within a post-human politics.