“O.J. like, ‘I’m Not Black, I’m O.J.’…Okay”: Collective Memory and the Narrative of America in Jay-Z’s “the Story of O.J.”

Hussle and Motivate: An Afrocentric Understanding of Constitutive Rhetoric Toward Economic Empowerment in Nipsey Hussle’s Victory Lap Album

“…I utilize these songs as case studies to explore how Nipsey rhetorically empowers his listeners to embrace an identity toward economic and financial freedom. Further, this essay is interested in interrogating the ontological function of the “rhetoric of economic empowerment.” I define the rhetoric of economic empowerment as an active call to symbolically improve or grant access to economic freedom and liberation to establish an individual’s or community’s citizenship and agency (Bradfield, 2010; Fisher, 2016; Jones, 2017; Leaven, 2020; Stillion Southard, 2017). To clarify, rhetorical analysis (or criticism) is a “qualitative research method that is designed for the systematic investigation and explanation of symbolic acts and artifacts for the purpose of understanding rhetorical processes” (Foss, 2017, p. 6).…”