“The Ultimate Drive by”: Racionais MC’s, Ice Cube, and the Pursuit of Blackness

Abstract

Considering that hip-hop music is the foremost contemporary artistic expression of Black lives I discuss American rapper Ice Cube’s track “I wanna Kill Sam” and Brazilian group Racionais Mc’s’s track “Racistas otários”. The two tracks have in common the fact that they address the experiences of Black people through their relationship with public policies and institutions that claim to promote the emancipation of Black people in Brazil and in the USA. I, then, demonstrate that the Racionais and Ice Cube symbolically (re)dimension contemporary “Blackness” as a result of the constant physical and symbolic clashes that started back in the slavery regime.