TRANSMODERNITY: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World

Notwithstanding the already established prominence of scholarship on rap music produced in the United States, Brazilian scholars rarely refer to American studies. Furthermore, a few comparative studies between Brazilian and American rap lyrics do exist. This study takes a step toward filling such a gap. While examining dominant scholarship on rap in Brazil, I demonstrate how Brazilian scholars render blackness invisible in their approaches to rap. Through a comparison between N.W.A.’s and Racionais MC’s’s lyrics, in which I highlight some of rap’s aesthetic and rhetoric devices that both groups share, I ultimately reclaim the place of blackness in Brazilian rap.