HHAP Episode 19: Quentin Williams on Multilingualism & Hip Hop in South Africa

Hip Hop African Podcast

This episode, South African hip hop scholar and sociolinguist Dr. Quentin Williams discusses his new book Remix Multilingualism: Hip Hop, Ethnography and Performing Marginalized Voice (Bloomsbury Press). Dr. Williams is a Senior Lecturer in the Linguistics Department at the University of Western Cape. He has published papers and book chapters on the performance of multilingualism, popular cultural practices (specifically Hip Hop), agency and voice in urban multilingual spaces. In addition to the book we’ll be discussing today, he is also currently editing the book Kaapse Styles: Hip Hop Art & Activism in Cape Town, South Africa. Dr. Williams has been writing on language and hip hop in South Africa for several years, and has extensive credibility within South Africa's well established hip hop community. Dr. Williams' research and work has also made valuable contributions to the field of linguistics. In this interview we discuss the book, Dr. Williams research on South African hip hop, and ultimately his place as a Coloured man from the Cape Flats in one of the oldest and largest hip hop scenes in Africa. Episode Breakdown 6:24 - Being a hip hop sociolinguist & self reflection in the book. 7:50 - The arena of freestyle rap battles 11:35 - His work with the group Suburban Menace 16:05 - Hip hop research and scholarship, & the responsibility to the subjects of the research 22:43 - His experiences in the Cape Flats township of Bishop Lavis during hip hop's days of hip hop, during the last years of the anti-apartheid struggle 29:10 - Relationships between Black & Coloured hip hop heads 38:05 - Different hip hop language varieties in South Africa 39:40 - Braggadocio, and its place and purpose in hip hop 45:00 - Masculinity & toughness in hip hop 49:24 - Dr. Williams concept of “Body Rap”, respectability politics, the pornification of hip hop culture, & rape culture within hip hop culture* 58:12 - Women navigating masculine hip hop spaces 1:07:44 - The diverse audiences that this book speaks to *Dr. Williams defines Body Rap as “a sub-genre of local rap, where the overarching theme in the lyrics is the sexualization and often the denigration of women’s bodies, performed for the pleasure of men”.