Entendendo o Homem Negro nos Racionais MCs: uma etnografia lírica

Abstract

My objective in this dissertation is to understand who is the black man built by the Racionais, what is his relationship with his ghetto and his peers, how he builds ties of otherness and solidarity and how all this influences the hierarchy of masculinities within the idyllic territory that the group builds. For this, besides the lyrics of some selected songs, performance is a very important aspect. Like two of its members, Mano Brown and KL Jay, they play the role of the black man in real life and how it translates lyrically and musically into representations. All the discourse produced by the group shows unequivocally some aspects related to the speaker; two of these aspects – being male and being black – give substance to a subject located in a specific place – the periphery – both physical and symbolic. I seek here to recall hip-hop's relationship with counterculture, its role as a mechanism of resistance, and how the descendants of enslaved blacks with double consciousness use rap to claim the promises unfulfilled by Modernity, freedom, equality and fraternity. In addition, I sought to understand how the expectations of being a man and the barriers to being black influence this subject and his representations.